German film services group, CineMedia Film is re-shuffling its board of directors in order to best position the company for a high tech future.

Co-founder Holger Heims joins the supervisory board taking the place of Markus Hoelzl. Hoelzl in turn moves over to the management board to take over financial responsibility for the company. Christian Sommer, director of Bavaria Film which owns 19% of CineMedia, joins the board of newly hatched technology division Ressort Medientechnologie.

"I join the board of the publicly quoted entity, maintain my seat on our 60% owned Internet subsidiary and join the board of the production operation. This gives the group access to my network while putting more emphasis on the areas where we want to build." said Heims. "But, just as important is Christian Sommer's arrival which strengthens our position in media technology. We are determined to be a major player in digital cinema."

In an attempt to build itself into a fully integrated media concern CineMedia has this year begun a round of talks which would take it further into production and co-production. Last year it bought a 60% stake in Taurus Films, one of Germany's larger independent TV production outfits. Last month it began talks to co-produce a $65-75m adaptation of an unnamed best-selling novel, to be directed by City Hall director Harold Becker.

In February it struck a co-production agreement with UK production house Own2Feet Productions for three feature or TV films, with a total production volume of $7.5m (DM15m) (Screendaily February 15). In January it entered the licensing business with the acquisition of 16 US feature films with budgets totalling $240m (Screendaily January 25).