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Creenwriters Con Erence

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Creenwriters Con Erence A publication by the Federation of Screenwriters in Europe www.scenaristes.org IRST Con erence of EUROPEAN creenwriters Thessaloniki, Greece 21/22 November 2006 © FSE 2010. The content is copyright but may be freely distributed provided the source is acknowledged. Contents Greetings 1 The Stories 5 Being a Screenwriter in Europe / The current situation (Part I) Local or universal ? Do our stories have a common European identity ? Is classic story structure help or hindrance ? Lecturer : Mogens Rukov The Money 11 Being a Screenwriter in Europe / The current situation(Part II) What kinds of screenplay development funding are available in Europe ? How much is invested in screenplay development ? Lecturer : Lenny Crooks The Schreiber Theory 19 First Thematic Cycle / The Stories (Part I) Lecturer : David Kipen The Rights 30 Being a Screenwriter in Europe / The current situation (Part III) What is the role of the writer in European production and distribution ? What defines authorship in the different European countries ? Lecturers: Eva Inès Obergfell and Frédéric Young Tell Me The Story – Screenwriting in the 21st Century 39 First Thematic Cycle / The Stories (Part II) Panel Discussion Speakers : Jurgen Wolff, Balasz Lovas, Graham Lester George, Marta Lamperova, Ruth Toma and Jaroslaw Sokol. Moderator : Thomas Bauermeister You Have The Right To… 50 Second Thematic Cycle / The Rights (Part I) Panel Discussion on Moral Rights and Sharing writers credits. Speakers : Fred Breinersdorfer, Frédéric Young, Razvan Radulescu, Robert Löhr, Mogens Rukov. Moderator : Leni Ohngemach Why write ? Confessions of a screenwriter’s dangerous mind 65 Second Thematic Cycle / The Rights (Part II) Lecturer : Uwe Wilhelm Show Me The Money – Financial Implications of Screenwriting in Europe 70 Third Thematic Cycle / The Money Panel Discussion on Writers and subsidies, Writers and producers, Collecting Societies and Online Content. Speakers : Srdjan Koljevic, Katharine Way, Antoine Lacomblez, Géraldine Loulergue. Moderator : David Kavanagh Visionary Closing Session 92 European Screenwriter’s Manifesto PARTICIPANTS 95 Greetings Christina Kallas Ladies and Gentlemen, Colleagues, My name is Christina Kallas and I am a writer and the President of the Federation of Screenwriters in Europe. It is in this capacity that I would like to welcome you all and especially the high-profile screenwriter colleagues who honour us with their presence. Before we start the conference, I would like to introduce to you a number of people whose support for the idea of this meeting has made it possible. First of all, I would like to introduce the Director of the Thessaloniki Film Festival, Despina Mouzaki. The festival, as you all know, is hosting us in the next two days in the frame of the Balkan Fund, the script development fund, which is here to support screenwriters from South- eastern Europe and which this year is celebrating its fourth edition. Despina Mouzaki Honorable Mr. General Secretary, Honorable Mr. President of the European Film Academy, Honorable Ms President of the Federation of Screenwriters in Europe, Honorable Presidents of the Greek Film Centre, the Greek Scriptwriters Guild, and the Hellenic Audiovisual Institute, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is with great joy that we welcome you to the First European Conference of Screenwriters which the Thessaloniki International Film Festival has organized in the framework of the Balkan Fund. Today, our discussion revolves around scripts. Scripts as a raw material for dreams, for the dreams of European filmmaking. The script is at the hear t of cinema, whether it’s an autonomous work of literature or a draft that expires the day that shooting a film starts. Today, here, we will discuss about its essence. Today, here, we will discuss about its people. Today we will discuss the ways that we can narrate our stories through cinema. The stories of people that comprise Europe today. The ways with which we shape our common, and at the same time, multicultural Euro- pean history with the help of cinema. Today we discuss about the situation of the people who narrate these stories to us. The scriptwriters, these modern audiovisual storytellers. We aren’t here to find permanent solutions to these problems. We are here to state them. To speak about them. And to speculate on them. Because the Thessaloniki Film Festival also has this goal : to become a meeting point for the dream and its realization, for the initial concept of a film and its manifestation. And I can’t think of a better meeting place or a more effective starting point than today. Thank you. Christina Kallas The F.S.E. is a federation that now counts twenty-one guilds and 9,000 writers all over Europe. And it was founded in Athens in 2001. I would now like to introduce the President of one of its founding members, the Screenwriters Guild of Greece, Mr. Alexander Kakavas. Alexander Kakavas Thank you ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of the Screenwriters Guild of Greece, I welcome you all. And I hope that this conference will be the first of many to be held. We are honoured and pleased to have you here with us. Thank you very much. Christina Kallas Greece has one important film funding institution and that is the Greek Film Centre. It is with great pleasure that I would like to introduce the President of the GFC, Mr. George Papalios. [We are] taking his support for this conference also as a sign of his increased efforts for the art and craft of screenwriting. George Papalios General Secretary of the Ministry of Culture, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for being here. I used to be a film producer, so I know that amongst you film writers it will be hard to find something clever to say. I will just say thank you for being here, welcome ; and I hope you have a very productive conference. We will try to take [up] whatever points you will make to help our scripts and scriptwriters in the future. Thank you very much. 1 Christina Kallas The Institute for Audiovisual Media is a member and also represents the European Audiovisual Observatory in Greece. Again, a very important partner for us, and I’m happy to introduce to Greetings Greetings you its President, Mr. Rodolphos Moronis. Rodolphos Moronis Good morning. The greatest blemish of the screenwriter is, without doubt, verbalism. The only unique and brilliant, I might add, exception to this rule is Eric Rohmer, whose theories for a talking cinema nevertheless didn’t find many followers. Since I’m not Eric Rohmer, and since I’m the one before last of the speakers of this rather dull part of your conference, I had better adopt a more austere, classic style of the Greek orator, Demosthenes. And limit myself to wishes for success for your conference in the hope that it will lead to better stories, to more productive cooperation by solving the rights issue, which is imperative if we are to find more money for the cultural product we call movies. Thank you. Christina Kallas This conference could not have come about without the help of a variety of further supporters. The Robert Bosch Foundation supported the participation of all the Eastern European collea- gues. I thank Frank Albert of the foundation for his efforts and his support. Several national funding bodies supported delegations of writers from the different European countries. I would especially like to thank the German Federal Board, FFA, whose support was very important to us, as Germany will have the European Presidency in the next half year, which will be vital for our issues as well as the collecting societies VG WORT of Germany, LIRA of the Netherlands, and SACD of France and Belgium. We were discussing a conference of European screenwriters so what was more natural than asking the European Film Academy to join us in this endea- vour. The European Film Academy board gladly accepted our invitation, saying that they were aware of the fact that they were doing too little for European screenwriters and that this would be a very first step. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of theEuropean Film Academy, Mr. Wim Wenders. Wim Wenders Good morning to all of you. Yes, I’ve been involved in the European Film Academy since its very beginning nineteen years ago – next year it will be twenty years. And because I was involved with it from the beginning, I can also say that it started as a club of directors and producers only. Actors joined us, cameramen, and eventually we realised we had all the professionals, but there were so precious few writers. All this has changed. By now, the European Film Academy has about 1,800 members all over Europe but still overall, if you look at all the professionals united there, still the writers are almost the smallest group in there. And we tried to reflect upon this and realise what was wrong with it. And I think you have one of the culprits in front of you, because European cinema for a long time was driven by the Auteur Theory, the Author Principle. The French sort of lived it in the ‘60s, the new German Cinema, of which I am a pro- duct, in the ‘70s really refined that process in which the writer and the author, and sometimes even the producer, were one person. I grew up in cinema like that, doing all these jobs at once – in a way thinking that was the only way to make movies. As you all know the Author Principle sort of crumbled in the ‘80s and fell apart and lost its strength. I myself, I had to unlearn that principle myself and learn how to work with writers and producers. And now there is nothing more pleasant for me in the whole filmmaking process than those relationships.
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