About thirty years ago, the film industry was launched here in Luxembourg, and it was from the beginning a distinct start, as this industry was based on cultural foundations and motives, benefiting from a government program to support joint audiovisual production.

The state has launched a fund for cinema to provide financial and organizational support to promote the sector's development.

 The Fund also assists in areas such as the drafting of regulations and legislation and developing international co-production agreements, compiles statistics relating to this sector, determines the award of “Luxembourg nationality” for audiovisual works and maintains a national register of productions[1].

Since then, the Luxembourgian audio-visual and cinematic production wheel has not stopped, which was established and continued based on respect for several principles, the most important of which is co-production. It may also be clear that it has largely avoided falling into the abyss of commercial film markets, meaning that it is a film industry to some extent, which takes into account a set of values that can be considered cultural values par excellence.

After the establishment of the film and audiovisual production industry here in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the arrival of films produced here to the most important festivals and international platforms, from the Oscars to Cannes, Berlin, Venice, London, and others, it has become necessary to launch new initiatives that deepen the human and cultural orientation of the industry.

It is no secret to anyone that the world has changed a lot during the past thirty years and is no longer the same as it was, and therefore even cultural priorities have changed greatly.

Now and here we are leaving our fascination with a free unified Europe, digital technologies, and the era of the communications revolution that ignited great growth in communication, cooperation, and all kinds of industries, trade, and remote business to the era of major humanitarian issues. The world today awakens little by little to give voice to those cries of warning, about the threat to the end of the human race on this planet due to climate change. Looking at the future, we do not know, no one does, if there is still enough time and chances to confront climate change and mitigate its deadly severity or not.

From these bases and in this spirit, we want to start our independent initiative to establish the Gutt Land Productions. The company will adhere to contemporary cultural and moral values, most notably placing the issue of climate change and projects that contribute to spreading environmental awareness and those that directly or indirectly address climate change issues at the top of its production priorities.

Gutt Land Productions will certainly continue on the principle of co-production, it will avoid, as much as possible, market-focused behaviors and commercial production of audiovisual materials, except to help it continue and progress in line with our vision, without any desire to obtain huge profits or provide a luxurious life for the founders or employees of Gutt Land Productions.

Gutt Land Productions is our hope to achieve cooperation and projects that cross the narrow geographical and professional borders to wider global horizons, by benefiting from the network of artistic and cultural relations that are available to the founders of the initiative, who all come from non-profit cultural, social, artistic and cinematic work backgrounds. Similarly, Gutt Land Production carries with it great hopes in supporting and visualizing humanitarian issues of moral dimensions such as democracy, free speech, women's rights, and issues of immigrants, displaced people, and refugees.

Therefore, it represents our hope that, along with the benevolent efforts in the world, we will contribute to creating better conditions for the future of the next generations to inherit a good land to live on.

To achieve this goal, or at least part of it, we will achieve our intention to be faithful to our principles, being committed to our values, in respect of attending the attachment to the name we chose and which we hope to be part of the creation of a Gutt Land, as making good in a broader sense.

Here we invite everyone to support our new independent initiative with all possible measures, we also invite all those who have the same vision and common tendencies to share their projects and interests with Gutt Land. This company will be an open platform for the realization of all audiovisual projects of all genres and sizes that do not conflict with our principles, as we stipulated in this statement. We also do not hesitate to be open to listening to advice and suggestions that we might receive from any party, as long as they are objective and made in the interest of developing and advancing our initiative.

 

[1] https://www.filmfund.lu/film-fund-luxembourg/about-us/mission