Hubert Bals: 24 proyectos que recibirán apoyo

40th International Film Festival Rotterdam
January 26 – February 6, 2011


Hubert Bals Fund supports 24 film projects in thirteen countries

The Hubert Bals Fund of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has selected twenty-four film projects that receive grants for script development, digital production, postproduction, distribution or workshops. In its Fall 2010 selection, the Fund gives 349 thousand Euro to projects from thirteen Asian, African or Latin-American countries. The selection includes new films by acclaimed filmmakers such as Martín Rejtman, Enrique Rivero, James Lee and many first time filmmakers. (See full list below)

After a successful season with HBF supported films winning top awards in Cannes (Uncle Boonmee, Palme d’Or), Locarno (Winter Vacation, Golden Leopard) and Sarajevo (Tilva Ros, Heart of Sarajevo), the Fund’s Fall 2010 Selection Round includes remarkable projects by a promising line up of upcoming filmmakers.

Postproduction
In the postproduction category, the HBF has selected five film projects. Milagros Mumenthalers Ausencias (Argentina), coproduced by Waterland Film (The Netherlands), is a subtle début comedy about two sisters living in the house of their recently deceased grandmother. Miaoyan Zhang’s Black Blood (China) tells a powerful story of illegal blood selling in a remote desert area. Sanjeewa Pelanwattage’s début feature Flying Fish is one of two film projects in this selection round dealing with the aftermath of the conflicts in Sri Lanka’s Northern region. The other project, selected for script development support, is While Waiting for You by Prasanna Vithanage. Li Ruijun’s The Old Donkey (China) premiers in Pusan’s New Currents Section. Yulene Olaizola’s fiction feature début Artificial Paradises (Mexico) about a young girl’s battle against her drug addiction follows her successful documentary Shakespeare and Victor Hugo´s Intimacies (2008).

Digital production
In the digital production category, Mexican filmmaker Carlos Armella directs Las Voces (The Voices), exploring the contrast between documentary and fictional filmmaking in a father and son story set in a remote Mexican village. Armella co-directed Toro Negro (2005) with Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio, whose second fictional feature project Tree Shade receives HBF script development support in this selection round. Gonzalez-Rubio won a 2010 Tiger Award for his Alamar.

Script development
The category of grants for script development includes Mai morire, second feature film project of Enrique Rivero, whose début work Parque vía won Locarno’s Golden Leopard in 2008. Rey (King) is Chilean director Niles Atallah’s second feature film about a Frenchman that becomes king of the Mapucho territory in southern Chile. Atallah’s début feature Lucia, also supported by the Hubert Bals Fund, competed this year in San Sebastian’s New Directors section. Promising Ukrainian filmmaker Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy receives support for his first feature film project Plemya (The Tribe), about a deaf mute teenager’s struggle to fit into the boarding school system.

Distribution & HBF Award
This selection round’s distribution category supports the screening of Iraqi filmmaker Oday Rasheed’s new film Qarantina in Baghdad as well as a research project that investigates the possibilities of screening independent cinema in Iraq. Encouraging independent filmmaking in India, the Fund will hand out its HBF Award for Best Film Project during the Goa Film Bazaar.



The line up of the IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund Fall 2010 Selection Round in full:

Postproduction & Final Financing
Ausensias (Absences) - Milagros Mumenthaler; Argentina
Black Blood - Miaoyan Zhang; China
Flying Fish - Sanjeewa Pelanwattage; Sri Lanka
The Old Donkey - Li Ruijun; China
Paraísos Artificiales (Artificial Paradises) - Yulene Olaizola; Mexico

Digital Production
If It Is Not Now, Then When? - James Lee; Malaysia
Ang Mundo sa Panahon ng Bakal (Steel is the Earth) - Mes de Guzman; Philippines
Las Voces (The Voices) - Carlos Armella; Mexico

Script & Project Development
Cactus Flower - Hala Elkoussy; Egypt
Conurbano - Gregorio Cramer; Argentina
Dos Disparos (Two Shots) - Martín Rejtman; Argentina
Mai morire - Enrique Rivero; Mexico
Marustali - Geethu Mohan Das; India
La mujer de barro (The Mud Woman) - Sergio Castro San-Martín; Chile
Niu pi san (Oxhide 3) - Liu Jiayin; China
Rey (King) - Niles Atallah; Chile
Sombra del arbol (Tree Shade) - Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio; Mexico
Plemya (The Tribe) - Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy; Ukraine
While Waiting For You - Prasanna Vithanage; Sri Lanka

Distribution
Amakula Mobile Cinema - Amakula Kampala IFF; Uganda
Qarantina - Oday Rasheed; Iraq
Year Without A Summer - Tan Chui Mui; Malaysia

Workshops/Special Projects
Goa Film Bazaar: HBF Award – NFDC ; India
Maisha Filmmakers and Technical Lab - Musarait Kashmiri; Uganda

(End of list)


Profile of the Hubert Bals Fund

Along with CineMart, the Hubert Bals Fund (HBF) is part of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). The 40th IFFR will take place January 26 – February 6, 2011. Year-round news on IFFR, HBF and CineMart can be found on the festival website www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com.

The Hubert Bals Fund is designed to bring remarkable or urgent feature films and feature-length creative documentaries by innovative and talented filmmakers from developing countries closer to completion. The Hubert Bals Fund provides grants that often turn out to play a crucial role in enabling these filmmakers to realize their projects. Although the Fund looks closely at the financial aspects of a project, the decisive factors remain its content and artistic value. Since the Fund started in 1988, more than 900 projects from independent filmmakers in Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America have received support. Approximately 80% of these projects have been realised or are currently in production. Every year, the IFFR screens completed films supported by the Fund. The audience favorite among the HBF supported films screening in the festival receives the Dioraphte Award of 10,000 Euro.

The Hubert Bals Fund is supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dutch non-governmental development organizations Hivos-NCDO Culture Foundation, the DOEN Foundation and the Dioraphte Foundation

Grants and selection rounds
Annually, the Hubert Bals Fund has close to Euro 1 million at its disposal and is able to make individual grants of up to Euro 10,000 for script and project development, Euro 20,000 for digital production, Euro 30,000 for post-production, Euro 15,000 towards distribution costs in the country of origin or Euro 10,000 for special projects such as training workshops. Selection rounds take place twice a year and have application deadlines on March 1 and August 1.

Training, workshops, the Hubert Bals Fund Awards
The Fund supports training initiatives for filmmakers in co-production meetings around the world. Occasionally, the Hubert Bals Fund grants Awards to the most promising film project at these co-production meetings.

Netherlands Film Fund grants € 200,000 for ‘Hubert Bals Fund Plus’

Dutch companies Circe Films, IDTV Motel Films, Volya Films and Waterland Film have been selected to receive each € 50,000 from the Hubert Bals Fund Plus programme, an initiative of the International Film Festival Rotterdam and the Netherlands Film Fund. The Dutch producers will coproduce four films:

· Our Grand Despair by Seyfi Teoman, Turkey

· Los ultimos cristeros (The Last Cristeros) by Matías Meyer, Mexico

· Ausencias (Absences) by Milagros Mumenthaler, Argentina

· 40 kun chilla (40 days of silence) by Saodat Ismailova, Uzbekistan

Iwana Chronis, Manager of the Hubert Bals Fund about the 2009 selection: “The Hubert Bals Fund is delighted with this year’s selection for the HBF Plus program. Looking back on the last four years, the HBF Plus program can be considered a great success and we are happy to see so many of the supported films doing so well at international festivals, with two Silver Bears (Jury Grand Prix and Alfred Bauer Prize) for Gigante (Adrián Biniez) in Berlin and a Cannes premiere for Los Viajes del Viento (Ciro Guerra) in 2009 alone.
We are pleased that the HBF Plus program is encouraging an increasing number of Dutch film producers to get involved into projects by filmmakers from Africa, Asia, Latin America and parts of Eastern Europe, thereby creating new opportunities for both parties.”
The ‘Hubert Bals Fund Plus’ programme, initiated in 2006, promotes international involvement of Dutch producers with films already supported by Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund.

Hubert Bals Fund Plus selection 2009:
Circe Film coproduces Our Grand Despair by Seyfi Teoman, produced by Turkish Bulut Film and German Unafilm.
Our Grand Despair, Teoman’s second feature project after his successful Summer Book portrays “Ender and Cetin, two men in their late thirties. After being away for many years, Cetin returns to Ankara, moves in with Ender, and as such, the two realize their childhood dream. Fikret, a close friend, asks whether his sister Nihal, can stay with them until she graduates from university. At first, Ender and Cetin are annoyed with the presence of a third party. After a while, however, Ender and Cetin, who act like caring and protective substitute parents for Nihal, fall in love with her; each unaware of the other’s love.” Our Grand Despair received Hubert Bals Fund script development support in 2008 en was in Cannes Ateliers 2009.

IDTV Motel Films is to coproduce Los ultimos cristeros (The Last Cristeros) by Mexican filmmaker Matías Meyer, produced by Mexican production companies Una Comunión and Axolote Cine.
Los ultimos cristeros, that received Hubert Bals Fund support for script development in 2008, is about "a cristero colonel who conducts, military and spiritually, six of his men through the sierra. They are followed by the government and are in need of ammunition. The support does not arrive and life in the sierra turns more difficult every day. In their suffering, they start feeling abandoned in their illness and solitude. Although rendition is an option, their oath to God is made; they have to die in the name of Christ the King."

Volya Films coproduces Uzbek film project 40 kun chilla (40 days of silence) by Saodat Ismailova that received script development support from the Hubert Bals Fund in 2007 and was also in Cannes Ateliers 2009. Volya Films is joined by Rohfilm, Germany and Atopic, France in Ismailova’s first feature. 40 kun chilla is “a story about women confronting crucial decisions: motherhood, the weight of tradition, homeland, and freedom of emotional expression, religion, or self-destruction in modern society.”

Waterland Film coproduces first feature project Ausencias (Absences) by Milagros Mumenthaler, produced by Ruda Cine, Argentina. Ausencias tells about “post-teenage sisters Marina, Sofía and Violeta who live together in the house of the grandmother that raised them and just passed away. During the mourning period, the sisters will face the process of accepting each of them taking different ways in life and leaving behind the family house life, as they knew it.” Ausencias was supported by the Hubert Bals Fund for script development in 2006 and was selected for CineMart 2008.

Hubert Bals Fund Plus
The Hubert Bals Fund of the International Film Festival Rotterdam supports filmmakers from developing countries with contributions in the stages of script development, post-production and distribution. Annually 20 to 40 film productions are realized with the support of the Hubert Bals Fund. In order to offer Dutch producers the possibility to get involved more often in international productions, and to support the ‘Hubert Bals Fund projects’ in the stage of actual production as well, Hubert Bals Fund Plus has been set up in 2006 by the Netherlands Film Fund and the Hubert Bals Fund of the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Approximately half of the films realized with support of the Hubert Bals Fund are made in cooperation with European co producers. The International Film Festival Rotterdam offers Dutch producers the opportunity to participate in international and artistically acclaimed productions through the extensive network of the Hubert Bals Fund and at the same time further support projects that were selected by the HBF.

In 2006, 2007 and 2008, the Netherlands Film Fund has made € 200,000 available for the Hubert Bals Fund Plus. Applications can be granted with a maximum of € 50,000 for a Hubert Bals Fund project, which already received script and project development support, co-produced by a Dutch producer.

Realized films include:

· Gitmek (My Marlon and Brando) by Hüseyin Karabey (Turkey, coproduced by IDTV/Motel Films, premiered in Rotterdam 2008 and was awarded as Best New Narrative Filmmaker at Tribeca 2008.

· Milh hadha al-bahr (Salt of this Sea) by Annemarie Jacir (Palestine, coproduced by Augustus Films, premiered in Cannes 2008’s Un Certain Regard).

· Los Viajes Del Viento - Ciro Guerra (Colombia, coproduced by Volya Films, premiered at Cannes 2009’s Un Certain Regard).

· Gigante - Adrian Biniez (Uruguay, coproduced by IDTV/Motel Films, premiered at Berlinale 2009 and was awarded two Silver Bears).

· Sahman (Border) by Harutyun Khatchatryan (Armenia, coproduced by Volya Films, premiered at Rotterdam 2009).