Davies, Greenaway projects set for Holland Film Meeting

The Holland Film Meeting (Sept 26-29), the Utrecht-based event dedicated to funding independent cinema, begins today.

Projects from Terence Davies (A Quiet Passion) and from Peter Greenaway (Eisenstein In Guanajuato) are among the titles being pitched at this year’s 15th anniversary Netherlands Production Platform (NPP).

The coproduction market includes both international and Dutch projects. 23 projects from 15 countries are at the NPP.

Acclaimed British director Davies has now delivered a final draft of the screenplay for A Quiet Passion, his biopic of reclusive New England poet Emily Dickinson.

The €4.6m project is being produced through Hurricane Films, run by Solon Papadopoulos and Roy Boulter. The company also produced Davies’ feature doc Of Time And The City and is working on his new feature Sunset Song, expected to shoot in early 2014. Boulter is due in Utrecht to present A Quiet Passion.

Boulter describes the NPP as a useful follow up to Paris Project (where A Quiet Passion was presented earlier this summer.) “Terence Davies’ work is always well received in Europe. There has been a lot of enthusiasm around the project. Obviously, it is ostensibly an American subject but the interest that we received  at the Paris Project led directly to this invitation.”

The producer confirmed that Hurricane is already in talks with potential German and French coproducers. 

Greenaway’s long gestating Eisenstein feature, which is sold by Rezo Film, is represented at the NPP by its producers Femke Wolting and Bruno Felix of Amsterdam-based production powerhouse Submarine.

For the first time, various “works in progress” are also being presented in Utrecht, among them Belgian director Savina Dellicour’s All The Cats Are Grey (produced through Tarantula) and Pieter Kuijpers’ romantic coming of age drama Heaven On Earth (produced through Pupkin Film).

Running in tandem with the NPP, the Holland Film Meeting is hosting a “Holland Meets Russia” event.

Marking 400 years of trade relations between Russia and the Netherlands, the event has been organised in collaboration with Moscow Business Square and the Northern Seas Film Forum in St Petersburg.

The initiative comes as mixed signals are being received about Russia’s attitude toward the European film industry. On the one hand, Russia is now an active member of European coproduction fund Eurimages. On the other, the Russian authorities have been placing more emphasis on national film schemes than in reaching out to international partners.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu earlier this month announced plans for a state-supported film production company that will produce “patriotic” movies.”

Among the high-level Russian attendees at the Holland Film Meeting will be Leonid Demchenko, advisor to the cinema department of the Ministry of Culture and Russia’s representative at Eurimages. There will also be representatives from St Petersburg’s Point Of View (POV) Film Fund, one of whose goals is to develop coproductions between international partners and Russian producers.

“There is a strong film tradition in Russia, a lost of knowledge and a lot of artistic value and also an ambition to work more closely (with European partners) internationally,” commented HFM head Signe Zeilich-Jensen.

Some Russian projects from Moscow Business Square - including The Dream-God (directed by Valeriya Gai Germanika and produced through Proline) - are being presented in the Netherlands Production Platform.

Alongside Holland Meets Russia, Utrecht is also hosting a German/Dutch film meeting as the two countries prepare to sign their long awaited coproduction treaty.

Friday sees the Binger Screen International interview. The interviewee his year is Oscar-nominated Dutch director Paula van Der Oest

The Holland Film Market is described as the “international heartbeat” of the Netherlands Film Festival (running from Sept 25-Oct 4). At a time when the festival itself is under increasing financial pressure because of Dutch government funding cuts, the Holland Film Meeting has remained largely unscathed

“As a whole, the festival has had to make really difficult cuts,” acknowledged Zeilich-Jensen. “The Holland Film Meeting is in the lucky position that we are in the same format as every year.”