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Well Finished A still from “The Wild Bull”, which received support from HBF

Started in 1988, the fund was the idea of Hubert Bals. Bianca Taal, the current head of the fund, recounts anecdotally, “Bals once met a Chinese director who in his free time taught English women how to eat with chopsticks, to earn money! After that he decided to help, believing that some of the most interesting cinema comes from outside Europe. He passed away two weeks before we got the required permission and so it was decided to name the fund after him.”

Since then the fund has supported close to 600 projects in the developing world. Annually, the Hubert Bals Fund has close to 1.2 million euro at its disposal and is able to make individual grants of up to 10,000 euro for script and project development, 20,000 euro for digital production, 30,000 euro for post-production or 15,000 euro towards distribution costs in the country of origin. Selection rounds take place twice a year, with application deadlines on March 1 and August 1. Annually, 20 to 40 film productions are realised through HBF.

Taal says that while the criterion is obviously artistic quality, they also look for films that can be used at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam. Annually a large number of the year’s movies supported by the fund are screened at the festival. The selected movies often travel to even Cannes, Locarno and Pusan. She adds, “We are looking for projects where our modest support means the most.” She explains that funding at different stages helps in different processes. “When we fund the scripting, we can support the project from the start. But funding in the post-production stage also helps as often the money is over by then.” Taal also marvels at how filmmakers in South-East Asia often make an entire movie with grants allocated for script development! This project helps filmmakers in countries where there is no supporting infrastructure for new and independent cinema. This year “The Wild Bull”, directed by Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni, had its international premiere at the festival. The movie received grants in the post-production stage. Unable to get producers from Maharashtra for this Marathi movie, Kulkarni says these funds did prove vital.

For more information and project entry, log into filmfestivalrotterdam.com.

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