Are you a short film-maker looking to take the leap into features? Do you have the burning desire to tell a story and need funding and support to realise your project? Round three of Microwave, Film London’s micro-budget feature film fund, is now open for applications.

This in from Tamsin at MayaVision:

Producers or production companies are now invited to send a rough cut of their unfinished short film to Maya Vision International, along with a completed application form. The closing date is Friday 30^th May 2008.

If you don’t have a rough cut by then, don’t worry as the Completion Fund has expanded to 2 calls per year allowing up to 14 short films to be completed under the scheme each year. The next call, 2009/I, is scheduled to open in September 2008, but full details to follow in due course.

Please pass the news on to all your filmmaking friends. We’d love to receive a bumper crop of exciting new films and look forward to seeing your entries! Full guidelines, forms and more information can be found at:

http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/shortfilm

You are very welcome to call for more details, but please read the guidelines first! Contact: Tamsin Ranger at Maya Vision International Ltd, 3^rd Floor, 6 Kinghorn St, London EC1A 7HW tel: 0207 796 4842 or email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. http://www.mayavisionint.com 

After three years of discussions that looked like they may never end, the UK-India film co-production agreement is finally set. Both governments have completed negotiations which began after Tessa Jowell signed the main body of the agreement in 2005. In recent, years more and more Indian films have used locations in the UK, with the new agreement allowing such producers to access UK tax relief - and other benefitis - on local production spending if eligible as a co-production.

Likewise numerous British filmmakers such as Alex Snelling, Ashwin Kumar and Arun Kumar have shot films in India in recent years, and will now be able to get Indian support when partnering with local companies. The Indian film industry is the most productive in the world, while 2.5 million Brits went to see Hindi films last year, with the market making up 16% of all realeases. 

As a direct result of the treaty the government expects that up to 10 UK-Indian co-productions will be made within the first two years. Indian films can qualify as British by meeting the requirements of one of the following: an official UK bilateral co-production treaty; the European Convention on Cinematographic Co-production; or the Cultural Test.

As part of the introduction of the treaty, UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) will run a series of workshops for Indian filmmakers who are interested in co-producing with the UK and making use of the treaty. The four UKTI workshops will aim to provide all those involved  – the national bodies, trade associations, individual production companies and professional advisers – with a better understanding of how the treaty will work and how potential co-producers can benefit from the same.

Star Wreck Studios, the guerilla filmmaking collective behind one of the most popular Finnish films of all time - and a big success story of online film distribution - have unveiled a teaser trailer for their follow up, Iron Sky, and are asking fans to help fund and produce the film.

Star Wreck : In The Pirkinning was produced by five friends in a two-room flat in Tampere with a small budget and the support of a few hundred fans and dozens of acquaintances. From the land of Linus Torvald, creator of open source (and world changing) Linux, the film is appropriately released under a Creative Commons license - Laurence Lessig's attempt to bring open source practices to other IP. The film was released in 2005 and was subsequently picked up by Universal Pictures for distribution across Scandinavia and screened on State TV in Finland, Belgium and Italy. Viewed online or downloaded more than 8 million times, Star Wreck has become, the filmmakers argue, the most popular Finnish film of all time. With virtual sets and Hollywood quality CGI effects, the films production values have been widely acclaimed, with the only criticism being that it's a Trekkie fan-film rather than an original concept.

“Iron Sky is a story about conformity: those who want to conform, those who want to make others conform, and those who refuse to conform.”
Timo Vuorensola
Iron Sky looks set to change that with an ultra-high concept futuristic space thriller. The premise is simple - in 1945 the Nazis left to the dark side of the moon, where they hid out rebuilding their forces. In 2018, they come back. A trailer appeared online this week (below) following a thirteen-part behind the scenes vlog . Under a 'Buy War Bonds' shoutout, the producers are currently inviting fans to pre-buy the DVD and a making of book in a special edition pack for €50, a kind of micro-pre-sales made popular by the likes of Brave New Films and Franny Armstrong . Tho committed to using open source principles, creating the excellent looking WreckAMovie community (currently in beta) for collaborative task management, the producers are yet to promise Iron Sky will be a free download, saying they are currently exploring all options. Tho if they make enough in micro-presales, they won't need to pre-sell any territorial rights to traditional distributions, which in theory would allow the film to  come out under a Creative Commons license. Watch this space...

From Mayavision:

Producers or production companies are now invited to send a rough cut of their unfinished short film to Maya Vision International, along with a completed application form. The closing date is Friday 30^th May 2008. Full guidelines, forms and more information can be found at www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/shortfilm

If you don’t have a rough cut by then, don’t worry as the Completion Fund has expanded to 2 calls per year allowing up to 14 short films to be completed under the scheme each year. The next call, 2009/I, is scheduled to open in September 2008, but full details to follow in due course.

Please pass the news on to all your filmmaking friends. We’d love to receive a bumper crop of exciting new films and look forward to seeing your entries!

The Arts Council's recently announced massacre for 2008 - which will see hundreds of small theatres, galleries, festivals and events across the UK close after total loss of funding - has received suprisingly little attention in the press given the implications. Those facing the axe at the whim of the Arts Council executives include the National Student Drama Festival, the Drill Hall, London Mozart Players and - the theatre which changed my life as a child - Harrogate Theatre which has had a 75% (£300,000) cut.

The news comes at the same time that the British Council has announced it is to close its arts departments, including the films department which has supported thousands of British filmmakers get their work shown abroad, leaving the arts world in complete disarray.

Meanwhile the Royal Opera House, where a stalls ticket for one of their 2008 productions starts at £126 rising to £165 (the cheapest and worst seats in the balcony are £30), saw an increase in its funding for 2008 to over £26m a year.

As well as providing entertainment and access to culture, the UK's theatre and arts sector makes a huge contribution to education and the economy, while providing a vital training ground for the actors, writers, directors, musicians and artists who have picked up a quarter of Oscars in the last 20 years (and done far more).

To make matters worse, Arts Council chiefs have avoided blaming the cuts on the Olympics or the DCMS, and instead argued that all the organisations concerned simnply weren't well managed enough, adding insult to injury. 

"Meanwhile the Royal Opera House, saw an increase in its funding for 2008 to over £26m a year."

Interestingly, the biggest recipients of Arts Council funding - the RSC, ENO, the National Theatre, South Bank Centre and the Royal Opera House - collectively getting some £100m annually, have not seen their budgets cut, but instead risen in line with inflation. Many believe this is because the smaller companies are less likely to kick up a fuss, or at least get significant press coverage. West End producer Thelma Holt told the Times “they wouldn’t dare take away funding from any of the larger organisations because they would be able to put up a huge fight. So they have mainly gone for the smaller companies.”

 submitted by Maya Vision

Producers or production companies can send their unfinished short film NOW to Maya Vision International along with a completed application form. The closing date is 14th December 2007.

If you don't have a rough cut by then, don't worry as the Completion Fund has expanded to 2 calls per year allowing up to 14 short films to be completed in a year. The second call will open in March and close in April 08.

Please pass the news on to all your film-making friends. We'd love to receive a bumper crop of exciting new films. Full guidelines, forms and more information can be found online.

New UK Film Council Development Fund head Tanya Seghatchian has unveiled her new plans for the department, with a big focus on supporting writers who haven't had a feature released yet. At first glance this looks like a real step forward for both simplifying the system and supporting new talent. She writes below:

From Tanya Seghatchian...
 
As you may know, I took over as the Head of the Development Fund at the UK Film Council earlier this year and have spent the last few months reviewing the fund and its practices, in line with both the UK Film Council’s policies and objectives and my own experience of working in film in the UK.