A favorite feature of the American Film Market will be absent for a second straight year as public screenings are cut again from one of the world's largest business conferences for the movie industry.


The advanced general audience showings were long considered a community perk for an annual week-long event that draws thousands of producers and distributors who attend hundreds of screenings in theaters across the city, taking over about two dozen screens. The conferences started on Wednesday and will go through Nov. 11.


"Throughout most of this decade, our distributors have opened hundreds of their screenings to the community for free," Jonathan Wolf, the managing director for AFM, said. "However, due to a lack of films that distributors were able to expose to the public in advance of their commercial release, we did not have public screenings in 2008 or 2009.


Misti Kerns, the president and CEO of the Santa Monica Convention and Visitors Bureau, said there are not as many films produced these days and as a result fewer available for the public to view in advance.

"This is another tentacle of the economic crisis going on," Kerns said.

AFM is expected to bring out about 7,500 people to Santa Monica this year, boosting tourism locally during an otherwise slow time of year.