Thefuture of the 14 year-old Nordic Film & TV Fund has been secured by a newagreement between the Nordic ministers of culture. The deal, which was signedin Reykjavik last week, runs until the end of 2009.

The foundation of the Fund was shaken earlier this year whenthe four private Nordic TV-stations (Sweden's TV4, TV2 Norway, TV2 Denmark andthe Icelandic Broadcasting Corporation), as if by a common agreement,threatened to pull their support for the fund.

One third of its annual $10m (NOK67m) budget comes from theprivate and public broadcasters with the other two thirds chipped in by theNordic Ministry Council and the national Film Institutes.

However, after a change of membership regulations, theprivate TV-stations agreed to sign on after all. If they had not, they wouldhave risked losing the films backed by the fund to the public broadcasters.

The Oslo-based pan Nordic funding body, which is managed bySvend Abrahamsen, has been providing top-up financing in form of productionsupport, development, distribution, language versions and film culturalinitiatives since 1990.