More about Barents TV-series   Each episode will target one universal issue such as e.g. food, architecture, art, sexuality, drugs, or child upbringing. The themes will be interpreted by several filmmakers from different parts of the region, contributing with their distinctive perspectives and portraying a variety of realities in each episode. Each story within an episode can vary in its form, encouraging a wide span of creative input. Further this aims to challenge myths and clichés about the north, as well as transmitting knowledge in new and exciting ways. The Barents region is a landscape of great contrasts. There are more than 5 million people living in an area as large as France, Portugal, Spain and Germany together. There are big cities but also groups of indigenous population with old sustainable traditions and developed awareness about the nature, so changes are noticed in dramatic ways. Several nations have recently started to extract the enormous natural recourses in the Arctic. The ambitions are high, but so is the risk.   But the area is so much more than that! Here you can find a variety of cultures and industries, both traditional and modern. By portraying different realities seen from local viewpoints, we hope to raise awareness of these multilayered societies existing here, targeting an audience both within the Barents Region and internationally. This is an opportunity to open new roads for cooperation and communication, as well as the exchange of trades, cultures and knowledge across borders. Therefore this may also be an important contribution to the development of stability and peaceful cooperation in the Northern Region.   A second motivation for taking on the task of this great and untraditional project is to create continuity and put new life into independent regional film and TV production. Cooperation between independent producers and traditional TV broadcasters should be very beneficial to both parts. The Management and Editorial office will be based in Tromsø, backed up by a broad network of solid expertise within culture, history, research politics and communities throughout the northern areas.   The trail program is financed by The Norwegian Barents Secretariat, Troms Fylke, Nordnorsk Filmsenter AS, Innovation Norway, also private contribution from the initiators. Contacts: John Arvid Berger, producer john@jabfilm.no  Mats Zoia Ravna     << Back to BTV front page