Beijing, People’s Republic of China: The Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA) and Motion Picture Association (MPA) on Saturday announced the 2015 MPA APSA Academy Film Fund open for submissions. The announcement was made at the MPA-BFM Film Workshop Closing Ceremony during the 5th Beijing International Film Festival.
The fund, an initiative to encourage collaboration in the region and extended to projects in their script development stage, is open to all members of the APSA Academy and all 2015 nominees once they are announced later in the year. The Academy, established in 2008 to encourage dialogue, collaboration and business opportunities for the region’s filmmakers boasts some 750 of the region’s most respected names in film.
The 2015 film fund grant recipients will be determined in November by an expert industry panel drawn from the Asia Pacific and announced at the 9th Asia Pacific Screen Awards ceremony from the historic City Hall in Brisbane, Australia’s New World City and the permanent home of the event, on Thursday 26 November.
The 2015 MPA APSA Academy Film Fund will take the total number of feature film projects supported by the initiative to twenty-four. The Fund was established in 2010 with the aim to stimulate film production in Asia Pacific.
Four of the projects are already completed and have won multiple awards including an Academy Award®, (A Separation), an International Emmy Award for documentary (No Burqas Behind Bars), Best Film from the Arab World at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival and the APSA UNESCO Award (Memories on Stone) and have premiered at festivals including the Berlinale and the Toronto International Film Festival.
Mike Ellis, President and Managing Director, Asia Pacific, MPA, said, “The idea to establish a film fund with APSA to support new feature film projects has surpassed all of our expectations. Not only does the MPA APSA Academy Film Fund receive world-class script treatments, but many of the projects go into production, and many of those find acclaim on the world stage, winning awards, entertaining audiences, and contributing something of value to cinema culture. We are excited to announce the opening of submissions for this year in Beijing, and hope to see many more great script ideas come our way.”
The fund is granted to filmmakers at all stages of their careers, from new and emerging talent to some of the most established, awarded and renowned filmmakers in the world. Recipients with their funded projects in various stages of production include the high profile filmmakers Zeynep Ozbatur Atakan (Winter Sleep, Turkey), Sergey Dvortsevoy (Tulpan, Kazakhstan), Mohammad Rasoulof (Goodbye, Islamic Republic of Iran) and Suha Arraf (Lemon Tree, Israel), Kath Shelper (Samson & Delilah, Australia), Ainsley Gardiner (Boy, New Zealand) and Garin Nugroho (Opera Jawa, Indonesia).
Guest of the festival, Film Director of the Asia Pacific Screen Awards and the Brisbane Asia Pacific Film Festival (BAPFF), Maxine Williamson said ‘Films from China have been strongly represented at APSA over the past nine years and won many awards. Prestigious filmmakers from China have also sat on the International Juries of APSA and we greatly value the ongoing working relationship with the China Film Producers Association. It is fitting to be able to make this announcement from Beijing together with the MPA, in the same year that Australia sends the largest ever delegation of film practitioners to the Beijing International Film Festival, a true sign of the ever growing relationship between the two countries. We look forward to welcoming more filmmakers from the People’s Republic of China to Brisbane in November for the 2015 awards, following a very big year for the People’s Republic of China at the awards in 2014.’
On Sunday at the Australia-China Film Industry Forum Networking Event in Beijing, the Australian Ambassador to China, Her Excellency Ms Frances Adamson, presented the 8th APSA Jury Grand Prize to the filmmakers of Blind Massage (Tui Na, Produced by Nai An, Li Ling, Kristina Larsen, Wang Yong, (People’s Republic of China, France)).
For more information on the fund including all recipients to date, visit:
http://www.asiapacificscreenacademy.com/the-academy/film-funds/mpa-apsa-academy-film-fund/
ABOUT THE MPA:
Promoting & Protecting Screen Communities in Asia Pacific
The Motion Picture Association (MPA) and the Motion Picture Association International (MPA-I) represent the interests of the six international producers and distributors of filmed entertainment. To do so, they promote and protect the intellectual property rights of these companies and conduct public awareness programs to highlight to movie fans around the world the importance of content protection. These activities have helped to transform entire markets benefiting film and television industries in each country including foreign and local filmmakers alike.
The organizations act on behalf of the members of the Motion Picture Association of America, Inc (MPAA) which include; Paramount Pictures Corporation; Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.; Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation; Universal City Studios LLC; Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures; and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. The MPA and the MPA-I have worldwide operations which are directed from their head offices in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. and overseen in the Asia Pacific by a team based in Singapore. For more information about the MPA and the MPA-I, please visit www.mpa-i.org.