With an obvious glance towards developing drama, the Celtic Development Fund has announced that four Irish/Welsh co-productions will receive a share of £44,000 of development funding in their current round. Surprisingly only 14 applications were made in the second round of funding. "After the first funding round when we primarily received and funded documentary projects, this time there was a bias towards drama proposals," explained Pauline Larkkom, head of production at Sgrin, the Welsh counterpart of Filmmakers Ireland.
Set up in 1999 the fund provides development funding of television co-productions between the nine counties on the east coast of Ireland and Gwynedd and Dyfed in Wales. Now known as the Interreg zone the area receives EU funding for economic and cultural partnerships.
The largest grant went to Crimson Films of Dublin and Ffilmiau, based in Bangor in Wales. Receiving £15,000, their project is entitled Masters of Celtic Horror, a 12 part series of self-contained horror stories. The Keeper, proposed by Ocean Film Productions Dublin and Ammanfor based Concordia Cyf will receive £12,000 to develop this drama project which sees an assistant at the National museum become a detective in a world-wide trade in stolen art and antiquities.
Also building a plot around detectives, Coco Television, Dublin and Antena Cyf in Wales are engaged in developing the 13 part Internet Detectives. With a celtic development grant of £12,000 this children's drama series will chart the adventures of a group of children from around the globe who work together to solve a new mystery each week. The fourth drama is a six part comedy, spoof documentary series following a British documentary team as they make their way around Ireland. Developed by Vinegar Hills Productions of Wexford and Boda cyf of Wales, they will receive £5,000 from the fund.
The next closing date for the Celtic Development Fund is already here with the 4th February and will be followed by a further round closing on 2nd June 2000.
The fund is administered in Ireland by Filmmakers Ireland.
Visit their site at www.filmmakersireland.ie
