On the occasion of the Berlinale reception of Deutsches Filminstitut on 15 February 2011, the European Film Gateway will be presented to the invited guests as a special preview. The public launch for the portal is scheduled for late March. 21 European project partners, among them 16 film archives, have contributed to the aim of providing a single access point to Europe's film archives' digital collections.
Luca Martinelli, Principal Administrator at the European Commission and Jill Cousins, Programme Director of Europeana, gave welcome speeches for the first public presentation of the portal. The European Film Gateway will offer access to around 400.000 photos, texts and films when it goes first online in late March. The amount of available objects will grow permanently as the archives will update their contributions on a regular basis.