27-04-2010

FNE at Finale Plzen: Midpoint launches new training programme

By Cathy Meils in Plzen
    Five leading Central European film schools are joining forces on a project to move young filmmakers into the professional world with Midpoint, the Central European Script Center (www.midpoint-center.eu).
    The project's first workshop takes place June 18-26 during Slovakia's Art Film festival (www.artfilmfest.sk ) in Trencianske Teplice, followed by a second workshop at Prague's FAMU film school, taking place August 28-September 3, 2010.

    The project was unveiled at the Finale festival of Czech films (www.finalefilmfest.cz ) held in Plzen April 18-24. Representatives from the five collaborating film schools, along with programme manager Barbora Ondrejčáková, said the workshops will concentrate on script development for film school students and young professionals with short and feature-length film projects. The working language for the workshops is English.

    "We created the programme so that young filmmakers from the three professions (scripwriting, directing, and producing) would start collaborating in the beginning, and to strengthen the producer's knowledge of dramaturgy," Ondrejčáková told FNE. By involving the leading film schools from five countries, the participants will have the advantage of international training.

    Participating schools include Prague's FAMU (famu.cz ) with film school dean Pavel Jech in attendance), PWSFTViT national film school of Poland in Lodz (www.filmschool.lodz.pl ), Romania's UNATC university of film and theatre in Bucharest (www.uatc.ro ), Slovakia's VSMU school of drama (ftf.vsmu.sk ), film and TV in Bratislava, and SFZE Hungarian university of film, theatre and TV in Budapest (www.szfe.hu ).

    The project is sponsored by the EU MEDIA Programme (ec.europa.eu ), Czech Ministry of Culture (www.mkcr.cz ), Slovakia's new audiovisual fund (www.avf.sk ), EAVE, in partnership with EAVE (www.eave.org ) and VSMU.