23-09-2019

FERA 2019 General Assembly Statement

    FERA 2019 General Assembly Statement photo: FERA

    STRONGER TOGETHER: that was the key message which emerged from the discussion of FERA’s General Assembly meeting in Bucharest, Romania on September 20 to 22.

    Mobilize to make the most of the new Copyright Directive

    FERA will support organizing at national level, in close collaboration between the professional organizations of our network, to ensure a meaningful transposition of the Directive and its historic provisions to rebalance the systemic weak bargaining power of film and TV directors in negotiating their contracts.

    Our common goal is to develop meaningful collective agreements and mechanisms across Europe to bring about fair contracts and remuneration to all directors, particularly those who are struggling to make ends meet.

    Standing united to face challenges to filmmakers’ ability to express their creativity freely

    Our love and dedication to our craft drives us to fight for our ability to create at a time of profound market changes in our industry and sometimes unstable local industry ecosystem: we must be in a position to create freely while building sustainable careers.

    We must also unite to fend off threats to our artistic freedom as populism rises and cultural policies are under attack across Europe.

    Bring back Culture!

    Our community calls on new European institutions to champion free thinking, artistic freedom, and the richness of Europe’s cultural diversity of creative voices through an ambitious agenda for culture.

    We are joining other cultural and creative organisations in calling the EU Commission president-elect to urgently reinstate culture within the title of the designated Commissioner’s portfolio, and to effectively fulfil the objective of promotion of culture set out in the 1991 European Treaty.

    The first milestone of this mandate will be to adopt an ambitious new edition of the Creative Europe programme: we urge EU institutions to seize this opportunity to stand for creativity by supporting European networks of audiovisual creators and enshrining the notion of fair treatment of creative talent as a core value of the MEDIA programme.

    We are grateful to the strong position taken by the former European Parliament in that regard and want to believe that new MEPs and Member States will uphold the importance of EU support to culture and to European creators.

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    Newly Elected Honorary President: Agnieszka HOLLAND (Poland)

    Newly Elected Executive Committee 2019-2021:

    Chair – Klemen DVORNIK (Slovenia)
    Honorary Treasurer – Sverre PEDERSEN (Norway)
    Bill ANDERSON (United Kingdom)
    Elisabet GUSTAFSSON (Sweden) – co-opted
    Hrvoje HRIBAR (Croatia) – co-opted
    Lou JEUNET (France)
    Alberto SIMONE (Italy) – co-opted
    Birgitte STÆRMOSE (Denmark)
    C. Cay WESNIGK (Germany)
    Martijn WINKLER (Netherlands)

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    Members of the Federation of European Film and TV Directors (FERA) from 27 countries gathered in Bucharest, Romania on September 20 to 22nd for its annual General Assembly kindly hosted by Dacin Sara.

    Contact: Pauline Durand-Vialle, CEO – This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. – +32 551 08 94