Parliament adopts White Paper on film
by Annika Pham
The Norwegian parliament announced on Wednesday that it had passed the government’s White Paper on Film Policy, green-lighting the long-awaited ambitious reform of the entire Norwegian film industry.
“Film is one of the art forms that creates the biggest interest and reaches the widest audience,” said Norwegian Minister of Culture Trond Giske. “We have clear and ambitious goals for our film policy, which is an important part of our cultural offensive”.
The cornerstone for the historic reform of the Norwegian film industry laid out in the government’s paper, the so-called Pathfinder for the Norwegian Film Offensive (in reference to Nils Gaup’s successful 1987 film Pathfinder), is the folding of the three current institutes – the Norwegian Film Institute, the Norwegian Film Development Agency and the Norwegian Film Fund – into one centralised super-body, which will also encompass the activities of the Norwegian Film Commission.
According to the official statement from the Ministry of Culture and Church affairs, this will allow filmmakers to deal with only one institution, from the idea and script-writing stage to marketing and distribution.
Film production will be at the heart of the government’s new measures, on a national and regional level, and as of next year the new institute and its 100 staff members will be responsible for implementing the four-point plan for the local film industry:
- strengthening the production sector (through the production of 25 films per year, higher professionalism and continuity across the whole chain of filmmaking)
- improving audience figures (films should ideally reach 3 million people or obtain a 25% theatrical market share and a 15% DVD and VOD market share, while the export of film and television dramas should double by 2010)
- providing access to film culture for everyone (archives available on all platforms)
- ensuring quality and diversity through gender parity in key industry positions by 2010 and achieving international recognition at key festivals for films and television dramas.
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