On Thursday and Friday (6 and 7 November) Plataforma per la Llengua attended a conference on audiovisual production in minoritised languages held at Leeuwarden/Ljouwert in Frisia (Netherlands) organised by the European Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity (NPLD) and the Coppieters Foundation, with support from the province of Frisia and the Noordeljik Film Festival (NoFF). Maria de Lluc Muñoz, international officer for Plataforma per la Llengua, represented Plataforma per la Llengua in a forum bringing together dozens of experts, film-makers, producers and representatives of governments and civil society from many European regions.
As part of the conference, Muñoz was able to attend a round table on the film industry in the different regions featuring the role of cinema owners, film festivals and public film institutes. Representatives of the University of the Basque Country, the TG4 channel in Ireland, the Babel Film Festival on Sardinia, CineSud from the Dutch province of Limburg, the Faroese Film Institute and the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at the University of Aberystwyth in Wales took part.
The organisation's representative also attended a talk about the impact of regional cinema on tourism by two lecturers from the University of Groningen, members of the Erasmus Knowledge Centre for Film, Heritage and Tourism (FIHETO), and a round table about European Union audiovisual policies. Participants included representatives of the PluringMedia network of the European Centre for Minority Issues, the Dutch office of the Creative Europe programme and the Euro-MP Raquel García Hermida from the D66 party in the Netherlands. This round table analysed the representation of minoritised languages in films and the support they receive, as well as the challenges they face.
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In another debate, led by the director of the Basque television station EITB, the editor-in-chief of public media in Frisia and the media development commissioner at the Irish media regulation council talked about public initiatives to stimulate audiovisual production in minoritised languages. Meanwhile, representatives of Netflix, Amazon, Avila Film and MyCulture+ spoke of their platforms' commitment to fiction streaming in non-hegemonic languages, and Irish and Frisian producers and directors told of their creative experiences in those languages.
The NPLD-Coppieters Campus: an event for sharing best practices in language policy
The NPLD-Coppieters Campus is an annual meeting for politicians, researchers and professionals to share their knowledge and best practices in a specific area of language policy and cultural production, which is different every year. Among the delegations attending this year were government and civil society representatives from Catalonia, Wales, Galicia, the Basque Country, Trento, Ireland, Albania and Brittany, among other European regions.
The NPLD is the European Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity, a body that aims to advise governments in developing language policies that encourage diversity, promote cooperation between associations representing linguistic minorities and protect the speakers of minoritised languages. It is made up of governments and organisations - Plataforma per la Llengua is on its management committee - and it has a direct influence on the European Council, one of the European Union's main decision-making bodies, as well as a direct relationship with the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, ensuring that language diversity is taken into account in all European bodies.
