producer will be offered advice from the experts next week at the Bermuda Film Festival.

Two sessions entitled Money Matters: Raising Financing for Independent Film and Legal Lessons for Film Makers will tackle the business side of the creative process of making a film.

The workshops will each last two hours and have on their panels the people behind films that have the arduous task of raising tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars and making sure that all contracts with actors and distributors are legal and binding.

There are six men on the Money Matters panel and four on the Legal Lessons section who will be open to questions and will offer advice on how to get going when it comes to making a film.

"This kind of advice in invaluable,'' said Duncan Hall, coordinator of special workshops at the Festival. "You couldn't put a price on the kind of information that the panelists will share with the audience in these workshops.'' Adam Page, a former investment banker who is the chief executive officer of the London based Ottawa Consulting Group will lead the international panel on raising funds.

His company serves the international banking, insurance, venture capital and institutional finance sectors analysing financial and investment behaviour and risk in the film and audio-visual industries. Much of their work in the last two years has centred on the use of insurance in film production financing.

"I am constantly surprised by the fact that Bermuda doesn't play a much bigger role in the international film and audio-visual sector. It sits more or less midway between the three major commercial focal points of the world's film business: Los Angeles, New York and the United Kingdom.

"It also, like the UK, benefits from a sophisticated and copyright-friendly legal environment and, as we hope to discuss at some length during the film festival, it is home to a sizable element of the world's insurance business.'' Mr. Page will be joined by Cameron McCracken, director of business affairs at the British Screen Finance Ltd, a private company set up by the British government in 1985 to coordinate film finance funds from both the public and private sector. It currently funds up to 20 feature films annually.

Peter Graham II will also be on the panel as Vice President of Lewis Horwitz Organisation, a company which specialises in creative financing for independent film and television. He has helped raise money for projects such as The English Patient and Hell Raiser IV. He also spent five years as vice president of the Bank of California's Entrainment Unit and two years as an entertainment lending officer at First Interstate Bank Beverly Hills office.

They will be joined by Paul Cohen, of Next Millennium Entertainment, who runs the privately held production /distribution company, Stephen Liu, co-founder and president of Reelplay.com Ltd an electronic product guide and service business, and Dr. Torsten Poeck, a partner in the Munich law firm Schwarz Kurtze Schniewind Kelwing Wicke which specialises in media law, international media financing and licence agreements.

Legal Lessons will be hosted by Mr. McCracken and will address issues such as contracts for rights, artists, distribution and will also include a discussion about the advantages Bermuda offers the global film industry.

Warren Cabral, a partner at Appleby Spurling and Kempe who heads up both the insurance and entertainment units, will join Mr. McCracken.

"The acquisition of the initial rights to a film makers' project will make all the difference between a creature which they control, or the fish that got away when the big distributors get hold of it. Structuring the myriad of contracts for rights, artistes, distribution and financing is a specialist skill and expert guidance at the earliest stages will take a huge weight off the budding film maker.'' Also on this panel are Dr. Poeck, Allan Niblo, producer of the award winning Human Traffic and John Wolstenholme, screen writer and co-producer of the film Hurrah that will be screened at the festival.

The workshops on Money Matters and Legal Lessons are being held at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute on Tuesday April 18 and Wednesday April 19.

A beauty: If you think you've found the next box office smash, like American Beauty which scooped this year's Best Picture Oscar, you may want to attend the upcoming Bermuda Film Festival workshops on how to fiance a movie.

MOVIE PICTURES MPC