FkN Newsletter
August 2009
FkN News
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Nordisk Panorama Event 2009
The countdown has started to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Nordisk
Panorama - 5 Cities Film Festival in Reykjavik, Iceland, 25 – 30
September. If you still haven't treated yourself to an accreditation,
it's time to get moving! Register here before 31 August and get the early bird discount on your accreditation.
As always, you can enjoy a wide array of side programmes, seminars, and social events besides the abundance of high quality Nordic shorts and docs in competition and we are proud to present our jury this year:
Short Film Jury:
Sharon Badal, Short film programmer Tribeca Film Festival
Trevor Groth, Senior programmer Sundance Film Festival
Martin de Thurah, Director and winner from 2008
Documentary Jury:
Frederic Boyer, Programmer Director's Fortnight Cannes
Catherine Le Clef, Senior Vice President, TV and Ancillary Sales Fortissimo Films
Håvard Bustnes, Director and winner from 2008
Read all about it at www.nordiskpanorama.com and benefit from the hotel discounts.
Here are some samples of what you definitely don't want to miss:
Fridrik Thor Fridriksson: My Dinner With...
We have asked the acclaimed Oscar nominated Icelandic filmmaker,
Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, to invite an esteemed international colleague
for a live tête-à-tête. The filmmakers will meet during the festival
for a 'dinner', an informal late afternoon session, where they will
discuss their films, their views on filmmaking, the world and life in
general. Fridrik Thor is one of Scandinavia's most distinguished
directors and producers with a track record of over 30 feature films
and several short films and documentaries. The guest will be announced
in September.
Retrospective Heddy Honingmann
Ms. Honingmann is an award winning filmmaker who has won major awards
at film festivals around the world. Honingmann has been described as
one of the most brilliant documentarians working today and one of the
contemporary masters of the form. The journalist, John Anderson, has
described her films as "elegantly composed, rich in precisely poetic
imagery, fluid transitions and narrative flow. Ultimately, though, what
one comes away feeling is the humanity, the empathy, the pouring out of
hearts. Ask any theologian: What separates man from other animals? The
same thing that distinguishes the work of Heddy Honigmann: Soul".
Special Screening of BANANAS*! and a Seminar
One of the most controversial documentary films of the year BANANAS*!
is an expose on the multi-million dollar international agribusiness of
bananas and the alleged poisoning of the banana farm workers due to use
of pesticides. Dole Food Company is suing filmmaker Fredrik Gertten,
producer Margarete Jangård and the production company WG Film for
slander and defamation with their film BANANAS!*.
A seminar will be held in connection with the screening on violation of
freedom of speech and the need for filmmakers to have the right to make
films on important issues and bring stories to the forefront that can
create debate and criticism. The producers of the film have retained
First Amendment specialist Lincoln Bandlow of Lathrop & Gage to
defend a defamation action brought against them by Dole Food Company
and Mr. Bandlow will be in Reykjavik as one of the key speakers of the
seminar.
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Featuring pitching sessions, pre-booked individual meetings and social events, Nordisk Forum is a valuable meeting place, which offers financiers the opportunity to network among themselves as well as with the attending filmmakers and producers with new documentary projects. In turn, the event offers the independent community insight into the programming / funding policies of the broadcasters and funding institutions. Finally, for observers and film school students Nordisk Forum is an intensive educational experience, encountering the professional financing process first hand.
Nordisk Forum 2009 will take place in Reykjavik from 28-29 September. We expect some 180 professionals to attend the event and are very much looking forward to two intensive days, discussing the selected projects. We have selected 22 new projects from 74 applications.
Find the programme and pitching schedule here.
Moderators
The pitching sessions will be moderated by Cecilia Lidin, Film
Consultant at European Documentary Network (Denmark) and Ulla Simonen,
Producer (Finland). Find their profiles here.
Nordisk Forum Online
We offer registered producers and observers to present a short clip or
trailer of a project, together with a synopsis and other production
information, giving attending financiers the opportunity to preview the
Nordisk Forum projects online and see short trailer excerpts. In
addition, financiers' profiles and online meeting booking will be
available when the site opens 10 September.
The site will be restricted to producers selected to pitch, observers with projects and attending financiers.
NF Introduces Distributors
In addition to the individual meetings between producers and
financiers, we are introducing a new service. 2 distribution experts
are available to the Pitch Teams for consultation; Gitte Hansen
Schnyder, First hand Films (Switzerland) and Peter Jäger, Autlook
Filmsales (Austria). An additional distribution consultant: Mark Atkin,
Crossover (UK) will be available for other attending producers during
Nordisk Forum. All will be sharing their knowledge about the
international television market and give advice about a project's
potential in terms of distribution.
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Successfully launched last year, we are proud to present Nordisk Panorama Outlook, a series of talks and professional meetings that bring some of the key players and key issues of today's short and documentary film market into focus. See the full NP Outlook program here.
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Nordisk Film & TV Fond is proud to be hosting a string of events during Nordisk Panorama entitled Open Source @ NP2009. Read more about the events here (pdf).
Recent years’ explosive development of new distribution technologies is
forever changing the ways moving pictures interact with their
audiences. What demands do the new digital platforms make on the
distribution strategies of the future? And how do they impact on the
production process?
Canadian documentary filmmaker, Daniel Cross, Professor at Concordia
University, Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, and Brett Gaylor,
filmmaker and head of New Media at EyeSteelFilm in Montreal, have many
years of experience with alternative distribution and production.
Recent productions, RIP Remix Manifesto and Open Source Cinema, have
taken the next step into the wide, wild world of digital interactive
opportunities – and challenges.
Focus: New Nordic and International Initiatives
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New Swedish Documentary Project Lauched
For the second time in two years Swedish public service
broeadcaster SVT and the Swedish Film Institute cooperate on a project
to make more documentary films. The theme for this project is The Woman
in My Life and is to be interpreted freely and the partners are on the
look-out for ideas that can develop in strong and personal 13-minute
films.
Unlike many other development initiatives in Sweden, SFI and SVT
directs this project to experienced filmmakers. The deadline for
submission of projects is 25 September. You can read more about the
project and find the application form here.
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North Sea Film Project Launched
Seven countries have got
together to form North Sea Screen to highlight what they have to offer
media firms, thereby attracting more TV and film companies to countries
around the North Sea. The group is made up of councils, national film
development agencies, universities and colleges in Denmark, Norway,
Sweden, the Netherlands, England and Scotland, and the partnership will
highlight the geographical diversity of the area, the transport and
communication links and the skilled workforce.
Nort Sea Screen Partnership has a budget of more than 5 million Euro,
which will directed towards seminars, workshops and especially
promotion of the regions.
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ARTE Opens Documentary Slot Focusing On Pop Culture
From January 2010 French/German broadcaster ARTE is openinga new
documentary slot.The weekly slot will be entitled Popkultur and will be
taking a closer look oat all aspects of pop culture including
cult-themes, new trends lifestyle and youth culture. Every modern
culture art form, which has happened after WW2, will be considered for
the strand including music, fashion, visual art, architecture, design,
cinema and literature.
Also documentaries dealing with culture, which is outside the
mainstream and commercial circuits, will be considered for Popkultur.
Most important for documentaries in this 52 minutes one-off documentary
slot is, that they should go behind the scenes of the cultural
phenomenon in question and take an innovative, opinionated and
provocative look at trends and tendencies.
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Special Nordic Delegation at Sheffield Dok/Fest
As you probably already
read in a previous FkN Newsflash, Sheffield Doc/Fest, the UK's premier
documentary marketplace, festival and conference, is inviting Nordic
producers and filmmakers to take part in a Nordic delegation at this
year's festival, in association with Filmkontakt Nord. Read the call here and remember, that the deadline is 4 September!
