Archive notice: This article was originally published on November 19, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
For two days, 140 producers, filmmakers, financiers and media professionals from 22 countries discussed cooperation on current and future projects.
For the 9th time, the East-West co-production market Connecting Cottbus offered its participants the opportunity to find partners for their own feature-film projects across national borders. For the first time this year, Connecting Cottbus presented the CoCo Best Pitch Award for the best pitch – endowed with a voucher for script doctoring worth 3,000 €, donated by Vienna’s EastWestFilmdistribution. The attending specialist audience voted.
The winner of the CoCo Best Pitch Award is Serbian director and screenwriter Andrijana Stojkovic, who presented her project The Box, a comedy of fate set in Belgrade in 1992, written by Stojkovic and Slavoljub Stankovic. The Box is produced by the Serbian production company Jetifilm
Five of the total of thirteen projects presented during the pitching came from the successor states of Yugoslavia, this year’s country focus.
The one-to-one meetings offered for the first time after the pitching provided an opportunity for more detailed discussions and were received very positively by the participants.
In addition to the project presentations and one-to-one discussions, Connecting Cottbus offered its guests a series of informative panels:
Under the title „This is how it can work …“, there was an insight into the current status of the projects Delta and DAU, both of which were presented at Connecting Cottbus in past years and found partners for production here. Delta by Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo is currently in postproduction in Hungary and Germany. The Russian project DAU by Ilya Khrzhanovski will be filmed from spring 2008.
Current information about film production in the successor states of Yugoslavia was offered by the panel „FOCUS Successor States of Yugoslavia – How films are made today“. Producers from Macedonia and Croatia are currently looking forward to the establishment of national film funding bodies that operate independently of the ministries of culture. Slovenia’s filmmakers, by contrast, face a standstill in film production in their country, caused by inappropriate political influence on the decisions of the national film funding body.
The possibilities and limits of digital exploitation of films were shown by the panel „Digital – a magic word? – classic and digital forms of distribution“. Following the keynote by Björn Koll of Salzgeber, online distributor Nowtilus, French VoD service Universciné and Reelport, Europe’s largest film platform and b2b service for rights holders and distributors, presented their approaches in the digital distribution world.
Unanimous conclusion of all participants at Connecting Cottbus: the East-West co-production market is an ideal place to build bridges between Eastern and Western European countries and to prepare successful cooperation. The focus is not only on financing, but also on the joint further development of projects and mutual opening up of exploitation markets.
Connecting Cottbus takes place as part of FilmFestival Cottbus – Festival of Eastern European Film – and every year makes an important contribution to networking partners from Eastern and Central Europe with German co-producers and promoting international dialogue. Producers, financiers and world sales companies, television editors, distributors from East and West have the opportunity to make contact at an early stage of project development in order to develop material for the European market together.
Connecting Cottbus is supported by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung MDM and the European Union’s MEDIA Programme in Brussels. Another partner is the Nipkow Programme. The organizer of Connecting Cottbus is pool production GmbH.
Next year, Connecting Cottbus will take place on November 13 and 14, 2008.
Further links:
- Connecting Cottbus
