Project description

Project description
project name: Lublin - Lvov: Film Cities
beneficiary: Lublin Commune
region: lubelskie
fund: European Regional Development Fund
operational programme: INTERREG Poland – Belarus – Ukraine
project value: 800 000.00 zł
EU grant value: 600 000.00 zł
punktor projekt realizowany
w latach 2004-2006
Project description
It has been known for years that Lublin and Lvov boast attractive locations for a variety of film genres. Filmmakers would come regularly to shoot scenes in Lublin's evocative Old Town lanes, at the castle or in the
Majdanek concentration camp (most recently for the Oscar-winning The Reader).
‘Because of those well-known - or sometimes not-so-well-known - productions, we realized that our film
locations can make Lublin and Volv more attractive for visitors and translate into business opportunities,'
says Grzegorz Linkowski who advises the mayor on the Lublin Film Fund (Lubelski Fundusz Filmowy).
At first, money was needed to set up an institution that would deal with this matter in Lublin and Lvov, to
document the potentially interesting film locations and to produce promotional materials. As it turned out, this
type of initiative can be financed from EU funds through the INTERREG IIIA programme. The application
submitted by the Lublin Municipality in co-operation with Ukrainian partners was accepted and so work could
start. With competent people involved, a strategy of developing the film industry in the partner cities was
worked out and plenty of work was done in short time. First of all, the Lublin Film Fund was established to
support organizationally and financially film productions located in Lublin.
As Grzegorz Linkowski stresses, logistic support is as important as actual financial resources. Filmmakers
can expect substantial help in organizing production, including simplified procedures when it comes to
obtaining a permission to close a street for traffic or block a road for the time of shooting a scene as well as
using municipal buildings free of charge. EU funds were also used to create a website for film-makers,
containing a database with information on Lublin, Lvov and the area along the Polish-Ukrainian border, and
to produce a promotional clip with fragments of the films already shot in either city plus a brochure describing
the most attractive film locations. These materiale received great interest at the film festivals in Cannes and
Gdynia.
The authors of the project are thinking about its further development. Most likely, a signposted walk will be
created in Lublin, taking in the places where well-known Polish and foreign films were shot.