Venice Film Festival's new director Moritz de Hadeln has named filmmaker/producer Christel Buschmann as the festival's correspondent for Germany to liaise with German producers wanting to place their films in Venice.

Buschmann - who Gibbi-Westgermany (1980), Comeback (1982) and Ballhaus Barmbek - Let's Kiss And Say Goodbye (1988) - is no stranger to Hadeln as she served on his competition selection committee in Berlin from 1997-2001.

As German films have found it difficult in the past to get into Venice's competition line-up, the Export-Union of German Cinema plans to facilitate Buschmann's job of pre-selecting films for the two competition sections by staging two screening sessions - one from May 6-8 and the other probably in mid-June - which will give her a concentrated overview of the films on offer.

The previous festival correspondent for Venice had been journalist and film historian Alexander Horwath who was recently appointed director of the Austrian Film Museum.