The Belgian region of Flanders is using the Berlin festival to announce the rebirth and expansion of many of its support agencies.

Just before the festival, Flanders Image, the promotional agency for the northern Flemish-speaking part of Belgium, was absorbed into the Flemish Audiovisual Fund (Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds) which started operations last autumn. The Flanders Image label will continue to be used in overseas promotions and will from March be headed by Christian De Schutter who takes over from Annemie Degryse.

The Flemish Audiovisual Fund, now headed by Luckas Vander Taelen, spans three areas of operation: research & development, production and promotion and is expected to develop a coherent audiovisual policy for the region.

It will today announce that it is channelling Euros 900,000 of its Euros 12.5m annual budget into the launch of five 'ateliers' or workshops for different forms of training. These are divided by genre into fiction, documentary, animation, experimental media and screenwriting.