FkN Newsletter
January 2011
FkN News
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Filmkontakt Nord at GIFF
Filmkontakt Nord will be present at Gothenburg International Film Festival, taking place 28 January – 7 February. Jing Haase will be giving a talk on how to get your short film out internationally on Sunday 30 January. She will also be present with a stand at the Short Film Day in Lagerhuset Sunday 30 January.
Karin Johannson-Mex will be present at the festival 2-4 February to screen films and meet the professionals. To set up a meeting with Karin, send her an email or call her at +45 3132 0212.
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Filmkontakt Nord in Clermont-Ferrand
In the beginning of February, Jing Haase will attend the Short Film Market at the world's largest International Short Film Festival in Clermont-Ferrand, France, the most important meeting place of the year for short film professionals.
Besides promoting Nordisk Panorama – 5 Cities Film Festival to an ever expanding network of professionals, FkN is present in Clermont-Ferrand to promote the new films available at Nordisk Panorama Market Online to potential buyers and festivals.
To set up a meeting with Jing Haase in Clermont-Ferrand 7-9 February, send her an email or contact her at +45 3311 5152.
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Filmkontakt Nord in Berlin
FkN’s Head of Nordisk Panorama Industry, Katrine Kiilgaard, is visiting the Berlinale 11-14 February to develop new partnerships and networks for this year's Nordisk Forum, taking place in Aarhus, Denmark, 26-27 September. To set up a meeting with Katrine, send her an email or contact her at +45 2042 4529.
New Nordic and International Initiatives
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Nordic Shorts Top 2010 Hit List
Nordic short film titles dominate the list of most award-winning short films in 2010 published by the German online film magazine Shortfilm.de.
The Norwegian short film Angry Man by Anita Killis took home the first prize for having won 43 prizes in 2011.
The top four on the Prize Hit Parade are all animated short films and three of them are made by Nordic filmmakers: Tussilago by Jonas Odell (3rd place) and Divers in the Rain (4th place) by Priit and Olga Pärn. Shortfilm.de has studied more than 1000 prizes awarded at about 200 festivals all over the world in 2010 and made a ranking according to which films won most prizes.
According to Shortfilm.de the Oscar nominees and winners did not play much of a role in the awards and festival prizes listed on the site. With the exception of Logorama (winner in the Short Film Animated category at the Academy Awards).
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Devoted Closes Down – New Website to Launch
The joint Nordic online platform for young film talents dvoted closed down on 7 January 2011 due to internal prioritising at the Nordic film institutes.
Dvoted was launched in 2006 by the five Nordic film institutes with the ambition to become a developing tool for film talents. The website was a popular online meeting place and discussion forum where filmmakers could share their experiences and films and get advice and guidance in film production from professional film people. Devoted soon grew to be the major film community in the Nordic countries with more than 10.000 members.
Now the site has closed in Denmark, Sweden and Iceland, but Finland and Norway will continue the project on a national level with new website initiatives based on the dvoted platform.
In Norway, a new website to replace dvoted is in development and will be launched as a pilot project in connection to the Norwegian Amandus Festival (film competition for young people under the age of 23 years), later this spring.
Many of the functionalities and features from dvoted will also be available on the new website and new features will be added. In addition to being a community platform for filmmakers, the new website will also be a tool for film centres and resource centres as well as for festivals that work with talent development.
The new website will be given a new name, and a name competition has been started on the Norwegian dvoted Facebook group where people can follow the development of the new website project.
The Norwegian project pilot is developed by Mediefabrikken i Akershus, Filmkraft Rogaland, Midtnorsk Filmsenter, Filmverkstedet i Oppland and the Norwegian Amandus Festival and is supported by the Norwegian Film Institute.
Read more about the Norwegian pilot project here and on the Finnish dvoted here.
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New Script Writing Programme at SUPER16
The alternative Danish film school SUPER16 opens a new Scriptwriting programme this spring.
The new scriptwriting department has been created to stimulate new creative talent and to strengthen the collaboration between director, producer and writer. The script writing programme aims to develop story writing skills and knowledge of dramaturgy.
The next SUPER16 classes will have both directors, producers and scriptwriting students. SUPER16 is open to admissions every second year. The application deadline is 15 March 2011. For more information about SUPER16 see here.
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MTV3 New Partner of Nordisk Film & TV Fond
MTV3 has joined the Nordisk Film & TV Partner Group that now counts 18 members and 12 broadcasting members.
MTV3 is one of the oldest commercial TV channels in Europe and the channel produces 3-5 feature films and around 30 hours of original TV drama a year.
Head of Nordisk Film & TV Fond, Hanne Palmquist welcomes MTV3 to the Fond, saying the membership will mean more options for Nordic producers to seek financing for their projects. All three Finnish major broadcasters, YLE, NELONEN and now MTV3 are members of the Nordic Film & TV Fond.
Nordisk Film & TV Fond has an annual budget of just under Euro 10 million provided in equal parts by the Nordic Council of Ministers, the five Nordic film institutes and 12 Nordic broadcasters.
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TV2 Norway Becomes Generalist Broadcaster
The major Norwegian commercial TV channel TV2 has signed a new five-year agreement with the Norwegian Ministry of Culture after the old concession expired. The new agreement gives TV2 Norway the status of a generalist broadcaster that makes it an alternative to the public service broadcaster NRK.
TV2 will operate from Bergen and will remain a commercial channel but will be subject to some public service must-carry regulations in the cable network. This means that 50% of all programmes must be in Norwegian language and that the channel will offer programmes for both small and large audiences, i.e . daily news, weekly programmes for children and youth in Norwegian languages as well as Norwegian film and TV drama.
Another condition in the new agreement is that TV2 will make an annual contribution of NOK 10 million to the Norwegian Film Institute.
The new agreement will run from 1 January 2011 and expires on 31 December 2015.
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Station Next Introduces Practical Guide to Film Production
The Danish film school for young people, Station Next has launched the new online web service Filmlinjen.dk.
The service is free of charge and offers advice and tools to practical film production.
For teachers and students who want to get hands on film production, Filmlinjen.dk goes through all stages from idea to, shooting and editing. The website offers texts and video tutorials on organising, planning and executing film productions as well as examples of analyses. Students can publish their finished films on the website.
The target group is school children from 7-10. grades as well as high school students and other students on this level.
Station Next is a film school for young people between the ages of 13 and 18 from all over Denmark and their teachers.
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Festival Trailer Competition
The Copenhagen based film festival CPH:PIX has launched a trailer competition for the next edition of CPH:PIX 14 April – 1 May 2011.
The jury will focus on the visual treatment and originality of idea, that should express the experience or impression of the CPH:PIX festival. The trailer should be of max. 25 seconds long.
Two winners will be selected, an Official Festival Trailer and an Audience Favourite. The official festival trailer will be awarded with DKK 10.000 and will be screened in cinemas during the festival. From 7 March – 14 March festival audiences will be able to vote online for their favourite trailer on www.cphpix.dk and all nominated filmmakers will receive tickets to the festival launch, galas and screenings.
The competition is open to everybody and deadline is 1 March 2011. Read more about the competition here (in Danish only).
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Unfinished Swedish Doc Gets Prize
The Swedish filmmakers Simon Klose and producer producer Martin Persson who managed to raise USD 25.000 through crowd funding in just two weeks for their documentary project TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay – Away From Keyboard were hit by a new success. Pirate Bay received the Kickstarter 2010 Award for Best Documentary Film Project even before the film is edited, much to the surprise of its director.
“It seems lame to get a prize for an unfinished project”, Klose says on the film’s website, but admits to be extremely proud.
The documentary is produced by the Swedish Film Institute and is partly funded through crowd funding on the American funding platform website. As mentioned in an earlier FkN news letter the project was pitched at Nordisk Forum and is still in the financing process. TPB AFK is scheduled to be released when the trial against the people from Pirate Bay is over.
The position as Managing Director of Grimstad Short Film Festival is open after Torunn Nyen stops in this position but continues as artistic director.
The
festival is looking for a new visionary person with the abilities to
develop the festival in collaboration with the artistic director.
Experience
of financing, budget planning, administrative skills and management of
staff are some of the qualifications wanted from the new candidate.
The
Managing Director will be responsible for the whole festival
management, for establishing budgets and planning of the festival as
well as for the overall information and market strategies. The candidate
should have relevant experience, strong working capacities and interest
and knowledge about film and media.
For more information about the job, see here.
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Swedish WG Film Wins over Dole
WG Film that produced the award winning documentary film Bananas!* won the case against the American multinational Dole Food Company, Inc.
Bananas!* tells the story of a case of 12 Nicaraguan banana workers battling against the Dole Corporation and its use of pesticides. The Dole Corporation had tried to prevent the documentary from competing in the Los Angeles Film Festival and filed a defamation complaint against the Swedish production company. But after a yearlong court battle, the Los Angeles Court held that the film was an exercise of the right of free speech, and granted a so-called anti-SLAPP motion filed by Swedish filmmakers Fredrik Gertten and Margarete Jangård and their production company WG Film. A SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.
WG Film could celebrate the court rulings, and producer Fredrik Gertten said in a comment, that companies like Dole will have to learn to respect free expression of speech and the freedom of press. Now that the Dole lawsuit is no longer a threat that can hamper the film’s distribution in the US, Bananas!* can reach a larger audience here. Oscilloscope Laboratories will distribute the film in the US. In addition, distribution rights have been sold to more than 15 countries worldwide.
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$ 50 Million Ford Foundation Fund for Documentarie
The Ford Foundation has launched a $ 50 Million fund to support documentaries with a social angle over the next five years. The goal of the initiative is to ‘advance social justice worldwide through the talent of emerging and established filmmakers’, according to the Foundation’s website.
The grants will be given through the JustFilms programme in three ways. JustFilms will contribute $ 1 Million a year over five years to the Sundance Institute that has become a new partner of the Ford Foundation. The money will a.o. go to the support of Sundance’s documentary film workshops.
Other support schemes include an open application process and partnerships with other Ford Foundation grant-making programmes where documentary films may be included.
The decision to launch FirstFilm was taken to meet the growing demand of global audiences for filmed content on social issues. The director of the program, Orlando Bagwell said in a press release that the foundation’s commitment “reflects our recognition that individual stories – meaningful and well told – can be a powerful instrument of change”.
JustFilms has already supported several films that can be seen in the online Film Collection.
For more information about JustFilms, see here
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€ 50.000 PUMA.Creative Impact Award
PUMA.Creative and Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation announced the launch of
the PUMA.Creative Impact Award at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City 21 January.
The PUMA.Creative Impact Award is a major annual award of € 50.000 created to honour documentary films that have an impact in the world and to help the continuation of the film’s campaign work.
The aim of the prize is to put a focus on creative, social justice, peace and environmental filmmaking and to encourage best practice in the filmmaking communities with a financial reward. Titles such as the Burma VJ (Anders Østergaard), The Cove (Louie Psihoyos) and Food Inc. (Robert Kenner) are eligible for the prize money as well as less well-known documentaries that have had a large local effect.
The call for the PUMA.Creative Impact Award is open until 1 April 2011 to any film from any country. Any one – filmmaker, distributor, NGO etc. – can put a film forward.
Five nominated films will be presented for consideration to the Jury that includes Queen Noor of Jordan, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me), Orland Bagwell, Director of the Ford Foundation Social Justice Media Initiative and Emmanuel Jal, musician and activist.
The PUMA.Creative Impact Award will be given in London in October at the annual PUMA.Creative and Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation Gala and Awards Ceremony.
Read more information about the award here.
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Kickstarter and Sundance Institute Collaborate
The crowd-funding platform Kickstarter and the global non-profit organisation The Sundance Institute founded by Robert Redford in 1981 have started a new collaboration.
The Sundance Institute is launching a new programme in partnership with Kickstarter and Facebook to teach filmmakers how to connect with their audiences online. According to a press release, Kickstarter will provide branding, educational and promotional support to alumnis of the Sundance Institute’s artistic development programme. Facebook will offer Institute alumni advice, educational materials, and best-practices tips on how to build and engage audiences via the service. A series of hands-on workshops for Institute alumnis have already been held in Park City.
Beginning this spring, the Institute will curate alumni projects at Kickstarter.com and in the coming months, Sundance Institute will build online resources related to independent distribution options, funding strategies and other key issues.
