FkN Newsletter
August 2010
FkN News
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Catch the Early Bird to Nordisk Panorama
If you still haven't treated yourself to an accreditation, it's time to get moving! Register here before 20 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.
Here are some samples of what you definitely don't want to miss:
The Personal Touch
Martin Widerberg is making a film about his father Bo, his grandfather Arvid and himself. Aslaug Holm has been filming her two young sons for several years, and is about to finish her film about them. Niels Pagh Andersen has worked as an editor on several personal documentaries. Meet them all in a conversation on the strengths, limits and possible ethical dilemmas of the personal doc.
Staging Reality
In her award-winning film Out of Love, Birgitte Stærmose is challenging the borders between documentary and fiction. See her film in competition and hear the director's thoughts about this issue.
My Dinner With...
This year introducing the highly acclaimed Norwegian short and feature film director Unni Straume, represented at several international film festivals with films like Music for Weddings and Funerals and Dreamplay. Unni is presently working on her new feature film Faith and have invited her producer Peter Aalbæk for a provocative, intimate and challenging talk about the art of filmmaking and life in general.
Read more about Nordisk Panorama and stay updated at www.nordiskpanorama.com.
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FkN at Odense International Film Festival
Filmkontakt Nord's Jing Haase and Elin Sander, this year's Nordisk Panorama director, will be at Odense International Film Festival next week, 23.-25. august. Besides watching Danish films and meeting with the Danish and international short film community, they will speak at Talent Camp Odense.
New Nordic and International Initiatives
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FILM-X-PERT – Video Tutorial for Kids
The Danish Film Institute (DFI) has launched FILM-X-PERT, a new on-line initiative offering children around the country practical help and tips on how to tell a good story on film.
FILM-X-PERT is as a video tutorial that gives children and young people a chance to get wiser on film technique and storytelling. In five on-line videos, we meet a team of children going through all phases in a film production with technical assistance from a professional.
The five videos deal with Idea, Script and Storyboard, Light and Shooting, Sound and Editing.
Later in the year, it will be possible for online users to edit directly on the website and to experiment with editing their own versions of scenes from real films.
Additionally, FILM-X-PERT will provide guidelines explaining how to integrate editing activities in school classes.
FILM-X-PERT is an effort to reach children and young people living outside of Copenhagen where the interactive film studio FILM-X is based, and offer them an on-line version of the creative film practice experience.
Read more here.
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High Five Power to Content for Kids
Nordisk Film & TV Fond and Power to the Pixel join forces in a new initiative for the development of six pre-selected high quality Nordic cross media projects.
The High Five Cross Media Content For Kids offers NOK 250.000 per project as a direct development grant and a development process including a 3 day workshop with international experts in the cross media field.
Power to the Pixel will design and conduct the development process that counts two sessions:
- The High Five Power to the Pixel Lab (17-19 November 2010 in Copenhagen)
A three-day workshop where the six selected Nordic cross media projects meet international experts.
- The High Five Power to the Pixel Forum (14-16 March 2011 in Malmø, Sweden)
An open Cross Media Seminar and a Pitching and Finance Forum taking place over two days at the BUFF Financing Forum.
The deadline for Nordic applicants is 6 September 2010.
For further information, see here.
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Doc Lounge Opens in 6 New Nordic Cities
The Doc Lounge network is expanding to 6 cities, opening up new screening venues in Bergen, Tromsö in Norway, Odense in Denmark and Visby, Kalmar and Växjö in Sweden.
First out is Bergen which will open on 27 September during Nordisk Panorama.
Since Doc Lounge started in Malmö 2006, new branches have opened up in all Nordic countries, now counting 14.
The Doc Lounge network screens new and high quality documentaries with a mix of local, national and international films. The films are screened in a club environment and each screening is combined with other cultural events such as dj/vj, discussions, live band, performances and exhibitions making the screening an event. Every evening a new film is being screened.
Doc Lounge Scandinavia is the hub and connecting point of the network.
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DVD Featuring the Cream of Nordic Shorts
Nordic film magazines have collaborated on the publication of a DVD collection of the best of Nordic short films produced within the last 20 years. The release of the DVD is made with funding from Nordisk Film- og TV Fond and can be purchased with the August issue of the magazines, Norwegian Rushprint, the Danish film magazine Ekko, Finnish Episodi and Swedish FLM.
The DVD presents 12 great Nordic shorts, including films by Lars von Trier, Aki Kaurismäki, Roy Andersson a.o.
Among the titles is Lars von Trier’s legendary and so far unreleased film project Dimension. The shooting of Dimension was planned to run over a period of 30 years, and the film release was set to Trier’s 68 year birthday 30 April, 2024.
Trier developed the project with his scriptwriter Niels Vørsel and producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen in the late eighties, and actors from Trier’s film Europa were to be cast for the project. Trier, however, lost interest in the project and gave it up.
Edited footage from the shootings appears on the DVD, and the finished film has become a sort of summary of Trier’s career.
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NOW IS – New Conference on Crossmedia in Århus
In response to the development of new media and the range of new possibilities to distribute stories and digital content, Headstart and Cross Media invite to a conference on storytelling and cross media.
The conference will focus on topics about participation through social media and audience experiences. With the new media and technologies the way we receive content has changed drastically opening up for new ways of storytelling techniques and audience participation.
The programme of the conference mirrors this development and has been organised in three areas where changes in the media landscape will be produced in the years to come:
1. The relationship between audience, media and content. Involvement is a key word in the way entertainment, marketing and communication will be perceived in the future.
2. New business models and ways of earning money involve audiences in new ways.
3. Untraditional collaboration between players with different qualifications and between industry sectors is a necessity in the future media landscape.
Special Adviser of cross media policy for the EU, Monique de Haas will be one of the keynote speakers at the conference.
The conference takes place 2 September 2010 in Århus. Deadline for accreditation: 27 August.
Read more about the conference here.
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New First Motion Partner
The EU project for the Baltic Sea area, First Motion, has announced changes in its partnership collaboration. First Motion partners comprise film funds, universities and national/regional developers/municipalities, with different profiles and areas of expertise.
The University of Agder in Norway (UiA) has taken over as First Motion partner replacing Kristiansand Kommune (KK).
UiA will take over KK’s First Motion budget and activities as well as full responsibility for the Norwegian partnership within the EU-funded regional development project. Representatives from the KK will, however, remain in First Motion’s transnational steering committee.
Both partners are located in the same region in Norway and have worked closely together. The staff currently employed by KK will stay with the project in order to ensure continuity and knowledge.
First Motion is an industry development project aimed at new business possibilities in the audio-visual sector as a result of new technological progress in the digitisation of the audio-visual work flow.
Read more here.
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Million Fund to Diversity and Innovation
The two US public broadcasting organizations The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) have launched a new million fund entitled the Diversity and Innovation Fund.
The fund is open to international producers and receives proposals for multi-platform projects for new, weekly, 10-episode series within the genres of history, science, travel, natural history and exploration. The criteria is that the series can be produced for 5.000 (around € 292.000) or less per hour.
The multi-platform projects should aim at new content distribution tools, such as VOD, Internet, mobile applications, social media as well as inclusion in the Digital Learning Library and/or PBS Teachers, etc.
Pilots will be reviewed by PBS and CPB staff and online by the public as well as through more formalized testing.
Based on the reviews, PBS will then determine which, if any, of the pilots will be broadcast and/or move forward for full production funding.
The intention of CPB and PBS is to create pilots of several projects and then select one or more for series production in winter 2010/2011. In the future, the Diversity and Innovation Fund may seek to support other types of projects, such as digital initiatives, education initiatives and gaming.
Deadline is 15 September.
For more information on the fund and call for proposals, see website.
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UK Film Council to Close
In July the UK government announced the abolishment of the UK Film Council (UKFC) as part of the government’s cost-cutting measures.
The press release went out without any consultation with the British film industry prior to the decision, and this caused frustrated reactions. Tim Bevan CBE, Chairman of the UK Film Council calls the decision: ”A bag mistake, driven by short-term thinking and political expediency”, (UKFC website).
Producer at the Norwegian production company Filmhuset, Eigil Ødegard who has co-production experience with UK partners, says to Filmkontakt Nord: ”I am afraid that the shut down, at least in a transitional period, will make it more difficult to get financing for serious British film productions as well as international co-productions with the rest of Europe!”
According to the press release from July from the British Cultural department, a new organisation will take over the Film Council’s acitivites in collaboration with The British Film Institute which will not be affected by the axe. When this new administrative move will be carried out is still uncertain.
Since its creation in 2000, the UK Film Council has invested over € 195 Million of Lottery funding into more than 900 films which according to the Film Council’s own estimations have generated generating 5 pounds (€ 6) for every pound invested.
The UK Film Council funding initiatives include digitisation of cinemas, support to film festivals and independent regional film venues.
For more information about the closure, read here.
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Document One Day on Earth: 10.10.10
The One Day on Earth participatory event invites filmmakers, journalists and students all over the world to record their life and experiences on 10 October, 2010.
The project shares Ridley Scott’s vision to document Life in a Day, a project that plans to create a documentary entirely from footage shot and submitted to YouTube by people from around the globe on a certain date in July. One Day on Earth is a grassroot film project that has been promoting and preparing for the day of shooting on 10 October for nearly two years.
The footage collected during the event will be used to produce a feature length documentary of 120 minutes of the most compelling moments from that day.
The documentary will be released theatrically and the video archive from the event will later be open and accessible to all participants for non-commercial purposes.
So far, 2400 individual participants have signed up.
Read more about the event here.
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Make Creative Documentaries at the University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh offers two new postgraduate degree programs in Trans-disciplinary Documentary Film where documentary research and practice can be incorporated. The two degrees are a MSc Master’s degree and a PhD study.
The MSc and PhD degrees in Trans-disciplinary Documentary Film now make it possible to propose a research project from within any area of academic study that could potentially be explored through the creative practice of documentary film.
The programmes start in September 2010 and applications are open.
For more information on the programmes, see here.
