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FINANCE Poland

An opportunity for first-timers

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Every year, from 2005, the sum of 250.000 euros (a million zlotys), will be assigned to Polish first-time directors. While the new film finance law is waiting to be voted on in the Senate and signed by the President of the Republic Aleksander Kwasniewski, Polish Television channel TVP, the Minister of Culture and the Polish Filmmakers Association have agreed to create the programme. The initiative came from Andrzej Wajda’s Masters School for Cinema and will be overseen by Wojciech Marczewski, one of the founders of the school.

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The purpose of the project is to help first-timers realise their first feature films under professional conditions, by offering them the means of production and artistic assistance. Each year, the programme will support ten productions, and each one can count on support to the tune of 25.000 euros (100.000 zlotys). The distribution and promotion will be assured by TVP Kultura (the Polish public cultural channel). The candidates do not necessarily have to have been students of the school. The criteria for submissions remains vague: maximum duration 30 minutes and on “a contemporary subject” .

The programme is governed by an artistic counsel made up of six representatives from the Wajda school, the TVP Kultura, the Minister of Culture, the Association of Polish Filmmakers, as well from the Lodz Cinema School and the Department for Radio and Television at the University of Silesia in Katowice. Candidates must present their projects directly to: Jerzy Kapuscinski (TVP Kultura), Jacek Bromski (Association of Polish Filmmakers), Wojciech Marczewski (Wajda School), Andrzej Mellin (Lodz Cinema School), Filip Bajon (Department for Radio and Television at the University of Silesia).

Among the objectives of the programme, clearly one of the most critical, is to turn theory into practice and to prepare them for feature films by giving them the chance to express themselves on important subjects. But what also matters for the creators of the initiative is to put more money into short film funding and, on the other hand, to enrich what Poland has to offer to the international market.

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(Translated from French)

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