Frank Stehling has taken over transFOCAL, the Berlin subsidiary of the Swiss Foundation for Professional Training in Cinema and Audiovisual Media, FOCAL. As CEO, he will head the organisation based in Berlin under the new name PRIMEHOUSE GmbH.

In addition to the successful training programmes P.R.I.M.E and Pygmalion, the organisation intends to concentrate in future more on assistance to film producers in the areas of coaching, consulting and financing. The emphasis will be to focus on the early linkage of interactive and classic formats. “PRIMEHOUSE represents the connection between film, television and interactive media. In future we want to use the network we’ve built up to develop offers which provide financial and marketing support to producers and users of the most diverse market segments during the project development phase”, said Frank Stehling regarding the organisation’s new direction. Concrete plans for 2008 include introducing a new ‘Finance’ module alongside the established P.R.I.M.E-Training module, under the PRIMEHOUSE umbrella. “In this way, we want to offer producers the possibility of putting the results of the training programmes into effect,” Frank Stehling explained.

PRIMEHOUSE GmbH’s commitment to cross-media activity and content is partly the result of experience with the film business’s requirements in the context of the European training programme P.R.I.M.E. The programme was established by the Swiss FOCAL foundation, the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and the Austrian Film Institute at the beginning of last year. It is aimed at independent European film and television producers. In the early phase of project development, it brings international experts in the film and games sectors together, and integrates them into the evaluation of film projects.

The latest P.R.I.M.E success-story in this connection – and this also highlights the new key expertise of PRIMEHOUSE – is the parallel development of an adventure game in conjunction with the 2-part remake of ‘Die Schatzinsel’ (Treasure Island), which will be broadcast by the private German TV channel Pro7 on 26 and 27 November. Through Janus Film’s participation in P.R.I.M.E Training 2006, the film producer of Treasure Island, Ivo Alexander Beck, met up with the P.R.I.M.E expert Andre Blechschmidt representing the game developer Radon Labs. That established the basis for the production of a TV film and a corresponding adventure game. Ivo Alexander Beck, CEO of Janus Film GmbH says: “The European film industry needs more organisations like PRIMEHOUSE, which, beyond the classic models of financing, forges contacts with the booming entertainment branch with its diverse interactive media and formats. In this context, Frank Stehling’s new company gives precisely the right signal.”

The final stage of the current P.R.I.M.E 2007 programme will be held in Berlin from 28 November to 2 December, coinciding with the European Film Awards. The newly-established PRIMEHOUSE GmbH invites you to a presentation of the current projects on 29 November at 7.30 p.m., at 31 Kantstrasse.

For further information on PRIMEHOUSE and the P.R.I.M.E projects, visit: www.prime-house.de.