31.03.2008
Film fund to close in style
First Baltic film school: run with Danish backing and on Danish principles.
The spring exam season at the first proper film school in the Baltic countries coincides with the closing chapter of the Nordic Baltic Film Fund.
Established in 1992 by Nordisk Film and Egmont, one of Scandinavia’s leading media groups, the fund will close in a few weeks when the three Baltic nations – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – themselves jointly turn out the first class of film master-graduates ever trained in the region.
Support in the form of the know-how of the Nordic film school principals and approx. DKK 9 million donated by the fund went into establishing the Baltic Film and Media School in Tallinn, Estonia.
The new filmmaking courses are part of the general media education programme offered to about 300 students by Tallinn University. Thirty of the students are enrolled in the new international film programme, which is based on principles corresponding to those of the National Film School of Denmark. Poul Nesgaard, principal of the Danish School, has been a member of the board of the film school throughout the establishment period.
‘The school has already become immensely important. We have noted what amounts almost to a revolutionary increase in interest in the film medium in our countries,’ says Ilze Gailite Holmberg, director of the National Film Centre of Latvia and chairman of the film school board.
The idea for the fund was fostered during the merger negotiations in 1992 between Egmont and Nordisk Film. It was at the same period that the Baltic countries broke away from the former Soviet Union. The two companies decided to support media activities in the new independent states by promoting a free, professional film environment. For 16 years the Nordic Baltic Film Fund donated a total of almost DKK 20 million. In addition to a new joint Baltic film school, the film milieu has also received support to distribute Nordic-made films, stage conferences and festivals, and run individual training programmes for young Baltic filmmakers, as well as large-scale collective programmes.
In 2004 the fund decided to close down its operations and channel all funds into a single project, the establishment of an international, joint Baltic film school. The school opened in 2006 after admitting the first 30 students. Among other things, the fund’s final donation will co-finance the graduation film that the first class of students will produce in summer 2008.
The fund chairman, former managing director of Nordisk Film, Søren E. Jakobsen, stresses that the final donation has spurred a development that will primarily give a boost to the Baltic film environment, but will also help to inject more long-term dynamism into the Nordic film industry.
For further information, please contact Søren Eusebius Jakobsen, chairman of the Nordic Baltic Film Fund, on tel. +45 2986-8175.
