14/01/2010

Since the start of the new year, The Netherlands Film Sector Institute functions as the umbrella organisation of the local Institute for Film Education, promotional body Holland Film, film archive and museum Filmmuseum, and distributor of local experimental works Filmbank (see news). The organisation, which has now been baptised eye Film Institute Netherlands, will be run by Filmmuseum director Sandra Den Hamer.

Den Hamer, a former director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), will lead the newly integrated team of 165 employees. The institute will move to a new building in Amsterdam in 2011 that was initially foreseen as the new home of the Filmmuseum (which also doubles as the country’s cinémathèque).

Claudia Landsberger, head of Holland Film, is now also Manager International Affairs, while Anna Abrahams, the director of Filmbank, will become Project Leader Programming. The director of the Institute for Film Education, Gabriël Maassen, has decided to pursue other interests.

Ido Abram, the current director of the Binger Filmlab and a former director of IFFR’s Cinemart, will join eye on May 1 as head of Communications.

One of the new tasks of the institute will be to coordinate the introduction of digital projection and archiving in Dutch cinemas, for which it is cooperating with industry organisations NVS, NVF and NVB.

The NVF and NVB (the distributors and exhibitors organizations, respectively) announced separately this week that together with the Dutch Film Fund they will create the Abraham Tuschinski Fund, which will channel the money obtained from a past lowering of the VAT on cinema tickets back into the industry. A total of €2.5m will be available each year, starting retroactively in 2009, with €1.6m available for production activities of producers of box office successes.