SOFA Goes Tbilisi: Up, Up, Up for the Third Year

The third edition of the Tbilisi SOFA workshop takes place in the beautiful Georgian capital from April 1 – 6 2019. The participants of the 2018/2019 edition: Eva Brazdžionytė (Lithuania), Agnieszka Kruk (Poland), Victoria Leshchenko (Ukraine), Marat Parkhomovsky (Israel), Róbert Vámos (Hungary) and Natia Nikoleishvili (Georgia) meet after the August 2018 Warsaw workshop for a concentrated follow-up. After Warsaw’s focus on project development, the Tbilisi workshop will concentrate on deepening the marketing aspects of their projects. For that, all participants will be supported by experienced professionals from the AV industry. This year they will include: Josef Reidinger (Managing Director of ARRI Media GmbH); Richard Naylor (Director of BOP Consulting); Karin Schockweiler (Deputy Director of Film Fund Luxembourg); Renaud Redien Collot (Senior Analyst at Institut Friedland); Juliane Schulze (Media Deals); Cornelius Ochman (Director of the Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation) and Jowe Harfouche (Executive Director of the Network of Arab Alternative Screens NAAS). The programme will include two public events. The first one on April 4 at 5pm will be a conversation with Josef Reidinger. The second one on April 5 at noon will start with an introduction on the current state of the Georgian film industry led by Tamara Tatishvili (Georgian film agent), followed by a mission statement by SOFA Head of Studies, Nikolaj Nikitin and a final project presentation by the participants 2018/2019.

Find details on www.joinsofa.org.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Meanwhile, film/AV-related cultural managers are invited to apply for the 7th SOFA edition that will be held in Warsaw, Poland (August 18 – 23, 2019) and later continued in Tbilisi, Georgia (April 25 – 30, 2020). Selected SOFA running projects will be invited for a third workshop focused on financing, in Vilnius, Lithuania (September 17-21, 2020). Project submission deadline: May 29, 2019. More information on: www.joinsofa.org.

Don’t sit on your coach, join SOFA!

SOFA – School of Film Agents is a programme of workshops aimed at strengthening national film industries and the European cinematic landscape, as well as kick-starting projects in the realm of cinema. SOFA helps its participants to develop their ideas into concrete projects, opening up new avenues towards application for financing programmes and final implementation. SOFA’s focus on cultural managers and film agents rather than producers and directors has made it a unique programme on the international film/AV scene.

www.joinsofa.org, www.facebook.com/SchoolofFilmAgents/

www.joinsofa.org

SOFA – School of Film Agents is a joint project of Filmplus gUG (Berlin) and Institute for Democratic Changes (Tbilisi), funded by German Federal Foreign Office and Creative Europe – MEDIA Programme of the European Union. The executing company of the Georgian workshop is Takes Film with the support of local funding partners: Georgian National Film Center, Ministry of Culture and Sport of Georgia, Enterprise Georgia (Film in Georgia). In addition, the 2019 Polish workshop will be funded by: Polish Film Institute, SDPZ (Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation), Mazovia Warsaw Film Commission and the Lithuanian session by the Lithuanian Film Centre. The organizers also wish to thank the strategic partners: Goethe- Institut, EAVE and the Network of Arab Alternative Screens (NAAS).

WHAT WE DO In its 7th edition SOFA – School of Film Agents invites up to eight professionals for intense workshops to Warsaw (August 18 – 23, 2019), Tbilisi (April 25 – 30, 2020) and Vilnius (September 17 – 21, 2020). We support film initiators, cultural managers and catalyzers with unique project ideas in the AV world. Selected participants will be trained in various creative fashions to reach local and international cinema-goers as well be given the opportunity to make ties beyond borders. With the help of experienced lecturers, you will receive a tailor-made coaching which enables you to realize your dream project efficiently. Our work- shops connect you with decision makers and high-level professionals in the AV industry. The rest is up to you – make your dream come true!

All participants are coached on-the-scene by Oliver Baumgarten (programme director, Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis, Saarbrücken), Ewa Puszczyńska (producer, Ida/Cold War), Christine von Fragstein (pitching expert), Renaud Redien-Collot (marketing expert) and Nikolaj Nikitin (head of SOFA). Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick acts as godfather. Among last editions’ experts were Marion Döring (European Film Academy), Karel Och (Karlovy Vary IFF), Roberto Olla (Eurimages), Sonja Heinen (European Film Promotion), Rainer Rother (Deutsche Kinemathek), Funa Maduka (Netflix), Anna Serner (Swedish Film Institute), Juliane Schulze (Media Deals), Vitalijus Zukas (Lithuanian virtual reality creator) and Tamara Tatishvili (Georgian film agent).

WHO WE LOOK FOR AV professionals with previous experience in cultural management (studies, business etc.) from Central or Eastern Europe / Central Asia / republics of Caucasus / Greece / Israel / Germany / MENA region Project proposals could include establishing a film festival, film fund, film commission, digital distribution platform, a cinema theater, film museum / archive, a project connected to copyright law, a print or online film magazine, VoD platform, a training initiative or another creative and highly innovative project in the field of film culture management.

HOW TO BE PART OF IT If we drummed up your interest, submit the following documents (in English) to Nikolaj Nikitin, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. until May 29, 2019:

max. two pages of project description: what’s your project idea about? What’s your motivation? Tell us about your objectives and what’s so new and unique about your project! Why is it you who can make it? a one-pager on the budget a one-pager financing plan a business plan a professional biography and background info on how you got involved working in the AV sector

For selected participants, there is an administration fee of 750 EUR. Scholarships are available upon request.

In 2018 the Filmtalent Zlín Foundation supported 22 film projects to the tune of over € 60.000 (CZK 1.549 million).

The Zlín Film Clapperboard Salon is where art lovers and cinephiles meet. For the 22nd consecutive time, this year again Film Clapperboards painted by renown, loyal artists will be sold in an auction on 26 May 2019 during the Zlín Film Festival. Through the FILMTALENT ZLÍN Foundation this money will be re-invested to provide a support to Czech and Slovak young start-ups in the field of cinema, student filmmakers and other film-related projects in a social or educational context.

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DISCOVER & EXPLORE Big thematic section at 59th Zlín Film Festival 2019 Open your eyes and see: - Nature documentaries - Feature films about the indigenous - Children´ s and Youth films from the Balkan countries - Travelling documentaries more...

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The Zlín Film Festival – International Film Festival for Children and Youth is the oldest and, currently, largest film festival of its kind in the world. The festival’s mission is to present a wide range of high-quality international film productions for children and teenagers and to make them accessible to a young audience. An important aspect of the festival is to develop the young audience’s aesthetic, social, and moral feelings, and to expand their awareness of the outside world. Every year the festival welcomes more than … young visitors, hosts numerous international film delegations presenting their creative work, and attracts over … children’s film professionals from around the globe. The aim of the program is to contribute to the development of Czech cinema for children and youth. The organizer of the festival is the company FILMFEST, s.r.o..

From Wednesday 10 April to Tuesday 16 April 2019, goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film will be transforming Wiesbaden for the 19th year running into one of the world’s most important showcases for cinema from Central and Eastern Europe. In addition to top-calibre filmmaking, the festival, hosted by DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, also features a host of innovative virtual reality projects.

For the second year in a row, experimental 360° and virtual reality works will be competing for the Open Frame Award at goEast. The competition, presided over by an expert international jury, is presented and endowed with a prize of 5,000 euros by BHF Bank Foundation. Last year’s winners, the Russian artist duo of Natalya Severina and Denis Semionov, won over the jury with their interactive VR work “Nominal Empire”. The programme brings creatives from Eastern Europe together with an international audience and jury with the aim of developing a vision for the potential and future of VR art and cinema.

Eight interactive installations and 360° projects from Romania, Lithuania, Belarus, Czech Republic, Ukraine and Russia will be on display in the Open Frame Award exhibition. In the run-up to the festival, the projects can be experienced from Thursday 4 April to Sunday 7 April at DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut und Filmmuseum via headsets, before moving on to Museum Wiesbaden, where they will be shown during the festival week. Thanks to technical support from HTC Europe, Samsung Germany and INVR, visitors to the exhibition have the opportunity to immersive themselves in the projects at close range.

The international jury is composed this year of Dutch-Iranian VR artist Ali Eslami, Franziska Nori, director of Frankfurter Kunstverein, and Israeli VR curator Tal Haring.

“At goEast, we celebrate artistic freedom and the exploration of new forms for telling stories with virtual reality works. This year, our nominees reconnect with past events by reconstructing them in virtual reality, giving the audience the possibility to explore the environments and make up their own minds,” revealed Georgy Molodtsov, curator of the Open Frame Award, adding: “Social and emotional plots are allowed to unfold through deft, artistic use of the still young medium. We hope that our exhibition and award will play a valuable role in the creators’ efforts to expose their ideas and their works to a wider international audience.”

For more information as well as full descriptions of the individual projects, please visit: www.filmfestival-goeast.de/en/sektionen/Open+Frame+Award/

Press Conference The press conference for the 19th edition of goEast will take place at 11 am on Thursday 4 April at Wiesbaden’s Caligari FilmBühne cinema. We kindly ask that you register in advance to attend.

You can find photo materials for this year’s festival in our download section: www.filmfestival-goeast.de/de/presse/downloads

The full programme for the 19th edition of goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film is available at: www.filmfestival-goeast.de/de/programm

goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film is hosted by DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum and made possible with the support of numerous partners. Primary funding partners are the State Capital Wiesbaden, the Hessen State Ministry for Higher Education, Research and the Arts, Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain, ŠKODA AUTO Deutschland, Renovabis, BHF BANK Foundation, Adolf und Luisa Haeuser-Stiftung für Kunst und Kulturpflege, the German Federal Foreign Ministry and Deutsch-Tschechische Zukunftsfonds. Media partners include 3sat, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Deutschlandfunk Kultur.

EU Copyright Directive

27/03: European Parliament approves new copyright rules for the internet – European Parliament

Creatives and news publishers will be empowered to negotiate with internet giants thanks to new copyright rules which also contain safeguards on freedom of expression.

26/03: Texts adopted (provisional edition): Copyright in the Digital Single Market – European Parliament

Full text of the European Parliament legislative resolution of 26 March 2019 on the proposal for a

directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on copyright in the Digital Single Market.

27/03: Questions and Answers on issues about the digital copyright directive – European Parliament

This Q and A provides answers to some of the more regularly raised issues regarding the directive on copyright in the digital single market. 

26/03: Copyright reform: the Commission welcomes European Parliament's vote in favour of modernised rules fit for digital age – European Commission

The European Parliament voted in favour of the new Copyright Directive designed to bring tangible benefits to citizens, all creative sectors, the press, researchers, educators, and cultural heritage institutions.

Creative Europe Programme 2021-2027

28/03: Creative Europe: Parliament votes for mobility of artists and circulation of works – European Parliament

MEPs voted on Thursday to double the budget of the 2021-2027 Creative Europe programme and to enhance international circulation of works, supporting better mobility for artists. 

28/03: Cultural and creative sectors contribute to youth employment and to social cohesion, says S&D MEP Silvia Costa – S&D Group

The European Parliament backed the report drafted by S&D MEP Silvia Costa to strengthen the Creative Europe programme for the period 2021 to 2027.

EU Broadcasting Directive

28/03: More online radio and news broadcasts across borders – European Parliament

Plenary approved on Thursday the new rules facilitating online broadcasting of current affairs and radio programmes across the EU. 

28/03: Commission welcomes European Parliament's vote on new rules facilitating access to online TV and radio content across borders – European Commission

Following the European Parliament's approval of modernised copyright rules earlier this week, today the Parliament endorsed another crucial piece of legislation to make the copyright rules fit for the digital age. The Commission welcomes the positive vote for the Directive that will simplify cross-border distribution and retransmission of television and radio programmes. 

28/03: Questions and answers: Directive on television and radio programmes – European Commission

This Q and A provides answers to some of the more regularly raised issues regarding the directive on television and radio programmes.

EU Single-use Plastics Directive

27/03: Parliament seals ban on throwaway plastics by 2021 – European Parliament

Parliament approved a new law banning single-use plastic items such as plates, cutlery, straws and cotton buds sticks. 

27/03: Circular Economy: Commission welcomes European Parliament adoption of new rules on single–use plastics to reduce marine litter – European Commission

The European Parliament agreed on the ambitious measures proposed by the Commission to tackle marine litter coming from the 10 single-use plastic products most often found on European beaches, as well as abandoned fishing gear and oxo-degradable plastics.

Group positions & responses: EPP Group, S&D Group, ECR Group

EU Elections 2019

29/03: Projections of seats of next Parliament – European Parliament

In collaboration with Kantar Public, Parliament’s Public Opinion Monitoring Unit is allocating projected seats calculated on the basis of voting intentions polls from each member state to Parliament´s currently existing political groups.

Romanian Presidency of the Council of the EU 

27/03: Ensuring young people’s access to culture and supporting creativity – important priorities for the Romanian Presidency of the EU Council – Romania2019.eu

The conference placed an emphasis on the importance of encouraging young people’s creativity at European level, as a prerequisite for facilitating their insertion on the labour market, and also for enhancing social inclusion, active citizenship and civic responsibility. 

European Audiovisual Observatory

28/03: European Audiovisual Observatory announces this year’s Cannes conference! - EAO

The conference will look at how today’s European films are financed. Who are the new financial players? How does public policy channel money into film funds and financing mechanisms? How is the structure of film financing in Europe changing?

InvestEU

27/03: InvestEU: EU ambassadors confirm common understanding reached with Parliament – Council of the EU

EU ambassadors confirmed the common understanding reached by the Romanian Presidency and the European Parliament on InvestEU, which will bring together under one programme 14 different financial instruments currently available to support investment in the EU.

Events

8-12 April: EUIPO Working Group meetings, Alicante

24 April (TBC): EU Terrorist Content Regulation Committee Vote (LIBE)

23-26 May: EU Elections

17-20 June: CineEurope 2019, Barcelona – Register here!

Recent Studies

EUIPO – Trends in Trade in Counterfeit and Pirated Goods – March 2019European Audiovisual Observatory – Mapping of national rules for the promotion of European works in Europe – February 2019Göteborg Film Festival - 6th Nostradamus Report – “Relevance in a New Reality” - February 2019 Institute for Information Law (IViR) - Film Financing and the Digital Single Market: its Future, the Role of Territoriality and New Models of Financing - January 2019

NEW TRAINING INITIATIVE FOR WOMEN FILMMAKERS

CIRCLE Women Doc Accelerator 2019 – LAST CALL for applications

The final deadline is April 1

The applications’ submission deadline for the second edition of CIRCLE Women Doc Accelerator is 1 April 2019. An exclusive 3 module training program addressing predominantly (but not only!) South and East European filmmakers.

CIRCLE Women Doc Accelerator is a new training initiative designed both for talented directors and producers who are in the process of developing their first feature-length documentary, as well as the more experienced authors.

We are looking for up to 8 women filmmakers (directors and/or producers) with a strong documentary project in any stage of production (from development to rough cut) who are seeking further support to upgrade their professional skills, develop films with leading experts and bring them to the wider professional audience.

The program of CIRCLE 2019 features three working modules:

1st MODULE: June 2019, Podgorica (Montenegro)

2nd MODULE: August 2019, Novi Sad (Serbia)

3rd MODULE: October 2019, DOK Leipzig (Germany)

In order to apply, please fill in the form: here!

We are also encouraging the filmmakers who are in process of developing their first feature-length documentaries to apply.

Participation fee: 650 €, covers the pedagogical material, accommodation and meals for all three modules. CIRCLE Women Doc Accelerator may allocate two full scholarships for participants in need.

CIRCLE is organised by Wake Up Films in partnership with Underhill Fest Montenegro and DOK Leipzig Co-Pro Market. The program is supported by Film Centre of Montenegro, Film Centre of Serbia, The Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia, EWA and EDN.

For more information please visit our site www.doccircle.me or contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Looking forward to receiving your applications!