Not unlike the European model, governments across Asia are moving to expand and extend cross-border film production.
Last week, during the Taiwan Creative Content Festival, four Asian countries - the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Turkey - discussed their funding and coproduction movie agreement. All of these countries agreed that film policy would be overseen by a film department under their Education Ministries.
Coproductions are to be encouraged, and the participating countries will match funds from private movie producers or from groups such as the World Cinema Fund. This will essentially be a new model for coproduction financing.
Since its inception in 2004, the World Cinema Fund (a German Federal Cultural Foundation program) has funded hundreds of film projects. These projects are coproduced by the German Cultural Ministry and the partnering country.
The WCF is now the leading entity for obtaining international film funding for artistic and innovative film production. It concentrates its funding for films in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, Central and Southeast Asia, and the Indian sub-continent.
The Turkish government, through its Ministry of Culture, has stated that they will also fund movie scriptwriting, production consultancy, and pay for Master Classes for aspiring filmmakers in the areas of coproduction and project development.
These are all good projects and certainly aid filmmakers in funding which would otherwise be unavailable to them. Currently, the U.S. is not part of nor a participating member of any coproduction group, as this is seen as a competitor to studio productions. It should be said that funding for U.S. domiciled filmmakers is available from many sources from the Ford Foundation to Netflix and the National Geographic Society, to crowdfunding sources.
By: Jim Lavorato
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