The Netherlands Film Fund this week announced the Lock Doc development support package valued at €600,000 which is aimed at production companies whose documentary plans have been disrupted by Covid, “but which can still be revised or further developed in terms of artistic content and production.” The measure also allows for the development of new feature doc plans.
The Fund’s contribution will amount to a maximum of €60,000 per company for:
• the redevelopment and further development of film plans for short or long documentaries intended for release in film theatres and/or on television and
• the screenplay development of film plan for one new full-length documentaries (min. 70 minutes) with both international ambition and cinema potential.
The scheme is open to production companies that are established in The Netherlands, a member state of the EU, EEA or Switzerland for at least two years and which produce films and other audiovisual productions on a regular basis. The production company making the application must be represented by a Dutch producer who has produced and released at least one full-length documentary, or several short documentaries, in Dutch film theatres or on television.
The slate support will be given to a maximum number of ten production companies. An overall subsidy ceiling of €600,000 applies to the scheme. The deadline for submissions is March 23.
“If you have projects in development that are effected by Covid in terms of impact on your plan or the contents of your plan, then that’s what this is for,” says the Fund’s incoming Doc Consultant Simone van den Broek. She adds how the scheme will help with the extra costs incurred in “re-thinking and re-developing” the documentaries.
The Lock Doc Development initiative operates outside regular Film Fund selective documentary funding of €3,095,000 per year for development and production, and €375,000 for minority co-productions.
So far, the Netherlands Film Fund has overseen €8 million in Covid-related relief support for the Dutch film and audiovisual industries. This included a €1million donation from Netflix in April 2020 to support workers hardest hit by the pandemic.
Later in 2020 the Film Fast Forward scheme was launched to support the R&D phase of new doc and audiovisual projects affected by Covid. This will be revisited in 2021 as Film Fast & Furious, which will be applicable across all genres including doc. Once again the focus will be on the R&D phase.
The Music Mayday support scheme supports films to be made within 2021 that will have music as their “point of departure,” points out the Netherlands Fund’s Head of Selective Funding Iwana Chronis. “We are so much looking forward to that feeling of positivity, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, to embrace the music of life,” she adds. “This is the starting point, thematically, of this scheme.”
Covid support is also offered via the Verbeelding scheme (run in collaboration with the Mondriaan Fund) to enable makers and artists to make short films that play “across the boundaries of cinema and visual arts.” The initiative is named the KorteVerbeelding.
Chronis hopes to announce soon further support packages for professionals working within interactive and immersive cinema.
