Cinema is an art; and besides, it is also an industry.
Malraux’s formula is well known and Philippe Reynaert, our ex-Walliboss, has never stopped hammering it over the years. It is on this leitmotiv and this economic vision that Wallimage has built its action to help develop, in a region that was once devastated in terms of audiovisual structures, many companies that are now very successful and renowned internationally.
In twenty years, Wallimage Coproductions has invested Walloon money in more than 500 projects with this objective in mind. Wallimage Entreprises, born in 2008, has subsequently co-financed companies, often allowing them to stay afloat or to develop.
If our first goal is to multiply the number of jobs linked to the audiovisual sector in the Walloon Region, we must not forget the icing on the cake: as co-financiers, we are also associated with the commercial careers of the works we support. However, on this point, it must be recognized that the problem sometimes arises. For a few outstanding successes such as La Trêve season 1 or Rundskop, how many films or series have not raised a single euro for the region? A lot.
For several years, we have been asking ourselves how we can interact at this level. Little by little, overcoming all the obstacles, we have, under the impetus of Wallimage Entreprises, developed a formula that has now passed all the stages of legal validation, both Belgian and European. We are therefore proud to announce today the creation of WALLIMpact, an economic development fund for audiovisual projects.
Beware! We are not talking here about cultural development as practiced by other bodies. Our objective is not to participate in the creation of difficult or culturally significant works, but to support producers in an often expensive development phase that could allow them to direct a work towards a potentially larger audience, in Belgium and abroad.
To allow this kind of qualitative progression, it is necessary to be able to properly pay good scriptwriters, co-writers, relevant script doctors, to set up targeted economic and marketing feasibility studies, to develop professional pre-posters and striking teasers to tackle international markets head on. This is where we come in to support project leaders with this fund, which is partly financed by co-production revenues.
WALLIMpact, our new fund for the economic development of audiovisual projects, is therefore supported by Wallimage-Entreprises, which underlines its ambition and its purely economic dimension. It will be based on three annual sessions. Belgian producers will be able to bring a file which will be analyzed and discussed by a jury composed of some members of Wallimage, but also of external professionals who will examine in priority the commercial potential of the files submitted. At the end of our deliberations, one or two projects will be boosted with an overall investment of 100,000 euros per session.
The many preparatory conversations we have had with the profession on the subject lead us to believe that there will be many callers. And, for the moment, few are elected. However, we hope that those we support will really increase their business impact. And we are also confident that those who are not selected will benefit from this external analysis to strengthen their attractions and to sweep away any weaknesses. It goes without saying that all submissions will be treated confidentially and that no pitches or scripts will be revealed outside the jury.
This fund is open to all Belgian producers for projects initiated by them or in co-development. Projects that we hope to see realized industrially with a significant Walloon DNA. Because we are still working here with the same objective in mind: to boost production in Wallonia.
The adventure is unprecedented but it is beautiful and exciting. May the new path we propose take some of our films to new heights.
The 2021 session schedule has been set as follows :
Session 1 : deposit on April 16
Session 2 : deposit on August 27
Session 3 : deposit on November 5
The files should be sent to this email address : wallimpact@wallimage.be
The complete rules are available at HERE
For information: the eligibility criteria of the loans granted by our fund to the European guarantee EIF are to be read HERE
