Interview with Marge Liiske - Director of the Estonian Film Foundation
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Estonia
Estonia Country Profile 2011TALLINN: The year 2011 saw developments with long-term implications for Estonia's film sector, even though it might not be remembered for its vintage crop of artistic achievements. Increased production, attendance at domestic films, and institutional developments marked the maturing of the Estonian film industry. Twice as many Estonian features premiered in 2011 as in 2010, raising the share of domestic fare from a dismal 2% in 2010 to an expected 8% of overall box office. After several years, an Estonian film, the full length animation Lotte and the Moonstone Secret, will likely end up in the annual TOP10 at the box office. The overall number of admissions for domestic films could reach 165,00, making it the third best year in the country's 20 years of independence. In a major move, Enterprise Estonia, the national export support agency, decided to finance the setting up and running of Estonia's Film Commission, which is planned to be launched at Cannes in 2012. For the first time, an Estonian film - The Confession, a short by the young director Tanel Toom shot as his graduation film - was shortlisted for the Academy Award, or Oscar, although it failed to win the prize. 3D films made ever larger strides locally, and the first Estonian documentary shot in 3D, Man Who Lived in Three-Dimensional Time, by Arko Okk of Acuba Films premiered at the Berlin European Film Market. The parliamentary elections in March kept the incumbent coalition government in power but brought in a new minister of culture. As a consequence, no radical shifts are expected in the overall state film policies. The provisional state budget for 2012 maintains overall public funding almost constant for the third year at about 5.5 M EUR (no precise figure was available at the time of publication). Of this, 3.4 M EUR of this will be handled by the Estonian Film Foundation, and the remainder is split between the Ministry of Culture and Estonian Cultural Endowment grants. As usual, little or no funding for film production is anticipated from the country's broadcasters. FNE at DISCOP Budapest 2011: Estonia TALLINN: Estonia's three national broadcasters, public broadcaster Estonian TV (ETV, etv.err.ee, operated under ERR which also runs a national radio network),and foreign-owned commercial channels TV3 (www.tv3.ee) owned by Modern Times Group (www.mtg.se) and Kanal 2 (www.kanal2.ee) owned by Schibsted (www.schibsted.com), vary widely in their original and adapted content production. All three operate one flagship TV channel and secondary niche channels targeted at select audiences - which, though forced to cut back during the recent financial crisis, could potentially increase in coming years. But one standard holds true for all the stations: ignoring local content imperils ratings. National broadcaster ETV airs the largest share of local product, followed by Kanal 2, currently the market leader by audience share, and followed by TV3 which has been minimizing local content for years with audience share slipping steadily. READ MORE>>>FNE 2010 Year in Review:Estonia Prepares for a Leap
Dismal figures, promising prospects. This sums up Estonian film industry's going in the turbulent 2010 year. While public financing, domestic rollout and admission stats have been in a nadir for years, there are encouraging signs for a robust recovery in 2011 and beyond. Box office and premiers The number of admissions for domestic films in 2010 was at the lowest in more than 5 years (exact figures not available at the time of publication). And no wonder, too, with just two Estonian features premiering in the course of the entire year, also a low point for the decade. Of the two rollouts, Snow Queen by Marko Raat somewhat undeservedly fell into almost complete and instant oblivion, while Red Quicksilver by Andres Puustusmaa managed to rack up some interest on the coattails of the police thriller it is based on. Neither made it to the top 10. Overall admissions, however, seemed to be doing well, with the second multiplex in Tallinn, Solaris, contributing its fair share. Financing The scarcity of domestic premiers can largely be attributed to the reduction in public film financing caused by the global economic downturn that ravaged Estonia particularly hard. The year-on-year reductions amounted to 0.5M EUR, or some 10%, leaving the industry gaping at the near-2006 figure of 5M EUR. One of the results was the delay of several features in production; they will now brighten up the box office in 2011. The Baltic Film and Media School, the only English-language film and TV school in Northern Europe, has embarked on a new round of substantial developments. Foremost among these are plans to build new premises by the end of 2011 in the centre of Tallinn, co-funded by EU to the tune of 2.2 M euros, and open a new international MA curriculum in media innovation and entrepreneurship in 2011. BFM is also a founder of Estonian Digital Centre that is setting up a post-production hub within the school's premises that will help boost Estonia's audiovisual export capacity. The project is funded by Enterprise Estonia by 770,000 EUR. The shool currently enrols around 350 students from over 20 countries. Launched in 2006, BFM has quickly become an active co-operation partner to films schools in Finland, Sweden, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany and others within the MEDIA programme initatives. It is now also a member of a consortium First Motion that developes new approaches to audiovisual production and distribution in the Baltic Sea region, headed by the Hamburg-Schleswig-Holstein Film Fund. BFM teaches major film and TV professions on bachelor's (3 years) and master's level (2 years) in English and Estonian.
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