15/02/2006

On Monday, it was the French and Germans who rallied to lobby for a better support system for European films and to reiterate the importance of public subsidies. Yesterday, other key figures of the European film industry – including Peter Aalbeck Jensen from Denmark’s Zentropa , Giorgio Gosetti from the new Rome Film Festival, Nik Powell, Head of the National Film & TV School in the UK, Guy Daleiden of Film Fund Luxembourg and Peter Buckingham from the UK Film Council– gathered under the initiative of Henning Camre, Danish Film Institute director, to announce plans for a new think tank on European film and film policy.

Promoted by industry people and many of the European Film Agencies (EFADs), the Think Tank will effectively take place in Copenhagen from June 21-24, and some 150 film professionals will be invited to discuss why film institutes fund films.

"As a European funding body, we know from market analysis that more than 700 films are produced annually in Europe, films that are mainly dependent on public funds, but these take only 7% of the European market, whereas US films occupy 72% of that market", stressed Camre to Cineuropa. "We want to change that through better collaboration between film institutes and a more cohesive film policy across Europe. There are so many different types of support and the level of support varies drastically as well, with some industries being totally under-financed", he added. "Film funds should understand that they have to help their film industry fulfill their commercial as well as cultural ambitions", he said.

Nik Powell added that "what we need is to look at the best way to make films that people want to see, and what kind of industry will produce better results than has been done so far".

The June think tank will tackle some of the issues of a series of case studies, and an advisory board – including Veronique Cayla (General Director of the French National Film Centre), Guy Daleiden, Dieter Kosslick (Berlin Film Festival Director), Peter Aalbeck Jensen, Antonio Saura (of Spain’s Zebra Film), Nik Powell and Philipp Kreuzer (Bavaria Film) – will help monitor the event.