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Filmplus gUG

10 May 2022

Many Ukrainian artists and filmmakers have fled their country and now seek to resume their former occupations. However, refugee status itself can be an impediment, as people in host countries can forget that these newcomers had professions before the war began. Besides this, navigating bureaucracies without knowing the language or how they work is daunting.

In response, ‘SOFA – School of Film Advancement’ —a training programme that supports the development of national film industries in Eastern Europe— will host a five-day digital workshop for Ukrainian film professionals in exile and support them in establishing a network across Europe. The workshop will offer an overview of possibilities for cultural managers to establish themselves in a new context and provide methods and strategies for continuing their work. The programme is specifically designed for cultural operators in film communication, promotion or in the field of the conception of specific film-related projects, i.e., cultural managers working in the film sector as film curators and festival organisers. The workshops will comprise keynote speakers and one-to-one sessions for each participant.

Who is working on the project team? Could you introduce us to some of your members?

Head of Studies and Director Nikolaj Nikitin brought the SOFA Initiative into being. Nikolaj is an experienced film curator and former longstanding delegate to the Berlin International Film Festival. Since 2005, he has been the Artistic Director at the European Film Festival Palic, and since this year, he is the curator of critic’s pics at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival/PÖFF. Since 2011, Nikolaj has been the CEO of the non-profit organisation gUG Filmplus, which has been organizing SOFA since 2013.

Berenika Partum, SOFA’s project supervisor, has extensive experience in managing cultural and audiovisual projects. She is responsible for contacts with funders, applications and reporting preparations. She controls the budget and advises the participants’ projects. Having Polish/Hungarian roots, Berenika has been based in Germany for over 40 years.

The local coordinators in the workshop countries complete this core SOFA team. The local coordinators are responsible for organising the respective local workshops. The core team is securing top-value mentors, experts, and guest speakers.

And who will be invited as participants?

Our participants mainly come from Central Europe and especially from Eastern Partnership Countries. The participants are creative audiovisual managers engaged in developing new approaches to sensitising and introducing young audiences to film. They use new technologies and innovative business models to create new jobs and advance the film industry in their countries. Being diverse and gender-balanced SOFA trains all players from the starting of educational projects up to audience development, film education, film preservation, museums, independent funding schemes as well as independent media outlets.

What is the long-term vision of this project?

SOFA wants to nurture, empower, and strengthen local and regional film industries and audiovisual landscapes in Europe. We are particularly interested in projects that focus on new technologies in the audiovisual sector and establishing pan-European collaborations between diverse cultural players and entrepreneurs.

What is the role of art –and more specifically of film– in a time of humanitarian crisis?

Film has a remarkable ability to speak and connect to people of every age and background. Film can point out social problems, sometimes even offer possible solutions for these problems, but above all, show many different realities of human lives that we cannot experience on our own but only through cinema. Cinema —a window into the world— teaches us to understand our neighbours’ culture, society and living reality.

What does a ‘culture of solidarity’ mean to you?

It means supporting each other, building bridges, and sticking together in all these needs that we are currently experiencing. We as SOFA want to make our contribution to this to set accents for a culture of solidarity among all our participants. We believe that art and culture – in time of war – is the only solution to bring people on both sides closer to each other.

Tell us about something that inspires you.

The project of our SOFA-Alumna of 2020, Irena Gruzka-Rozbicka, inspired us very much. Together with Oliver Zenglein, the founder of Crew United, they immediately followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine and launched Filmmakers for Ukraine, an information hub managed by an independent group of committed volunteers, including representatives of professional associations, institutions, and numerous colleagues in the film industry. The platform has been providing information (regarding accommodation, work opportunities, paid training possibilities, legal assistance, work, education, etc.) and assisting with transportation to support those affected by the war. It pays particular attention to the needs of the country’s film community alongside the needs of diverse people from socially marginalised groups.

There are many other implemented projects with innovative approaches realised thanks to SOFA that inspire us and prove that our mission has meaning – especially in the current European crisis. All our selected Alumni inspire us with their innovative projects that have ambitions to make changes, and create gap-filling and sustainable infrastructural job opportunities within the film-audiovisual industry. Realised success stories are an ongoing inspiration for us to continue our hard but very rewarding work.

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