Preparedness resources of the Arthouse Convergence in response to COVID-19

As of March 15, 2020 many art house cinemas have made the difficult decision to temporarily close to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, a novel coronavirus that causes respiratory illness. Art houses have taken this step in compliance with public health guidelines and in solidarity with their communities.  In order to help navigate this rapidly evolving situation, Art House Convergence is updating its webpage daily. To facilitate resource reagrdingAdvocate for Arts Funding and

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Survey on working conditions at film festivals in Germany/ Umfrage zu Arbeitsbedingungen bei Filmfestivals in Deutschland

Film festivals have become an indispensable part of the culture and film industry, creating many new professions and highly qualified employment groups. Nevertheless, film festivals are often associated with low pay, exploitation and self-exploitation. The AG Festivalarbeit in ver.di would like to collect data by means of a survey of employees at German film festivals as explore the connections and, not least, honour good examples with a Fair Festival Award.

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Why Film Festivals?

On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Berlinale, Carlo Chatrian, Karel Och and Eva Sangiorgi discussed with Academy President and filmmaker Jeanine Meerapfel and Andreas Kilb new ideas and future developments of international film festivals at the Academy of Fine Arts Berlin (12.2.2020) . Access to the video recording here

What a shame: A tale of multiple Hollywoods

Without a doubt, this year’s Oscar ceremony will go down in history, as „Parasite“ is the first non-English language film in the 92-year history of the Academy Awards to win the Oscar for best film. Nevertheless, this fact cannot hide the fact that women and different ethnicities, despite the far-reaching changes made by the Academy four years ago after the #oscarssowhite protest, do not appear in this Hollywood story. Recently,

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The next junction: Film festivals in Baden-Württemberg establish a joint network

Corresponding to the development that „due to the steady decline in cinema numbers and the increase in streaming services, film festivals are becoming ever more important and playing an ever greater role in the film landscape“, the film festivals of another federal state in Germany have now joined forces. In doing so, they are not least following the initiative of a Germany-wide working group on film festivals, which was initiated

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It is still along way to go for festivals to reach parity

Even though the four major film festivals Sundance, Tribeca, South by Southwest (SXSW) and AFI seem to be making progress towards gender parity for directors, the Women’s Media Center (WMC) – the nonprofit women’s organization founded by activists Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, and Gloria Steinem – still sees a great need for action to reach 5050×2020 / for numerous film festivals, as an analysis by Carla Hay shows. See more

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Female directors still represent just 21% of all directors of European films produced between 2003 and 2017

At the end of last year, the 5th Diversity Report of the BVR – Bundesverband Regie had made it clear that in Germany the public broadcasters had not fulfilled their promises of equal opportunities for female directors and that the announced gender monitoring had not been carried out. A study by the European Audiovisual Observatory recently published shows how the situation for women is shaping itself at European level. Download

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Compliance with minimum social standards becomes the criterium for public funding of film festivals – blessing or a curse?

In its coalition agreement, the government of the German federal state of Hessen has set itself the goal of doubling its budget to support Hessian film festivals. This increase is, however, contingent upon these festivals’ commitment to abide by social standards in the remuneration of their employees. What, on the one hand, seems more than laudable in an area largely characterized by a precarious employment situation could, on the other,

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