(vis) The 41st INTERFILM General Assembly met on 12th June 2010 in Copenhagen. Held every three years according to the bylaws, it elects the President and the Steering Committee of twelve members (including the President). A report of the President, Pastor Hans Hodel from Switzerland, about the work of the presidium and of the Steering Committe in the last term, as well as a report of the Executive Director, Karsten Visarius, about the future of INTERFILM went ahead elections.

Hans Hodel’s report showed the impressive scope of INTERFILM’s acitivities, amazing particularly because INTERFILM must do without permanent employees. INTERFILM currently maintains 18 juries at international film festivals, of which 14 are Ecumenical juries (in cooperation with SIGNIS), 3 INTERFILM jurys and one interreligious jury. INTERFILM also organised a number of seminars and workshops, maintains a website and publishes the membership magazine INTERFILM Info. This work is made possible by the commitment of the members of the Presidium and of the Steering Committee, by the cooperation with the festivals, by partnership with SIGNIS (Catholic World Association for Communication), WACC (World Association for Christian Communication), and CEC (Conference of European Churches), and last but not least by support of the INTERFILM membership. For their indispensable donations the President thanked in particular the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), the Joint Association for Media Communication (GEP) in Frankfurt/Main, and the Reformed Media in Zurich.

Subsequently Karsten Visarius, film official in the Cultural Office of the EKD, explained the structural background of INTERFILM and the challenges the organization will have to face in the next years. In his estimation INTERFILM has to substitute a portion of the work done so far on a voluntary basis, as well as parts of church donations, by new financial resources. It follows that INTERFILM must establish an active fundraising.F

Finally in the elections the General Assembly followed the proposal of the Presidium and of the Steering Committee and confirmed Hans Hodel as President for the next three years. Newly elected as members of the Steering Committee were Mikael Larsson (Sweden), Philip Lee (Canada) and Jolyon Mitchell (UK).

The new Steering Committee held its first meeting after the General Assembly and elected the other members of the Presidium. It confirmed Denyse Muller (France) and Werner Schneider-Quindeau (Germany) as Vice-Presidents and Karsten Visarius as Executive Director. Philip Lee, Deputy Program Director of WACC and editor of the WACC quarterly "Media Development" was elected as new Vice-President. He replaces Andrew Johnston (Canada), who had receded from his office.

The participants of the General Assembly were guests at the award ceremony of the "Gabriel", the film prize of the Danish Church, on the preceding day. It took place within the annual State Assembly of the Church Councils in Nyborg. The winner was the film "Superbror" (Superbrothers) by Birger Larsen (Denmark 2009). The Gabriel is awarded since 2003 to films from Scandinavia.