Sustaining A Regional Screen Ecosystem In A Small Nation: Aarhus and the West Danish Film Fund, 2002-2019

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SARSESNA (Sustaining A Regional Screen Ecosystem In A Small Nation: Aarhus and the West Danish Film Fund, 2002-2019)

Reporting period: 2018-05-01 to 2020-04-30

Since 2010, Danish screen production has enjoyed global attention with the transnational popularity of high-quality films and TV series. Yet, they are the product of a specific culture-political milieu that is anchored in the capital, Copenhagen, in which almost all of the national screen industry has been concentrated since the 1930s (from expertise and talent, funding, policy, to infrastructure). It has only been fairly recently that institutions and industry players have acknowledged that the Copenhagen-centric nature of Danish screen production means that peripheral regions of Denmark are neglected and underdeveloped as potential production hubs. Den Vestdanske Filmpulje (DVF) or The West Danish Film Fund (est. 2002) is a regional response to the imbalance in Danish screen production. By supporting and investing in the development and production of film, television, and transmedia projects in the Western Region of Denmark, of which the city of Aarhus is the ‘capital’, the activities of DVF directly fosters and strengthens growth within the creative screen industry of the region.

This research project addresses the question of how Aarhus can create a strong, sustainable regional screen ecosystem in the context of a small nation. This project emerges from the fact that, at present, there is a scarcity of international research on the cultural economy of peripheral, sub-national regions in Denmark.5 Research is therefore much needed on the screen-cultural potential of peripheral regions in order to achieve a deeper understanding of how small nations can exploit their geographical and creative potentials to ensure equitable, holistic cultural development and the long-term sustainability of the screen-cultural industry. A renewed attention on Denmark’s regions and their creative potentials will be an important step towards addressing the imbalances between centre and periphery.

The objectives of this project were to:
• Analyse and provide the historical background to the social, economic, and political transformations that have taken place in Aarhus’s screen industry since the establishment of the DVF in 2002 and consider the forces that have engendered these changes,

• Map and evaluate the screen ecosystem of Aarhus – that is, the material connections between institutional policy, industrial conditions, geography and landscape, and the creative decisions of screen practitioners relating to representations of regional identity,

• Identify and clarify the implications of new funding arrangements, initiatives, technologies, affinitive partnerships, and structural platforms for regional screen production and innovation, and

• Outline strategies on how regional screen production can productively harness geography, heritage, and tourism to forge and strengthen domestic and international ties.

May-Oct 2018
• Data collection: First wave of expert interviews with screen practitioners.
• Participation in the Media, Communication and Society research programme seminar, AU, 1/6. Paper: “Sustaining A Regional Screen Ecosystem in a Small Nation: Aarhus and The West Danish Film Fund”.
• Co-organisation and participation in the Transnational Television Drama: Tastes, Travels and Trends conference, AU Department of Media Studies and Journalism, 6-9/6.
◦ Conference paper: “Regional television drama productions in Denmark”
◦ Panel Chair (with Prof. A.M. Waade) of “The ‘New Nordic Noir’case, and how the industry and researchers can collaborate on talent training, innovation and strategic partnerships”
• Ethnography of this.nordic 2018 conference, 13–14/9, Filmby Aarhus.
• Organisation of international workshop at AU (together with Prof. A.M. Waade, AU and Prof. R.A. Saunders, Farmingdale State College, SUNY): 'Nordic Noir, Geopolitics, and the North', 4–5/10.

Nov 2018-Apr 2019
• Second wave of expert interviews.
• Participation at ECREA 2018, Lugano, 31/10 – 3/11. Paper: “Sustaining A Regional Screen Ecosystem: Aarhus and the West Danish Film Fund”
• Participation at Regional Studies Association Annual Conference, 15–16/11, London. Paper: “Sustaining a Regional Screen Ecosystem in a Small Nation: Aarhus and the West Danish Region”
• Organisation of int'l workshop at AU Department of Media Studies and Journalism: "The Media and Cultural Industries in Regional Spaces: Convergences, Conflicts, and Contingencies" and research visit, 28/3. Paper: “‘Just be an international success instead of a regional one’: reshaping film education at VIA Film & Transmedia in Aarhus”
May-Oct 2019
• Ethnography of Picture This 2019 industry conference, 1/10, Copenhagen, and this.nordic 2019 industry conference, 29-30/10, Filmby Aarhus.
• Member of working group for programme development of Cultural and Creative Industries programme at the Arts Faculty, AU, May 2019–ongoing.
• Panelist at European Research Day event organised by EURAXESS ASEAN, 10/6, Singapore.
• Convenor of workshop: 'Regional Screen Milieux: Production, Policy, and Praxis at the Periphery', NordMedia conference, Malmö, 21–23/8
• Completion of the AU Teacher Training Programme, Aug 2019–Jan 2020.
• Guest lectures on Danish screen culture and regional media production on AU courses 'Film & TV Analysis', 'Screening the North: Film and Television series in Scandinavia and Norden', Autumn 2019.

Nov 2019-Apr 2020
• Panelist at EURAXESS ASEAN webinar on MSCA-IF, 27/4.
• The production of 1 conference paper, 2 journal articles, and 1 data visualisation artefact were delayed due to the COVID-19 situation.

Publications
• Co-editor of A History of Danish Cinema (with C.C. Thomson and I. Thorsen), Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming in 2021. Book chapter: “Regional film funds and production in Denmark” [preprint available open-access]
• Peer-reviewed article “Regional screen ecosystems at the peripheries: Production and talent development in Tromsø and Aarhus” with S.A. Sand, Journal of Scandinavian Cinema,10:2, 2020 [preprint available open-access]
• Monograph: Bridging Regioscapes (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming in 2021)
• Guest-editor of special issue of Nordicom Review on Geopolitics of Nordic Television Drama; peer-reviewed article “Geopolitical television drama within and beyond the Nordic region” (co-authors A.M. Waade and R.A. Saunders), forthcoming in 2020.

This project:

• is the first comprehensive study of the development of regional screen culture in Aarhus, which, as part of Denmark’s geographical periphery, has thus far been neglected in contemporary screen studies scholarship.
• Advances the sub-field of regional production studies within media studies, as well as the field of Nordic and Danish cinema studies, by contributing a contemporary Nordic case study of how peripheral, sub-national regions develop their screen industries outside of the capital.
• Engages with current tendencies in European cultural research that highlights regional and peripheral perspectives on cultural production, policy, and innovation.
• Contributes to the growing collaborative relationship between industry partners and academia in the West Danish region through frequent dialogues and knowledge exchange.
• through two international workshops: brought scholars working on regional production studies from across Scandinavia and the rest of Europe in dialogue with each other to discuss best practices and establish collaborations for future research projects.

Ethnography of this.nordic 2018 industry conference (13 Sept. 2018) - Exterior of Filmby Aarhus

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SARSESNA (Sustaining A Regional Screen Ecosystem In A Small Nation: Aarhus and the West Danish Film Fund, 2002-2019)

Download Download the content of the page