Lars von Trier's Danish production outfit Zentropa has started a new fund to give up to $1.2m (Euros 800,000) to challenging local film projects.

Lars von Trier will judge the proposed projects himself and the production funds will go to films where the director is working outside the usual language of film and typical plots.

The first project to be backed is Anders Ronnow-Klarlund's new film Memories. The unusual project will try to make a film out of still photos. The subject matter is civilization's relations to nature and ability to survive. Ronnow-Klarlund previously made Possessed and Strings.

Peter Aalbæk Jensen, producer and von Trier's partner in Zentropa, said in a statement that the fund would aim to 'secure the survival of more elite films in a world of more and more result-oriented and public-seeking TV stations and film institutes.'

The Fund is called Brilleabe Fonden, non-translatable Danish slang for intellectual people who wear glasses. That's the way Aalbæk Jensen through time has referred to von Trier's films.

The new fund can be seen as an answer to The Danish Film Institute's Raw Film initiative supporting films with budgets under $2.3m (Euros 1.5m) with a total of$3m (Euros 2m) in 2008. Those films will aim to sell 75,000 tickets locally.

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