Eleven short films in development will participate in the VAF 2018 Třeboň pitching competition. The winning short film project will receive 2,000 EUR. Thanks to the cooperation with the European Animation Development Lab Animation Sans Frontières (ASF), one selected director or producer will receive a scholarship in amount of EUR 1,500. Tim Leborgne, project leader of ASF will follow the pitches in both categories and choose the winner. The price worth EUR 1,000 will receive the best short film and will cover the sound postproduction including studio and sound engineer for 5 days. This award is offered by Polish Playade Sound Studio by Piotr Kubiak.

The jury for Short Films pitching competition:

Urszula Łuczak has been a producer at Platige Image in Poland for over eight years now. She began working at VFX Department, where she was involved in movies such as Essential Killing, Melancholy and Uwiklanie. As a production manager, she created stereoscopic scenography for spectacles such as Polita for Buffo Theatre and Pilots for Roma Theatre. She also produced animation movies for the Qatar market: Hero and the message and Heroes and the mission. Her first full feature animation movie co-produced by Platige Image called Another Day of Life – a film in which she was involved as production manager – has recently been released into festival circulation

Andres Mänd is a producer and CEO at Nukufilm Studios, Estonia. He studied theatrical directing in Estonia, animation in Russia and art management in Finland. He worked as an animator at Nukufilm (1983-1996), as the Head of Animation Departement at Volda University College, Norway (1996-2017). He has animated over 40 puppet films, including TV commercials and music videos. He has also produced the majority of the graduation films from Volda University College over the last 20 years. Andres has served in the past as judges on short or animated film festival in Norway, Cuba and Estonia.

Manon Messiant a graduate of Sciences Po Lille, has worked on notable French productions such as My Golden Days directed by Arnaud Desplechin (2015) and Elle by Paul Verhoeven (2016). She then joined Kazak Productions, where she developed  a real thirst for animated films and worked with Gabriel Harel (Yul and the Snake) and Adrien Merigeau (Artistic Director of Song of the Sea by Tom Moore), among others. Now as production manager at Sacrebleu Productions, Manon is working on several upcoming animated films directed by Rémi Chayé (Longway North), Michaela Pavlatova (Tram) and Boris Labbé (Rhizome).

Terhi Väänänen is the producer, CEO and co-founder of Pyjama Films, a Finland (Turku) based animation studio specialised in artistically ambitious 2D animation projects. The studio’s first short, Elli Vuorinen’s Sore Eyes for Infinity (2016), produced by Väänänen, has been selected for 50 international film festivals and has won eight awards, such as the Anča Award and special mention at Animafest Zagreb. Väänänen has worked in the animation field since 2009, previously as the festival director of Animatricks Animation Festival and as the project coordinator of the Turku Region animation development project.

Dario van Vree following his animation studies at the prestigious KASK academy in Belgium, Dario has been directing animation shorts and series with an eye for the weird, the incentive and the power of character performance. His work is characterized by clarity, humour and a love for paradoxes. In addition to directing at his Amsterdam-based animation studio Studio Pupil, Dario teaches animation & direction at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam and is co-founder of the KLIK Amsterdam Animation Festival.

Additional jury member for ASF Award in both categories Short Films and Series/TV Specials:
Tim Leborgne graduated with a Master’s degree in social psychology from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. In 1999, Tim had the good fortune of returning to one of his childhood passions, animation film, by working with Corinne Jenart and Marc Vandeweyer at Cartoon AEFA for four years, during which he participated in the creation and management of the European Training Network for Animation (ETNA) and to the organisation of numerous Cartoon Masters, Cartoon Movies and Cartoon Forums. In 2003, Tim joined The Animation Workshop / VIA University College in Viborg as the director of its Professional Training and Open Workshop (artist residencies) departments.

The ten best Series / TV Specials projects will compete in a pitching contest based on concise presentations and discussion with the jury and the audience. The winning short film project will receive 2,000 EUR. The winner and the runner up (Special mention) will have direct access to Cartoon Forum 2018 without the need to undergo competitive pre-selection. Thanks to the cooperation with the European Animation Development Lab Animation Sans Frontières (ASF), one selected director or producer will receive a scholarship in amount of EUR 1,500. Tim Leborgne, project leader of ASF will follow the pitches in both categories and choose the winner.

The jury for Series / TV Specials pitching competition:

Marc Bonny was born in 1955. After some years in cultural sector, he begun directing and programming an arthouse theater. Then he had the opportunity to work for 20th Century Fox in Lyon and learned about film distribution. Some years later he created Gebeka Films, an independent distribution company specialized in high quality films for a young audience. Some examples of films

being distributed by Gebeka since 1998 : Kirikou and the Sorceress (Michel Ocelot), The Boy Who Wanted to be a Bear (Jannik Hastrup), The Three Robbers (Hayo Freitag), Brendan and the Secret of Kells (Tomm Moore), A Cat in Paris (Alain Gagnol / Jean-Loup Felicioli), The Painting (Jean-François Laguionie), Moomins on the Riviera (Xavier Picard), My Life as a Courgette (Claude Barras), Zombillénium (Arthur de Pins), Louise by the Shore (Jean-François Laguionie) and many others. On the other side, Marc Bonny is also an exhibitor through The Comoedia, a nine screens arthouse theater set in Lyon.

Maciej Chmiel graduated from History of Art at the Warsaw University, Academy of Leadership at the Warsaw Polytechnique and received an MBA from the University of Illionois. He was involved with culture on a professional level starting from 1985 when he became a manager of the punk rock band Dezerter. Results of this five-year collaboration were one record in the USA, one in France and three in Poland. It was the first CEE band to tour Japan. He continued as journalist writing articles for the largest Polish daily newspaper and as a host of his own radio and TV shows, as well as the editor of music programmes in TVP, the Polish national broadcaster. Then he established his own production company which during ten years produced a dozen of documentaries and hundreds of TV programmes. After heading TVP2 for some time, he is for the last two years Vice Head of Department of Trade and International Cooperation in TVP.

Moe Honan is CEO of Moetion Films Ltd., which she founded in October 2013 and where she works as a producer and voice director of animated feature films and TV series. Moetion Films develops and produces content for child and family audiences. Moe won the Producer of the Year 2016 award at Cartoon Movie in Lyon. Since 2000, in conjunction with many international partners based in Germany, Luxembourg, Finland, Denmark, France and Canada, and with broadcasters such as NDR, WDR France 2, France 3, TVO, and the BBC, Moe has co-produced many animation projects including five award-winning animated feature films which have been distributed internationally. Most recently she completed Two By Two – Ooops! The Ark Has Gone (a.k.a. Ooops! Noah Is Gone), a 3D animated feature film co-produced with partners in Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. The film was released in 2015 in the UK and Ireland. It has achieved over 4.2million EUR in box office sales and been distributed world-wide. Prior to her role as a producer, Moe worked in radio as a news presenter and arts journalist and also as a director and assistant director on documentary programmes such as Battle of the Somme and the series Battlefields for RTE and The History Channel and PBS.

Manuela Lumb started her career by helping establishing the animation Studio Film Bilder. She founded the distribution company Edition Film Bilder and was producing many prize winning short films. In 1998 she became commissioning editor at SWR and was responsible for Children’s Programme. Later she joined WDR and was commissioning editor for the “Show with the Mouse”, where she successfully produced many animation features and series and also live action. In 2008 she became Head of Children’s and Family Department at the Berlin-based studio TV Film where among others, she developed and produced the most successful German children’s brand for KiKA, “Kikaninchen”. In June 2016 she became Head of Development at MotionWorks, one of the leading animation production companies in Germany. Since April 2018 she works as an independent producer and consultant.

Éva Vass started her career in 1993 as a cultural columnist, presenter and reporter in a Regional TV in Hungary, later she moved to the Regional theater as a dramaturge. In 1997 she joined TV2 and worked first as a planner, then until 2014 as Head of Program Operations in the multichannel environment of TV2, Super TV2, Pro4, Fem3 (MTM-SBS Rt., ProSiebenSat1). She then spent a year as an editor in printed lifestyle magazine. Éva has returned back to broadcasting in 2015 – this time to MTVA, starting as Editor in Chief and working since 2016 as Director of M2 Channel. Éva has also served several times in various festival juries – at BANFF World Media Festival, Prix Jeunesse International, International Emmy Awards in Budapest and at the 10th Festival of European Animated Film and TV-Film, 2017, Kecskemét, Hungary.

Additional jury member for ASF Award in both categories Short Films and Series/TV Specials:
Tim Leborgne graduated with a Master’s degree in social psychology from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. In 1999, Tim had the good fortune of returning to one of his childhood passions, animation film, by working with Corinne Jenart and Marc Vandeweyer at Cartoon AEFA for four years, during which he participated in the creation and management of the European Training Network for Animation (ETNA) and to the organisation of numerous Cartoon Masters, Cartoon Movies and Cartoon Forums. In 2003, Tim joined The Animation Workshop / VIA University College in Viborg as the director of its Professional Training and Open Workshop (artist residencies) departments.

Feature Film Projects: Pitching Competition

As this is a pilot year, we have left the selection of projects to VAF national coordinators, who know best of current production in their respective countries. The goal was to invite experienced producers who have a clear vision of their project and the condition that the project had already received some funding. After making their pitch, the teams will have a special feedback and networking meeting with experts invited by VAF - broadcasters, producers, distributors, fund members etc.

There will be two awards to compete for: firstly the Best Feature Film Pitch, the winning project will advance directly to the prestigious Cartoon Movie 2019, and secondly the Nespresso Audience Award.

The VAF Třeboň will take place May 1 – 3, 2018 within the International Festival of Animated Films Anifilm. For a full line-up of selected films visit: http://visegradanimation.com/selected-projects/

As organisations working across the European audiovisual sector, and in the context of the discussions surrounding the next Multi-annual Financial Framework, we would like to reiterate our support for the Creative Europe MEDIA Programme, a vital component of the European audiovisual landscape, and call for an ambitious budgetary proposal to ensure the continued success of the European audiovisual sector in the future.

dok.incubator has just announced the final selection of talented filmmakers whose projects will be supported in 2018. dok.incubator is a well-established rough-cut stage workshop that is unique in its format and impact on filmmakers. Its aim each year is to offer individual mentorship for eight documentary projects with a focus on dramaturgy, distribution and marketing strategy and audience building in order to premiere at prestigious festivals and reach a wide distribution.

The teams behind the projects come from the whole world and their projects cover a wide range of topics and genres.

A rather intimate portrait Story of B., the disappearance of my mother (IT) by Italian filmmaker Beniamino Berrese, depicts the director’s own. An iconic model from the 1960s, she now wishes to withdraw into solitude and literally “disappear” from public.

Mercurius of Molenbeek (FI, BE, DE), a Finnish documentary by Reetta Huhtanen, follows a six-year-old boy in the world he’s created for himself in the shaken Molenbeek Muslim neighbourhood as he seeks something bigger than everyday reality.

From the remote mountains of Albania in Avenge (SI, XK), Marija Zidar tells a story of family pride, and of deep-rooted principles of revenge and forgiveness while fighting the omnipresent corruption and prevailing communist residues.

Stella van Voorst van Beest’s I will never leave you (NL) brings the study of Rotterdam’s municipality social project involving dozens of volunteers visiting elderly citizens, each trying in their solitude to find a way to live together in the ever changing urban environment.

César Jaimes’ Lapü (CO) from Colombia is an artistic portrayal of rituals concerning life and death in the Wayuu tradition, where dreams and everyday reality are inseparable and represent both sides of the documentary protagonists lives.

A Latvian project People From Nowhere (LV, DE, CZ, EE) by Gints Grube uncovers family history in a picture of a father and daughter emigrating during the Cold War to New York. It is a search for the truth, a portrayal of family values, and a confrontation with choices that will change their lives.

Searching Eva (DE) by Pia Hellenthal is the tale of a modern icon, growing up in the age of the internet and turning the search for oneself into a public spectacle. It is a hybrid of fiction and documentary, of offline and online, about a German young woman searching for her place in a modern world.

Petter Sommer’s team from Norway presents a portrait of The Mens’s Choir (NO), whose hard-boiled, beer thirsty members are confronted by life’s reversed face – their beloved conductor is diagnosed with cancer. Can they make it to their last ever concert together?

These eight projects have been selected out of 101 applications and they now have the opportunity to join ranks of the other successful documentaries which were developed at the dok.incubator workshop. Over the six years of dok.incubator, over one third of the films have been screened at IDFA, six have competed at Sundance, and many more have been at Visions du Reel, CPH:DOX, Hots Docs, and other similar festivals.

Find more information about the projects here.

EU Copyright Directive

12/04: Call to the European Council: Secure the aims of the Proposed Copyright Directive in the DSM - IFPI Website

IFPI and wide range of European creators, producers and performers urge no fudging of EU Value Gap fix.

EU Cultural Budget

09/04: Boosting the EU culture budget – A call from Europe’s cultural and creative sectors – IMPALA Website

On the 9^th of April, 66 organisations from across Europe’s cultural and creative sectors sent an open letter to the EU institutions urging them to give a significant boost to the EU budget dedicated to culture.

Copyright enforcement

10/04: Speech by Vice-President Andrus Ansip on copyright – European Commission

“Our copyright reform gives publishers and authors the means to negotiate better with digital platforms. Rights holders will be in a stronger and fairer position to negotiate and be paid when a platform puts their work online. The legal bargaining position of press publishers needs similar improvement and clarity” stated Vice-President Ansip.

/04: Recommendation on measures to effectively tackle illegal content online – EAO Newsletter

The present Recommendation constitutes additional measures and builds further on various voluntary initiatives already undertaken by hosting service providers in their fight against illegal content online, such as the EU Code of Conduct on countering illegal hate speech online.

Data Protection

/04: Guidance on the direct application of the General Data Protection Regulation – EAO Newsletter

In the light of the General Data Protection Regulation, which will become directly applicable on 25 May 2018 and will replace the Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC) and the Police Directive (2016/680/EU), the EU Commission issued a Communication aimed at guiding all relevant actors in their preparations vis-à-vis this new legal instrument.

Events

17, 18 & 19 April: EUIPO Working Group Meetings 17 April: SatCab Trilogue 26 April: AVMS Trilogue 3 May: AAPA/EUIPO - Enforcement Database and Online Digital Infringements 12 May: European Audiovisual Observatory Conference - Cannes 12 May: UNIC Cocktail - Cannes 13 May: Europa Cinemas Conference - Cannes 14 May: European Film Forum - Cannes 15 May: Creative Europe MEDIA Stakeholders' Meeting - Cannes 20-21 June: European Parliament Vote - Copyright Directive