16/10/2002

Stability in investment and new ways of financing films. Those are the directives for the future of the Franco-German Tv station, Arte's film division.
Arte’s president Jérôme Clément and Michel Reilhac, head of the film sector announced Arte was co-producing 20 features films this year (compared to 26 in 2001) with a total budget of Euros7.5million. Clément and Reilhac were keen to underline the main purpose of their investment: “our co-productions have taken on the role of promotors in the international market that convince other partners to finance our projects”.
Amongst the novelties the executives announced was a 10 per cent increase in the film division’s resources that would work together with one or more companies of the Sofica network (France’s film and audiovisual financing company network).
Arte also intends increasing the number of European feature films produced directly by the channel (and not by Arte Cinèma) from this year’s 6 to 8. They include Lars von Trier’s Dogville and the first of a trilogy by Theo Angelopoulos.
Two bits of excellent news for the Arte Tv channel at a time when the industry is going through a particularly difficult period as the two executives said when they spoke about their worries about the vertical concentration of productions, the uncertainty regarding the future of Canal+, the re-negotiation of the European directive known as “Television without Frontiers” and the ongoing WTO talks.

(Translated from French)