Archive notice: This article was originally published on August 17, 2010. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The annual report for 2009 shows that major productions such as Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer delivered successes. There were even two Oscars for Babelsberg productions (Kate Winslet for The Reader and Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds), and although revenue increased compared with the previous year, consolidated revenue fell.
According to the annual report presented to the general meeting, this was due to the international financial crisis and strikes by the American unions, whose effects depressed productions worldwide. For 2010, however, the studio was fully booked again, including Unknown White Male with Liam Neeson and Diane Kruger and studio filming for the horror thriller The Apparition. Filming had also already begun on Roland Emmerich’s new film Anonymous.
The other major partner of the animago AWARD & CONFERENCE is Medienboard Brandenburg. It was highly active last year and currently has seven funded films in cinemas and festival programmes (Men in the Water, The Silence, Run If You Can, Men on the Bridge, A Little Miracle in Athens, Mr. Nobody, Autumn Gold).
In addition, Medienboard launched a major event programme at IFA on the topic “What is driving current media development?”, with contributions on media development, the strategic scenarios of media companies, opportunities for new sources of online revenue, content financing and the importance of social media. http://www.medienwoche.de.
Just as an aside: if you want to switch to digital cinema projection technology, you can obtain help from Medienboard – grants are available for commercial cinemas and arthouse cinemas with no more than six screens that can demonstrate “continuous operation”. More at http://www.medienboard.de
