About

The ThinkTank works to maximise the effectiveness of European Film Policy.  We concentrate on generating change to ensure that filmmaking environments do not evolve into stagnant subsidy cultures.

We set up forums of debate, producing outcomes that provide the impetus for change. In these debates we require participants to be courageous in questioning, challenging when examining received wisdom and acknowledge, yet not be blinded by, narrow interests. These forums should become a valuable network for the European film industry, its national film agencies, its various film funders and experts from production, distribution and exhibition, preservation and education.

We shall proactively develop a network of diverse executives from throughout the industry to meet regularly to develop medium to long range ideas. These will not be discussion groups, rather starting points for research that the ThinkTank shall design and undertake so that eventually, if workable and correct, the results shall be publicised and disseminated to be the basis for new policy.

The ThinkTank believes that European Film can only operate with state support--therefore our goal is to make that support transparent, responsible and, to those that give it, accountable to the creative, commercial and political implications of their decisions.  Initially, the ThinkTank intends to question how well, if at all, European funding schemes work and if the balance between public and private funding of European cinema is correctable.

The ThinkTank values that Film commands an outsized importance in a country's cultural landscape and should embrace the obligation to nurture diverse and artistically ambitious talent. Vitally, however, film must marry artistic endeavour with commercial success, as we believe that masterpieces are borne on the back of an industry.

The executive director of the ThinkTank is Henning Camre, previously the head of the DFI (Danish Film Institute). 

The other members of the Board of Directors:

Henrik Bo Nielsen (Chair) CEO Danish Film Institute

Pete Buckingham, Director, Distribution & Exhibition, British Film Institute

Peter Dinges, CEO, German Federal Film Board

Philipp Kreuzer, Director, Bavaria Film & Bavaria Media Italy

Michel Reilhac, Director, Arte Cinema France

Peter Aalbaek, CEO, Zentropa Entertainments