ProPro 2017

From March, 13 until March, 21 the second edition of ProPro – The Producers’ Programme for Women – took place in Vienna, for the first time in cooperation with FOCAL and IDM.

Sixteen female producers from Austria, Switzerland and South Tyrol were focusing on topics such as career planning, success strategies, leadership skills and the development of their film projects or company strategies. Among the top-class ProPro mentors were: Kate Leys (script editor, UK), Gabriela Bacher (What a Man, DE/USA), Katrin Schlösser (Schlafkrankheit, DE), Ewa Puszczyńska (Ida, PL), Sylvia Stevens (Faction Films, UK) and film financing expert Linda Beath (Ideal Filmworks, IT/CAN). In the area leadership coaching Sonja Zant and Cornelia Jaksche supported us with their skills and knowledge.

In addition to the tailor-made programme for the participants, a framework programme with a wide range of public networking opportunities was offered.

Kate Leys held a penetrative and entertaining keynote with the title „Shining from the Screen: Storytelling in Film, Who it’s for and Why it Matters“ and also participated in a panel discussion analyzing the quintessence of stories together with South-African producer Bongiwe Selane (Happiness is a Four-Letter Word) and author/producer Andrea Willson (Anatomie, SMS für Dich).

A case study of the Polish producer Ewa Puszczyńska on her film Ida had to take place via skype and nevertheless was very well received because of the fascinating story how a Polish language, black-and-white film on a gloomy topic became a hit which won an Oscar for best foreign language film as well as a BAFTA and three European Film Prizes.

Another panel with IDM-boss Christiana Wertz, Valerie Fischer (Cobrafilm/FOCAL, CH), Rebekka Garrido (Connecting Cottbus), Iris Zappe-Heller (ÖFI – Austrian Film Institute, Eurimages) and film exploitation expert Salma Abdalla (Autlook Filmsales) focused on current topics in the fields of coproduction, networking and market opportunities in a European context.

The whole week through, film financing expert Linda Beath conveyed know-how on business management such as cash flow planning, human resources management and examples of successful companies in the European production landscape.

With her lecture on power-competence Christine Bauer-Jelinek made another fascinating and controversial contribution on successful communication.

But also in the area of TV ProPro offered excellent networking opportunities: Katharina Schenk, Klaus Lintschinger and Sharon Nuni, all of them head-of-department of ORF, were available for inputs and one-on-one meetings during an entire morning. At the end of the week a panel discussion on the possibilities to increase the proportion of women in TV took place, gathering ORF-TV-director Kathrin Zechner, Michael Lehmann, manager of Studio Hamburg, Alfred Grinschgl (managing director RTR and “Fernsehfonds Austria”) as well as director and producer Connie Walther (ProQuote Regie, DE) and Nina Kusturica (FC Gloria, AT) who presented their views and visions.

As a result of the great success we are happy to announce that another edition of ProPro will take place – probably in 2019.

We kindly invite interested parties to sign up for our newsletter at propro@filminstitut.at.

Source: Website Propro@filminstitut.at.