MEDICI — The Film Funding Journey

Methodology, Skills and Professional Benefits Participants Participants' Comments MEDICI Head of Training «The 12 Labours of Hercules» Report of the Reports – Workshops 1 to 4

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Sixth Workshop – 27 to 29 September 2016 – Warth (Switzerland)

Module 6 – Hybrid contents: the mix of different artistic disciplines

Introduction

There are new ways for artistic content creators to develop, finance and distribute their audiovisual works and to engage with audiences in both classic screenings and exhibition environments and beyond.

Or, in other words:

How to support media and art industries professionals creating content in the borderland between art and film?
How do the production and the institutional contexts influence the creative process?
What is the future of artistic cinema? Does it lie in the hands of the film industry or in the hands of the art world – or in between?
How can best practices from the art world be adapted by the independent film world, or vice versa?
Should funds open up towards supporting films by artists from other disciplines (not just filmmakers in a traditional sense)

Case Study 1 / Funding Artist Feature Films: in the borderland between art and film

Please also see Tobias Pausinger’s presentation (PDF)

What is artist feature film?

A hybrid between art and film
An example of classic art-house films in the new era when the border between art-house and mainstream films almost does not exist any more
Films made by visual artists who are, unlike traditional filmmakers, interdisciplinary, more curious and open for new forms
Films that make visual art more accessible to audiences

Why Artist film?

Visual artists bring innovative ways of filmmaking, storytelling and distribution together with a new kind of investors.
A new wave of visual artists making films emerged due to digitization making the access to filmmaking much easier
The film industry is currently suffering a crisis of artistic imagination, whereas the artist feature films seem to promise:
- Exotic freshness and artistic vision
- Influx of creative boldness and authenticity

But

The art world still functions in a different way from the filmmaking world. Visuals artists are used to different processes of producing, distributing and monetizing art as well as regulating the copyrights
People from the art world lack organizational skills of people from the film industry
Would the methods of classic filmmaking and financing de-regulate or additionally regulate the production of artist films?

Different categories of artist films

1. From the WHITE BOX to the BLACK BOX

Films made by visual artists who move directly from the art world to the art-house film world. They create films that adopt the style and narrative of classic art-house cinema, and are not one-man shows any longer, but collaborative projects.

Examples:

WOMEN WITHOUT MEN by Shirin Neshat’s that premiered in Venice. The financing comes from the art world, fashion industry, private investments and public film funds on the top
HISTORY’S FUTURE by Fiona Tan, Indonesian visual artist based in the Netherlands. It premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival (in the main competition)
REMINDER by Tom Sturridge was premiered at the Berlin films festival (Forum selection). The director is an Israeli visual artist based in Berlin. The budget is 2.5 million euro
INVENTION by Mark Lewis – a film by a famous photographer that was premiered in Toronto as a 90 minute film, but was also exhibited as a video installation

2. From WHITE BOX to MULTIPLEX

This category includes only very famous visual artists.

Examples

HUNGER, SHAME and 12 YEARS OF SLAVERY by Steve McQueen
50 SHADES OF GRAY and NOWHERE BOY by Sam Taylor-Johnson

3. From WHITE CUBE to WHITE CUBE

Visual artists who make feature films keeping artistic complexity and a non-narrative form
They are too avant-garde for cinemas and still fit better into museums and galleries
They also sometimes make documentaries

4. From BLACK BOX to WHITE CUBE

Art-house filmmakers start making art installations. Those installations are not part of any film. By selling them, or having them commissioned by the museums and art galleries, the filmmakers in fact earn money that they later invest into a feature film.

Example:

SINGULARITY by the Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra

Difference Between Arthouse and Artist Films

Art-house films	Artist films
DEVELOPMENT
Auteur’s vision	Collaborative, includes other art forms
Predictable	Performative and unforeseeable
One-form	Hybrid of visual arts and film
Scripted	Non-scripted (only a concept)
Director knows how to make a film	Director knows why he wants to make a film
Based on storytelling	Based on process-following
Clear crediting system	Chaotic crediting system
Director include him/herself in the budget	Director does not include him/herself in the budget
Selling the rights	Selling the product
Clearly defined producer’s function	No clearly defined producer’s function
FINANCING AND RECOUPMENT
Transparency	Collector’s secrecy
Contractual commitment	Handshake
Recouping (producer)	Owning (collector)/selling (gallerist)
Co-producer	Investor
A lot of available data	No data on financing and sales
DISTRIBUTION AND EXHIBITION
Distributing	Collecting
Owning “rights”	Owning an “object”
Sublicensing	Selling
Territorial distribution	Institutional distribution
Long gestation time of a film process	Long programming process of galleries and museums (i.e. two years in advance)
Broad distribution	Scarcity and limited access (museums/galleries)

Challenges for the film funds

Can film funds find a way to include artist films within their schemes?
How to evaluate application for artist films when they do not include any classic screenplays and director’s statements, release strategies or budgets? How to compare them with applications for classic films?

Recommendations for film funds

Cooperative funding (more joint decisions or communications between film funds and art funds and councils)
Grants (instead of soft loans)
More flexibility in distribution
Consideration on a case-by-case basis
Circulation of decision makers
Temporary curated funds/grants that can be set up for a limited amount of time (In Austria, there was a case of a fund that was set up for the purpose of financing only 6 projects in total)
No or less intervention
Special art film funds create ghettoization and limited access. These funds are much smaller, poorer and considered as a marginal activity
Provide chances for higher budgets for artist films

Case Study 2 / The “FUSION” project (Sweden)

www.filminstitutet.se/sv/sok-stod/filminstitutets-stod/produktionsstod/fusion/
(see PDF document for translation)

The idea behind

The aim of Fusion is to train commissioners from the Swedish Film Institute (SFI) to evaluate, read and think about projects in a new way
Fusion focuses on a creative process, and deals with it from a non-traditional angle and outside a comfort zone

Participants

Both commissioners and selected artists from different arts
6 out of 120 people were selected (one theater director, one author, one duo dealing with visual arts and music, one filmmaker directing commercials and one classic film director)
Only the classic film director has already received production funding from the SFI for his debut film

Supporters

Fusion project costs 300,000 euros. One half comes from the SFI and another from one studio and three post-production companies that invest through services
It was established within the framework of the Gothenburg Film Fund and Gothenburg Film Festival in February 2017

Methodology

This is only one-time, one-year project (call in 2016, pitch sessions in 2017 during the Gotteburg Film festival)
Applicants do not apply with projects but with explaining the motivation for working in a group (how they can contribute to the group and what they expect to learn)
Two commissioners evaluate applications
The idea is to take the selected applicants out of their comfort zone. They are all invited to what is called a laboratory where they work together both as group and individually
The work process is facilitated throughout the year by meetings with representatives of post-production companies, commissioners and different people from the art world
Selected applicants are expected to pitch the project during the Gothenburg Film Festival in February 2017. If they have nothing to pitch, they will have to explain why

Outcomes of group discussions

Optimistic approach

Netherlands Film Fund has a scheme for visual artists wanting to make a feature film. The fund launched this scheme because there was a lack of opportunities for these artists. They could only go to the Mondrian Foundation for small amounts of money and small projects, which made it impossible to finance a bigger film. However, even though the artists’ scheme has been working well, there are still some ongoing challenges:
- Final cut to a visual artist does not mean anything; they want to do it over and over again.
- Both the art and film world should give more room to each other and be flexible despite different types of communication
- Should the funds separate rules applying to visual artists?
- The artist films move boarders. They are usually visually stunning and challenge the traditional movie canons. However, sometimes it does not work and artist films either end up only in museums and galleries, or directors decide to cut them into pieces and offer them as separate shorter films to galleries.
- Some artists do not want to sell rights to their feature films to the distributors because in that way they let down their collectors and commissioners of their artworks.
Serbian Film Center has introduced in 2016, for the first time, a special scheme for video art and experimental films, with a hope that it will bring new voices to the art-house cinema
Swedish Film institute does not insist on separate schemes for artist films. The commissioners, instead, are expected to be intuitive enough to recognize an artist film project with a strong potential, and support it. The SFI has supported once a feature film project by a woman visual artist that did very well in the cinemas

Skeptical approach

Luxembourg Film Fund has had one call for transmedia and experimental films. They supported a so-called “in-between project”. It was a video installation by a video artist that was, later on, exhibited in a gallery. However, the director who filmed the entire process of creation of the video installation in fact made the film about the creative process. Despite this case, the fund is not sure about its role within such schemes.
Croatian Audiovisual Center: In Croatia, an experimental scheme was launched in 2001 within the Ministry of Culture – before the establishment of the Croatian Audiovisual Center. The budget of the scheme is 300,000 euros a year. It is meant for short films and different artists can apply: visual artists, cinematographers, etc. The experimental filmmaking is also part of a specific tradition because Croatia had a very strong experimental scene in the 1960s and 1970s. Some of the supported experimental films indeed do cross into mainstream and get to festivals. However, the Croatian Film Center always forwards artist filmmakers back to the Ministry of Culture and does not plan to introduce a scheme for them.

The Development of Content: Challenges and Opportunities – Public Funds as Pawns or Players?

List of Participants (PDF)
MEDICI Sixth Workshop Full Report (PDF)

Illustrations by Séverine Leibundgut

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