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FkN Newsletter

August 2009

FkN News

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.

Nordisk Forum
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.

Nordisk Panorama Outlook
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.

Open Source @ NP2009
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

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.

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.

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.

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!