French-Russian Film Academy launched, Carole Bouquet and Pavel Lungin serve as presidents

The agreement to set up this association was signed in St Petersburg on the second day of the Kinoforum by French actress Carole Bouquet [pictured], CNC President Eric Garandeau, Russian Cinema Fund (RCF) chief Sergei Tolstikov and Russian filmmaker Pavel Lungin.

Bouquet and Lungin will serve as the presidents for the association which will begin operating from bases in Paris and Moscow from this autumn.

Proposals for the Film Academy’s range of activities have been drawn up after consultations with French and Russian professionals by the CNC, Institut Francais, Unifrance and the French Embassy in Russia along with opposite numbers at the RCF and the Russian Ministry of Culture.

The Film Academy would be dedicated, among other things, to organising seminars about opportunities for Franco-Russian co-production and supporting young talents in both countries, as well as arranging script workshops, improving and supporting the theatrical distribution of Russian films in France and French films in Russia, and collaborating in the area of film heritage and archiving.

The idea for a film academy to promote dialogue and exchange between film professionals from both countries had first been aired by Lungin during last year’s St Petersburg Economic Forum at the beginning of the Russia’s “Year of France” festival. Lungin had spoken about the creation of such a body with Russian President  Dmitry Medvedev, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the countries’ Ministers of Culture Alexander Avdeev and Frederic Mitterand.

The CNC and RCF will be providing financial support for the activities of the Film Academy which will also receive income from membership fees.

“We already have drawn up a list of talented young directors, actors whom we will approach to become members of the Film Academy,” CNC president Eric Garandeau told ScreenDaily.

“This academy is opening a continent of common dreams so that filmmakers from France and Russia can work together on co-production projects,” he added, noting that projects from members of the Film Academy would be able to benefit from the CNC’s new €6m World Cinema Aid fund (Aide au Cinemas du Monde) which will begin operating in January 2012 as a successor to the former Fonds Sud and Aid To Foreign Language Films.

Furthermore, Garandeau explained that one of the first opportunities for the members of the fledgling Academy to meet each other would be at a co-production forum held during the Russian Film Week at the Forum des Images in Paris at the beginning of next year.

He also noted that the Film Academy could play a role in a reassessment of the co-production treaty currently existing between Russia and France. “The treaty is from the 1960s and needs to be renewed,” Garandeau said.

In a first reaction to the creation of the Film Academy, Russian producer Evgeny Gindilis of TV Indie told ScreenDaily: “We have historical links with France so it was natural to create this Academy. It could become an important element in the development of relations between the two film industries and France has the potential to become a major market for Russian films. Moreover, we now have an organisation which can represent our common projects within the Russian and French industries.”

Meanwhile, Kira Saksanganskaya of Rock Films observed: “Anything which helps us on the way to European co-production for us to push our projects is a great day for us.”

Earlier in the day, a roundtable on co-production had seen leading Russian industry figures such as producers Sergei Selyanov, Artem Vasiliev, Andrey Deryabin, distributor Raissa Fomina and Vyacheslav Telnov, responsible for co-productions at Russia’s Ministry of Culture, in discussion with visiting Hollywood executives such as Graham Taylor, Garry Morenzi, Andrew Ruff, Fox International Productions’ Anna Kokourina, and Dutch-based producer Michael John Fedun.