NEWS & VIEWS

Take a good luck at NordMedia, the new German film and media fund ­ worth circa Euro 15 million and based in the Kurt Schwitters Forum on the former Expo 2000 fairgrounds in Hannover. Launched on 12 December 2000 under the tutelage of Horst Meyer by the State of Lower Saxony (Land Niedersachsen) and the City of Bremen (Freie Hansestadt Bremen), NordMedia ­ aka nordmedia ­ is also backed by NDR Hamburg, ZDF Mainz, Radio Bremen, SAT 1, the Deutsche Messe (Hannover Fair), Film & Medienbüro Niedersachsen, and Kinobüro Niedersachsen.

According to spokesman Jochen Coldewey, NordMedias&rquo;s aim is to fund film, television, and multimedia projects, while supporting in addition consulting-and agency »services rendered« sectors. Private investors are in the picture. Remember Dutch director George Sluizer’s The Commissioner, an international coproduction seen in the 1998 Berlinale competition? That was a film project financed under a previous funding system in Lower Saxony. So, too, was Margarethe von Trotta’s critically acclaimed Jahrestage chronicle, based on Uwe Johnson’s contemporary classic and aired on ARD (First German Television) at prime time. With credentials like these, NordMedia has catapult Hannover to the other half-dozen major German »media cities« ­ Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Cologne, Stuttgart, and Leipzig ­ and is already a power to be reckoned with.

Ron Holloway