Country Focus: Belgium
by Cineuropa
18/05/2010 - Articles, interviews, news, analysis on the Belgian audiovisual sector.
The Netherlands
Articles, interviews, news, analysis on the Dutch audiovisual sector.
Country profile: Netherlands
2012 target date for nation-wide digital distribution
Several organisations in the Dutch film industry have put their heads together to coordinate and speed up conversion of the distribution and projection processes from analogue to digital, it was announced in July. The new overseeing entity, dubbed CinemaDigitaal.nl, was founded by the NVB (Dutch organisation of Exhibitors), the NVF (Dutch organisation of Film Distributors) and EYE Film Institute, the national film bureau. The country has a large number of cinemas, including an impressive...
Benelux takes on Disney giant
It’s the story of the week: an army of European exhibitors have threatened to rebel against Uncle Sam, by deciding to boycott Disney's new work, the much-awaited Alice in Wonderland, which marks the return to the fold of Tim Burton, who left the company in 1984. Exhibitors’ bold and somewhat suicidal decision comes from what some have feared for months, namely the shake-up of distribution windows, without consultation or prior agreement. Backed by vague or even non-existent legislation in...
Hubert Bals Fund supports young indie filmmakers
Twenty-five films from 18 countries participated in the Hubert Bals Fund of the 2010 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). The initiative, as usual, extended to funding films from development through to post-production and distribution, and crosses all genres, from documentary (Sebastian Diaz Morales’ El Camino Entre Dos Puntos, Argentina), to more experimental works (Paul Agusta’s At the Very Bottom of Everything, Indonesia) and animation (Ayar Blasco’s El Sol, also from Argentina)....
A good year at the Dutch wickets
Last year was an excellent year for cinema-going in the Netherlands, with a record-setting 27.2m tickets sold for regular screenings, an increase of 15.2% when compared to 2008. With higher ticket prices factored in, box-office earnings where up 21%. Home-made features also profited in absolute numbers, holding their ground with a virtually unchanged 17.4%, for a total number of 4.73m tickets sold (4.2m in 2008). The most-visited film of the year was David Yates’ UK-US co-production Harry...
Netherlands Film Sector Institute is born
At the beginning of next year, four Dutch film organisations will be combined to form a single entity, baptised the Netherlands Film Sector Institute. The creation of the umbrella organisation is the result of Education, Culture, and Sport Minister Ronald Plasterk's desire to give the Dutch film sector a “single face and point of contact”. As of January 1, 2010, the Netherlands Institute for Film Education, promotional body Holland Film, national cinémathèque, film archive and distributor...
Cinema-going up in 2009, but local films don’t profit
In the first half of 2009, the total number of paid cinema admissions in the Netherlands went up significantly, from almost 10m in 2008 to over 11m this year, an increase of 12.3%. The most visited film of the first six months was Ron Howard’s Angels & Demons, which sold over 635,000 tickets. The movie based on the bestseller by Dan Brown is followed by Oscar-winner Slumdog Millionaire from Brit Danny Boyle; animated Disney comedy Bolt; the comedy Yes Man with Jim Carrey; and the digitally...
The Netherlands - International Film Guide Survey
Do Dutch filmmakers look beyond their borders? The jury of the Netherlands Film Festival in Utrecht in September had its doubts, causing a bit of a stir by rhetorically asking themselves, 'Do some filmmakers from the Netherlands ever take a look at foreign films'. They expressed their dissatisfaction with the variable quality of content and production of the films they had to judge, suggesting that more should be done to keep Dutch cinema in step with international developments. On the other...
Nine projects cross first hurdle
The Dutch Film Fund, local broadcaster VPRO and the Mediafonds have selected nine new projects for “treatment development” in the context of the De Oversteek III (“The Crossing III”) series of films. De Oversteek is a joint initiative of VPRO and the film fund, currently in its fifth edition. The Mediafonds has been part of the initiative since last year. Each of the selected projects will receive €8,000 in the first round to develop their initial treatments, and a further six projects will...
