Four European institutions have received a total of Euros 800,000 from the European Union's MEDIA Plus Programme as part of its new initiative to promote European films and professionals at film festivals around the world.


The Brussels-based European Film Festivals Coordination (EFFC) was awarded Euros 250,000 to establish a support service for all festival organisers around the world interested in enhancing the participation of European Films; to organise a package of films touring to festivals in the Balkans and Turkey and South Asia; to arrange training sessions and staff exchanges, to establish a database of European films and to stage a series of roundtables at selected festivals.

Meanwhile, Hamburg's European Film Promotion (EFP) has been allocated Euros 210,000 to mount promotional activities in support of selected European films at leading international festivals in Buenos Aires, Shanghai, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro & Pusan as a first priority, and at Sundance and Tokyo as second priority. EFP plans to work directly in partnership with the festivals, providing a range of support services for European films selected at the festivals.

Moreover, Euros 90,000 is being provided for Italy's Instituto Internazionale per il Cinema e l'Audiovisivo dei Paesi Latini (EuAmLatiCine) which aims "to promote the exchange of the audiovisual production mostly between European countries and South America, but also with the Latin language regions of the American Continent (from the Caribbean, Canada and United States)."

Special attention will be given to film festivals in Brazil, Colombia and the "Cono Sur", and the selection of films made with the help of such European institutions as ARP, European Producers Club, AIDAA, and particularly EFCA. Financial support for the transport of copies, subtitles, and promotional costs will be provided to the film festivals as well to local distributors.

Finally, Euros 250,000 has been given to Europa Cinemas to create two different schemes for supporting the distribution and exhibition of European films in third countries.

For the exhibition scheme, Europa Cinemas "proposes to reimburse part of the costs paid by the cinema owner for a first period of screenings of the films presented in the festivals supported by [EFFC and EFP] and bought by local distributors. The final amount to be paid will be directly linked to the number of entries achieved by the European film and the revenues paid to the distributor from the exploitation of the film."