Also at the Imagine festival: film fans become film financiers

In 1945, advanced rocket technology allowed a group of Nazis to escape to the moon. There they hid and soon they will return to take over again. At Imagine, Amsterdam's festival for fantastic film, there was a sneak preview of that. If the omens do not deceive, it promises Iron Sky, as this Finnish production is called, to be a hilarious sf comedy featuring a 'Foxy Fraulein' and 'all the Reich moves'.

There is another reason why Iron Sky by director Timo Vuorensola is currently attracting a lot of interest in certain circles. It is one of the showpieces of the new mode of film financing that is crowdfunding hot. Basically, thanks to the internet and social media, filmmakers are visiting their fans with a digital collection box, so to speak, to raise money for a new production. It was one of the discussion topics on Sunday at a theme afternoon with the motto: 'Power to the people', or how film fans become filmmakers themselves or help finance projects.

Timo Vuorensola himself was present to explain his project. Iron Sky is budgeted at €7 million and Vuorensola aims to raise about €1 million of this through crowdfunding raising. The counter now stands at half a million.

This currently makes it one of the outliers among experiments with crowdfunding going on here and there. The new Dutch platform Cinecrowd, which with its website enables makers of short films to raise money, thinks in much smaller budgets, around 10,000 euros. Making a short film with that will only work if (almost) everyone cooperates for nothing, but you can achieve something quickly as a filmmaker and that has its charm.

And it seems to be working. Amos Mulder and Floris Parlevliet are the first two filmmakers who, with the help of Cinecrowd, have secured their minibudget and can start filming. Meanwhile, a filmmaker of repute has also come forward to give this a try. Eddy Terstall (Simon) presents its plan for the short relationship comedy on the Cinecrowd website Deal, which should cost €20,000 and - if the budget is raised in time - will premiere at the Dutch Film Festival. Do you also fancy seeing another new Terstall soon? Then go to www.cinecrowd.nl and do your bit.