FkN Newsletter
March 2010
FkN News
Join Us on Facebook!
To keep you updated whereever you are and to further expand the Nordic
family, Filmkontakt Nord has created a group on Facebook. Join
us!
Nordic Delegation at Hot Docs
For the first time, Filmkontakt Nord is hosting a Nordic delegation to
Hot Docs. The call for participation has already been out. If you missed
it, read it here.
The deadline has been extended to Tuesday 9 March!
The first Nordisk Panorama Deadline has come and
gone
As of this year, we're operating with two deadlines for Nordisk
Panorama: 15 February for films completed in 2009 and 15 May for films
completed in 2010. The first deadline has come and gone and around 250
shorts and documentaries have been submitted to this year's festival,
taking place in Bergen, Norway, 24-29 September. We are happy to see so
many 2009 films and are looking forward to the films from 2010. Keep
them coming!
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Filmkontakt Nord in Tampere
Filmkontakt Nord's Jing Haase and Elin Sander, this year's Nordisk
Panorama director, will be at Tampere Film Festival in Finland next
week. On Friday 12 March Filmkontakt Nord welcomes Finnish Filmmakers
and international guests alike to the traditional FkN reception taking
place at the Festival Centre Bravo Plaza 17:00-18:00. Join Jing, Elin
and Finnish Chairman of the Board, John Webster, for a drink and a short
update on Filmkontakt Nord as well as this years Nordisk Panorama in
Bergen, Norway.
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Filmkontakt Nord at Tempo
At the same time, FkN director Karin Johansson-Mex will be at Tempo
Documentary Festival in Stockholm, Sweden, with Filmkontakt Nord's
Nomadic Office. The Nomadic Office offers individual consultancy
regarding Nordic and International financing of documentaries to
filmmakers with new documentary projects. The individual meetings have
already been set up, but like in Tampere, Filmkontakt Nord is happy to
offer a drink to old and new friends. Join Karin and Swedish members of
the Board Ewa Cederstam & Terese Mörnvik at Biograf Rio on Thursday
11 March 17:00-18:00.
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Filmkontakt Nord at BUFF
Karin Johansson-Mex and Jing Haase will be present at BUFF, the
International Children and Young People's Film Festival in Malmö,
Sweden, as well as at the connected financing forum BUFF:FF.
Jing is also in Malmö to promote Nordisk Panorama Market Online, FkN's
online streaming service aimed at international tv-buyers, sales agents,
distributors and festival programmers. At NPM Online these
professionals can easily keep abreast with the latest and greatest short
films and documentaries from the Nordic countries and stream films in
full length around the clock and at their own convenience - not to
mention free of charge. To set up a meeting with her, send her an email or call +45 3311 5152.
New Nordic and International Initiatives
New Course at the School of Film Directing in
Göteborg
As the first school in the Nordic countries, The School of Film
Directing at Göteborg University in Sweden offers a 1-year course in
curating for film and video. The course in on Master level and focuses
on the role of the curator and the possibilities of creating new windows
for film and video exhibition as well as elaboration on the existing.
To read more about the new course (in Swedish only), click here.
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New Initiatives for Film Professionals at
Cinemateket in Stockholm
Cinemateket, the Swedish cinemateque, is launching some new initiatives,
mainly directed at film professionals. With more dialogue and
discussions around film art and film politics as well as a Swedish
version of Actors Studio, Cinemateket hopes to become a natural meeting
place for active filmmakers. There will be debate evenings with Swedish
filmmakers on many different topics and once a month, Stina Lundberg
Dabrowski, professor at Dramatiske Institutet, will lead the Actors
Studion-inspired talk with a film personality from Sweden or abroad.
Read more about Cinemateket here.
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New Profile at Odense International Film
Festival
Odense International Film Festival (OFF) in Denmark is returning to it's
initial profile as a short film festival. Since 1996, the feature
length documentary has also been a part of the competition programme,
but now OFF wants to strengthen it's profile as a short film festival,
thereby giving the full attention to the short film as a unique art
form. The competition programme will from now on be dedicated to the
short film under 30 minutes in all its forms - fiction, animation,
documentary. Read more about Odense International Film Festival here.
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European Commission Aims to Set up a Media
Production Guarantee Fund
During the financial crisis it has become even more difficult for
producers of audiovisual content to access bank credits. Therefore The
European Commission is now initiating the MEDIA Production Guarantee
Fund. The fund will be aimed at supporting and facilitating the access
of European audiovisual companies to bank credits. The fund that should
be launched in the course of 2010 will benefit from a total contribution
of € 8 million over a 4-year period. It
would share the financial risk
related to the loans granted by banks to European independent
audiovisual producers, by guaranteeing to cover a certain percentage of
the loss in case of failure by the producer to reimburse the loan, thus
encouraging local banks to grant credits to film producers.
The fund will receive an annual contribution, which
will be used to guarantee bank credits granted to European production
companies. The setting up and management of the fund will be delegated
to a European financial organisation under indirect centralised
management.
Tho read more about the Media Production Guarantee Fund, click here.
Norwegian Road to Forum
The Norwegian Film Institute is
giving up to 8 documentary film teams the possibility to 'prepare' their
projects for the pitching forums in the Nordic countries, Europe and
Canada. Veien til forum 2010 (the road to forum 2010) consists of two
week-long sessions, ten weeks apart. In the first week, the projects
will be presented and developed, with a special focus on creating a
pilot. During the second session, the projects, with the new pilots,
will be pitched to a test audience consisting of filmmakers with a large
experience in international pitching. The workshop will be lead by PeÅ
Holmquist, documentary filmmaker and professor in documeantary film at
Dramatiske Institutet in Sweden. Read more about the workshop (in
Norwegian only) here.
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Danish Report on the Film Industry
The Danish Producer's Association has initiated
a project aimed at collecting and processing data from the Danish film
industry. The accounts from the last three years (2006-2008) of 74
companies have been examined and the report shows an industry under
economical strain. Only a third of the companies have had a surplus in
all three years and the average return is defined as 'not
cost-effective'. Some companies have however managed to do well despite
the crisis. Especially larger companies have been successful. To read
the report (in Danish only), click here.