Germany’s film heritage sector is celebrating a new federal and state-funded initiative launching in January that will provide €10 million ($11.15 million) a year towards the digitization and preservation of feature films.
Rainer Rother, the artistic director of the Deutsche Kinemathek, outlined the plan at a panel discussion at the Lumière Festival’s International Classic Film Market (MIFC) in Lyon, France, as part of this year’s focus on Germany and the country’s heritage sector.
The initiative, known as the Förderprogramm Filmerbe (FFE), or Film Heritage Funding Program, covers 80% of digitization costs for commercial license holders or production companies but 100% when the applicant is a film heritage institution or other public organization.
Rother said all of the €10 million would be spent in the first year, with heritage film institutions, festivals and preservation efforts accounting for about €6 million ($6.7 million).
The Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin is expected to digitize and preserve around 25 feature-length films and 25 shorts, Rother noted, adding that the Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum in Frankfurt and the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation in Wiesbaden would achieve similar numbers.
Also taking part in the discussion were Fabio Quade, head of sales and distribution at the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation; Claire Brunel, who oversees public relations and business affairs at the Wim Wenders Foundation; Torsten Radeck, head of home entertainment marketing at Studiocanal in Germany; and Levko Kondratjuk, managing partner at Camera Obscura Filmdistribution, a boutique label specializing in Italian genre films.
Source: German HeritageSector Applauds New Digitization, Preservation Funding – Variety