Leading overseas television producers and investors will be fishing for financing from Bermuda-based insurance companies while attending next week's Bermuda Film Festival.

The team of international experts will be on the Island to participate in workshops on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week, and will be taking advantage of being on the Island to talk to the big money men of the insurance world.

According to Adam Page, a former investment banker who is the CEO of London based Ottawa Consulting Group and is leading a panel on raising funds, insurance is a key money spinner for the movie makers.

He said: "Insurance now plays a key role in film production financing and important advances are currently being made in terms of risk management and risk assessment in this field. We shall be meeting with several leading insurance companies during the course of the festival with a view to exploring this side of film finance.'' Mr. Page's 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 the company's work in the last two years has centred on the use of insurance in film production financing.

Mr. Page will be speaking at a sessions entitled Money Matters: Raising Financing for Independent Film on Tuesday.

The workshop will last two hours and has on its panel five other people behind films that have the arduous task of raising tens or even hundreds of millions dollars.

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.

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 a Munich law firm.

BUSINESS BUC MOIVES MPC