The European documentary industry objects to MEDIA funding changes
25/05/2021 - More than 40 European associations and guilds have issued a statement objecting to changes in Creative Europe – MEDIA funding regulations for documentaries
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Entitled "European Creative Documentaries, the Leftovers of the New MEDIA Programme", the statement singles out three technical modifications meant to simplify and standardise the programme rules, and which will have major consequences for creative documentaries in Europe.
The first point concerns development funds which will now only be awarded to projects that begin filming, at the earliest, ten months after the deadline for submission of the application for support – as opposed to eight months from the date of submission, as was the case previously. The signatories point out that this new deadline is incompatible with the production schedules of single creative documentaries, which are inherently shorter than those of fiction and animated titles, due to the need to react quickly to the rapidly changing reality of world events.