This departure did not come as a complete surprise: at the opening of the series camp festival in October, its founder Malko Solf announced that there would still be “big news” in three weeks. Three weeks turned into eight, but the news is still big: The series camp is leaving Munich and finding its new home in Cologne. Anyone who wants to see series hits in the cinema in advance or take part in one of the many specialist events will have to travel to the Rhine from summer 2023.
One wants to become bigger and more international, said Solf in an interview with a media magazine, but more funds are needed for this. In Bavaria he was not able to convince everyone, in North Rhine-Westphalia the enthusiasm was greater. How much bigger remains to be seen: Yes, there have been talks, says Dorothee Erpenstein from Film-Fernseh-Fonds Bayern (FFF), which has supported the series camp in recent years. That would also have been done in the future, said Erpenstein: “Apparently, NRW offered more.”
The responsible NRW minister, Nathanael Liminski, was all the more pleased and named his federal state the series hotspot of the republic: “In no other region in Germany is more TV and series content created.” This is what is called location policy, and people in Bavaria actually like doing this. The responsible State Ministry for Digital is looking for the blame elsewhere: “To close the required funding, other partners, for example at the federal or local level, would have been necessary,” says a spokesman.
One wonders: Are series of Bavarian politics really important? Is the financing of a specialist festival a state-supporting task? And wasn’t the venerable Bavarian TV award just transformed into the more promising “Blue Panther – TV & Streaming Award” at the urging of Prime Minister Söder?
When the series camp started in 2015, it was still a small event for fans. But just as the series boom continued, the festival grew from year to year, more and more people came, also from the industry. “As a venue from the very beginning, we could directly feel the power of the series camp at HFF Munich,” says HFF President Bettina Reitz. The series camp was a Bavarian success story that is now being let go – and that’s not nice.