21/01/2009

“Ten years of workshops, over 100 projects backed, over 400 professionals involved,” said President Anne-Marie Luccioni in summing up the first ten years of Eurodoc, the training program created in 1999 for European documentary producers. “The goal”, adds Luccioni, “is to favour the development of a network between EU partners and, starting this year, to also open new markets for them, placing them in contact with non-European colleagues”.

To do so, the 2009 edition (officially presented today, during the Trieste Film Festival) will involve 26 production, private and public companies from 14 European countries and four companies from India, South Africa, Tunisia and Chile.

As per usual, there are three weeklong workshop sessions (in March, June and September). The first, on analysing projects and evaluating scripts, will be held in Orléans, France; the second, on budgets and technical aspects, in Rotterdam; while the third, for individual meetings between producers and the heads of top international broadcasters, in the region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, Italy.

Together with the Slovenian Film Fund (SFF) and the Croatian Audiovisual Center, the Regional Audiovisual Fund of Friuli Venezia Giulia has promoted a partnership with Eurodoc, thus the three countries of EuroRegione (Italy, Slovenia and Croatia) will host one of the workshop sessions during 2009-11.

“This is a way to help auteur documentaries, which encounter difficulties in our country,” said Nerina Kocjancic of the SFF. The crisis is not specific to Slovenia, however, but to all of Europe. “The funds come from all audiovisual sectors, especially non-fiction”, explained Luccioni, who thanked the “MEDIA Programme for backing Eurodoc (by supplying over half its budget, along with the very generous National Film Centre (CNC) of France) and the entire industry”.

(Translated from Italian)