Danish Documentary/Status
Twice per year the Danish Film Institute (DFI) invites the national documentary filmmakers, distributors, promoters and bureaucrats, including television people, to meet for information and inspiration. The first meeting took place on monday this week, a so-called ”DOK-dag” (Documentary Day) was arranged, the second meeting will take place at the European Film College a weekend late August.
It was an optimistic Head of Production, former producer Claus Ladegaard, who gave us some headlines: ”Armadillo” by Janus Metz had sold 135.000 cinema tickets, ”Burma vj” by Anders Østergaard had received its 50th international award, there were more than 1 million tv viewers for ”Armadillo”, ”Tommy” (Danish pop star) by Sami Saif and ”The Home Front” by Phie Ambo, the special documentary distribution initiative DoxBio had done pretty well in its attempt to get documentaries shown around Denmark – and funding-wise it was strong that the new 4 year film agreement with the Ministry of Culture included more money for the creative documentary through the consultant system. In 2011 each of the two documentary consultants will have 15 million DKK, which is a bit more than 2 mio.€, to support production of documentaries. The consultant for children docs and shorts will have a bit less.
For this money 30-35 documentaries are to be made every year. To talk about access a representative from the Distribution department of the DFI told that 240.000 online screenings had been organised, of the 1000 films that are available – primarily in the educational circuit. Schools have subscriptions for the films available through ”Filmstriben”, for libraries goes the same but the individual public library can put a limit on how many films a user can have per month – the more screenings through the libraries, the more expensive it gets. The DFI considers to introduce another system to reach the homes.
