Kids Kino.Lab, script development programme, opens the call for submission. Are you ready to submit your project? The deadline is October 23rd.

Kids Kino.Lab is an international script development programme for film projects and TV series for young audiences. It is dedicated to scriptwriters and producers who are interested in developing their films (live action, animation or documentary) or a TV series. 

During the workshops, 12 teams (producer + scriptwriter) will be developing their projects from short synopsis to the second draft of the script together with production basics (estimated budget, financing and promotion plan).

The shooting of the feature Grandpa Goes South by the director Vinci Vogue Anžlovar started on Friday, 21 August. All of us still remember Grandma Goes South (1991), in which the director sent the protagonist, played by Majolika Šuklje, to the seaside.

Grandpa Goes South - 2020

The film Grandpa Goes South is a story about life, expectations, and the search for meaning. It is a tale about friendship. Vlado kidnaps his best friend Boris from the hospital because he refuses to come to terms with the fact that Boris is dying. Boris and Vlado, both musicians, have known each other for many years, as they played together in a jazz orchestra. Vlado decides to take Boris to Serbia and reunite him with Neda, a woman that has been the focus of his unfulfilled love for many years and with whom he lost touch with years ago due to unfortunate circumstances. At first, everything goes according to the plan – until they cross paths with a Gypsy woman called Esma. From then on, life takes a different turn.

The 24th edition of Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries begins this week, taking place mostly in an online form from 29 August to 6 September. Baltic Sea Docs is the most important documentary training and pitching event in the Baltic countries, bringing together filmmakers from the wider Baltic Sea region, Eastern Europe and Caucasus region. 

POLITICS

Public consultations launched by the European Commission.

The European Commission has launched three public consultations with regards to The Digital Services Act Package, the Impact Assessment for a possible New Competition Tool and the Community Competition Law. The CICAE is participating in them to make sure that the arthouse cinemas have a voice and that the small and medium sized businesses ran by exhibitors are taken into account in the discussions that will shape important aspects of the EU economy of the upcoming years.

European Funding for Cinemas

Venues of the network Europa Cinemas will receive at the beginning of 2021 a financial support dedicated to help compensate the losses due to forced closure during the pandemic. The amount of the financial support will be proportional to the number of weeks of closure of the venues.

ARTHOUSE INDUSTRY CURRENT ISSUES

AMC - Universal: Market power against diversity

The AMC - Universal deal, whereby the cinema chain accepts a 17-day cinema window in order to then participate in PremiumVoD revenues, is also about market power concentration. Christian Bräuer expresses his concern, because just like Uber, Amazon and Co., this deal is about crowding out the economically operating competition in order to be able to dictate its own terms. The concern here is for the smaller medium-sized cinemas, which will have ever greater problems with supplies and will no longer have a chance as copycats. But also the smaller distribution colleagues, whose access to the screens is also becoming increasingly restricted.

Even in the USA, there is now a political danger that entire industries will tend to monopolize. It is more important now that we in Europe define clear rules for the market and its access. The appeal is therefore made to politicians, film funders, but also the antitrust authorities in Europe and in each country to observe current developments and, where necessary, to take countermeasures.

ONLY 20 DAYS LEFT TO APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP!
Deadline: 11th September 2020

PITCHING EVENT FOR YOUNG TALENTS
developing new animation projects

The sixth edition of Cartoon Springboard will take place in Valencia, Spain, from 27 to 29 October 2020. It will be an excellent opportunity for the young talents of European animation schools to improve their animation project by pitching it in front of a panel of experts from the audiovisual world.

In preparation for this year's Kids Kino Industry, we're hosting a series of a free weekly Inspirational Webinars with industry professionals. The first webinar “Exploring The Change. Göteborg’s Film Festival Nostradamus Report Meets Kids Kino Industry” starts today at 15:00 CEST (GMT+2).

When: Every MONDAY from 24th August to 21st September
Where: ZOOM
Cost: FREE (register here)

We kick off our Inspirational Webinars with a dynamic session on the future of the children’s screen industry in the light of the COVID-19 crisis. Media analyst and author of the Nostradamus Report, Johanna Koljonen, will introduce us to the 2020 edition of CREATIVE EXPLOSION, discussing screen industry developments in the context of global macro trends including the pandemic. Focusing on the young audiences platform agnostic perception of the content she reflects on new possibilities for creators and distributors in terms of storytelling, audience relationship and releases.

The session will be joined and moderated by David Kleeman who brings in his analytic knowledge on how children make their choices around the media and what they are seeking in the near future.

Finally, Madiana Asseraf-Jacob from the European Broadcasting Union will guide us through an overview on how children’s public broadcasting have been shaping their formats and content during the pandemic and what the main lessons learnt from here in terms of their future programming are.

There is more to come!

Please check our lineup of the Inspirational Webinars, and don’t forget to register. Remember that you need to register for each seminar separately (apologies for this inconvenience!).

The upcoming webinars:

• 24th August, 15:00 – 16:00 CEST, “Exploring The Change. Göteborg’s Film Festival Nostradamus Report Meets Kids Kino Industry”
• 31st August, 15:00 – 16:00 CEST, “New Format in Kids TV”
• 7th September, 15:00 – 16:00 CEST, “Studio Presentation – Up-and-Coming Projects”
• 14th September, 12:00 – 13:00  CEST, “A Quantum Leap – Game Tech in Filmmaking”
• 21st September, 12:00 – 13:00 CEST, “Curse or Blessing, Co-Production in a Changed Environment”

More details and the registration form for each meeting can be found here.