Spurred by the success of the Canada/Germany sci-fi copro Lexx: The Dark Zone, the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation has signed a letter of intent with the Berlin-Brandenburg Film Board, an agreement above and beyond the Canada/ Germany treaty stating that the two regional boards will work together to foster coproduction activity.

The agreement was signed in April when representatives of the nsfdc along with a delegation of local producers and businessmen traveled to Germany for discussions with funding agencies and producers in that country. Further talks were scheduled for this month’s Banff Television Festival and will be held during the Atlantic Film Festival this fall.

‘Germany is one of the territories earmarked by the province as a good export market and they are the second largest media market in the world,’ explains nsfdc president Anne-Marie Varner. ‘There are a lot of good solid business reasons to want to try and increase our cooperation with each other.’

Reid Sirrs, investment and trade officer with Nova Scotia’s Department of Economic Development and Tourism, has been working closely with the nsfdc in the areas of market access and development, and says Germany is a ‘target market for the world for attracting investment.’

‘The deutsche mark is relatively high, labor is very expensive in Germany, utility rates are expensive, and it is a very harsh market for manufacturing,’ says Sirrs.

‘We have been trying to get certain companies to come to Nova Scotia, and the sell that we give the Germans is that if they export their products to the States they can set up a base of operations in Canada and not pay duty; they get value added. We use the nafta market as a lure for them to come here and we are doing the same with the film industry.’

With existing good relations between Nova Scotia and the u.k., Varner says she has had her eye on Northern Europe for some time. While she can’t release details yet, Varner says four European deals are in the works, including two export sales in negotiation which should be finalized this fall.

The Berlin-Brandenburg agreement means potential for the Nova Scotia industry in terms of attracting more financing to projects through different sources. Since German film funders are structured similarly to those in Canada, with different tiers of federal and provincial agencies, Varner says they are a natural coproduction fit.

In addition, she says, Germany has a huge market for export which has not yet been tapped into and the letter of intent gives Nova Scotian producers a foot in the door.

One such producer is Halifax-based Topsail Entertainment president Mike Volpe, who says the excursion to Germany gave him the opportunity to meet with local producers and broadcasters.

In Germany, Volpe hooked up with a potential coproduction partner, Hope and Glory Films, and the two companies are now in the very preliminary stages of development on a possible sports comedy.

For producer Charles Bishop, also of Halifax, the April trip followed an earlier excursion to Germany with the Ontario Film Development Corporation and allowed him to move forward with some of the projects which had been discussed on the previous visit. However, nothing has been solidified yet.

To complement the new global friendship, the Atlantic Film Festival, taking place Sept. 18-26 in Halifax, will present for the first time Strategic Partners, an international coproduction conference, which will focus on Germany.

The conference, running Sept. 19-21, will give Atlantic producers the opportunity to meet with potential partners, pitch projects and learn about German financing structures and the marketplace.

As part of Strategic Partners, organizers are calling for submissions of dramatic work from producers from Germany and Canada. A jury will select a maximum of 30 projects, which will be included in a promo package and sent out to participating producers, financiers, broadcasters, distributors and funders.

Spearheading the two-and-a-half-day conference will be Jan Miller, former National Screen Institute and Local Heroes International Screen Festival executive director. The conference is receiving assistance of $140,000 over three years from the Canada/Nova Scotia Cooperation Agreement on Economic Diversification.

Strategic Partners falls on the heels of a German/Canadian Mixed Commission, being hosted Sept. 18 by the Department of Canadian Heritage and Telefilm Canada in Halifax, where the official coproduction treaty will be renewed and reviewed. The commission will also address differences between the film and tv industries in the two countries, changes on the financial landscape and broadcasting legislation.

All levels of the production community will be in attendance including producers, craft guilds and unions.

Deborah Drisdell, director of international relations at Telefilm, says Telefilm views the German territory as underexploited.

‘We considered the potential and their openness to Canadian films and embarked on a strategy to increase the amount of cooperation between Canada and Germany,’ says Drisdell.

‘While there was quite a bit of activity with Germany, it didn’t seem to be at the level it merited,’ she says. ‘We tried to get some meetings together between the provincial agencies here and regional funders in Germany to start discussions on that level.’