In order to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus crisis on the German film and cinema industry, the Executive Committee of the German Federal Film Board (FFA) decided an extensive package of measures and the creation of an aid fund jointly supported by the FFA, the German Ministry of Culture, and state sponsors.
“The effects of the coronavirus pandemic pose an unprecedented threat to the German film and cinema industry,” explains FFA President Bernd Neumann.
“The consequences for cinemas, production and distribution companies – and therefore for everyone working with and for the film industry – are unforeseeable. In this extreme situation, the industry has to stand together, the Federal government, the states, and the FFA have to find and implement solutions together quickly and as unbureaucratically as possible. The package of measures that we have just decided on also requires financial support from the other funders at the federal and state levels. The fact that they have basically agreed to this shows that we are on the right path to make it through this crisis together.”
To alleviate the acute plight of the film industry, for the cinemas the FFA Executive Committee has resolved, for instance, to defer loan claims and outstanding tax payments from 1 March 2020, and delinquency procedures will not be pursued for the time being.
For productions, among other measures the repayment of funding actually required by the German Film Law will be waived for projects interrupted by the pandemic, repayments due will be deferred. In the areas of distribution and physical video sales, the repayment of funding will also be waived.
In order to implement the package of measures,
the FFA is creating an aid fund in which the other film sponsors at the federal and state levels are participating.
The FFA emergency aid program against the effects of the coronavirus crisis for the German film and cinema industry can be found
here (German only), with more on the
FFA website.
source: FFA
image: My favourite German cinema: Essen's Lichtburg (opened in 1928), here hosting the German red carpet premiere of Christoph Hochhäusler's "The Lies of the Victors" in 2015.
by 9EkieraM1 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40863847
