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Szolnok Conference 04: Trans-Europa Express
Between Eastern and European Countries
By Daniela Bisogni

First, a brief look at the past to introduce the actual situation. There is a present need for original and strong stories. Europe has become larger. There are fewer borders, so politics don't make the difference anymore. Money makes the difference. The new limitations are imposed by the power of capitalism. All over the world, major distributors (mostly Hollywood) dictate to both national distributors and local cinema theatres what to distribute, where, and when. They usually say to cinema owners, for example: "I'll give you the latest Spiderman or Tom Cruise and you, in exchange, will guarantee me the distribution of the other 10 titles of my group, each one for at least two months, writing down the dates in our contract."

What happens to Italy in this regime? As most other European countries it becomes impossible to set the dates for our own National and European movies. This makes it impossible to schedule adequate ad marketing and thus, these films are released at the last moment, when eventually an American movie is taken off from the screen beforehand.

There is now a new tendency in big-budget movies: a relatively bad performance of some special effects due to the lack of a strong story, Matrix Revolutions is a good example. In this perspective, it is not by chance that a major portion of the two latest Matrix movies were generated on computer (it is well known that Keanu Reeves devolved part of his fee to the special effects department). When Keanu Reeves wears eye-glasses, the computer is doing the acting. Roland Emmerich well understood the problem posed by the excess of special effects in a movie and the need of strong stories for the public: in fact his Independence Day was mostly an apocalyptical special effects big-bang movie with no relevant story in it. However, his latest The Day After Tomorrow has special effects and a touching story on global polar thawing. So more than ever there is a need for stories.

In the times and areas of the iron curtain, it was relatively easy for filmmakers to make good movies: they had the financial support from the Government and only one problem, censorship. And most of the times this problem became a creative impulse for directors who are now listed in the history of cinema (Kieslowski, Wajda, Meszaros, Passer, Zanussi, Jancso, Szabo and many others).

Now , little financing comes from the Eastern States, but the new directors are trying anyway to experiment with new forms of expression: the story is sometimes no longer appealing to them, and they prefer to narrate a film of atmospheres, faces, nature, with no plot. European cinema has to get back to telling stories.

Then, some facts and figures about European audiences in recent years. National European and American quotas (from European audiovisual observatory).

2003 was a bad year for cinema in Europe, and not only for European films. An increased number of movies were completely produced (748), 25 more than in 2002 (+3%). But 46 million fewer people went to the cinema than in the previous year. This means that a total of 954 million tickets were sold, —4.4% down from 2002. In Italy the phenomenon was less evident, only two million tickets sold which means a —1.9% (from 111 millions spectators in 2002 to 109 million in 2003). A negative tendency appeared strong in Luxembourg (-11.4%), Germany (-9.1%), Spain (-2.3%), France (-5.6%), and Great Britain (-4.9%). Sales were stable in Greece (0.0%) and Ireland (+0.6%). For the new countries of the European Union the figures are even worse, with the exception of Latvia (Lettonia) (+1.8%), the Czech Republic (+13.5%), Hungary (+0.6%) and Cyprus (+12.0%): the worst of the rest were Estonia (-18.2%) Lithuania (-27.3%), and Poland (-8.2%). Outside the European Union the European Audiovisual Observatory noted a great growth in countries such as Russia (+23%) and Bulgaria (+51%), probably due to the creation of multiplexes.

American movies had a growth (+1.6%) in the European market for 2003, coming to 72.1% in all of the European Union. European movies make only 6.3% of their incomes outside national borders. The movies of others regions of the world represent only 2.2% of the market. Nemo dominated European box-offices in 2003, with almost 38 million tickets sold (37,714). After that came Matrix Reloaded, The Curse of the Black Pearl with Johnny Depp, and The Lord of the Rings. Two British comedies, Johnny English (14 millions tickets sold, 11th place) and Love Actually (12 million tickets sold, 14th place) are the only two European movies placed in the top 20, in the general classification. Right after those, we find Goodbye Lenin (9 million tickets sold), and Taxi 3 (7 million tickets sold). In 2003 only 6 European movies, Johnny English, Love Actually, Goodbye Lenin, The Pianist, Die Another Day and Calendar Girls made more than 20% of their income outside their home country. European movies have not a better performance in the United States (from 4.5% in 2002 to 3.3% in 2003).

Thanks to Goodbye Lenin in Germany national production had a growth to national box-office from the 11.9% for 2002 to 17.5% for 2003. But France is the country that sees the most national movies: in 2003 it held 24.8% of the market (35% in 2002), followed by Denmark (25% in 2003), and then Italy (21.8% in 2003 and 22.2% in 2002).

The movies of the new members of the European Union were practically absent in the theatres. Just 15 films from these 10 countries were distributed to the original 15 members states, and all told, they sold 76,221 tickets, representing a market share of 0.01%.

From Italy and France come the only positive signs: in 2003 the number of productions that were 100% national was 98 (96 in 2002), in France 105 made in France in 2003. Those two countries, together, represent almost 1/4 of the entire European production of the 25 countries, in 2003. Looking closely at the positions of the European movies most seen in the 15 original European members, in the top 20 we find four Italian movies, but only two of them (La Finestra di fronte, Ricordati di me) were distributed outside of Italy. The other two, Natale in India (12th) and Il Paradiso All Improvviso (20th) made so much money, in Italy alone, that they appear among the top most seen European films in Europe, even if they were not.

New Tendencies in Europe

A new tendency in European cinema: big and medium budget movies made by co-productions that result from many small productions put together. We have a good mix when the artistic integrity of the author is preserved. Films such as The Tulse Luper Suitcases by Peter Greenaway (production: Barcelona, Luxembourg, Budapest, Roma, Berlin, Moscow) is a project that covers all the twentieth century and minimum three feature films, all presented to major festivals. These movies also introduce a new tendency: good quality films made in digital, which are financially much less expensive and don't deteriorate. But among the co-productions, there are also movies, such as The Transporter produced by Luc Besson with the American Fox, which are, in some ways, mere imitations of US thriller/action movies.

The new path is indicated by Eros, a film by Michelangelo Antonioni, Wong Kar-wai and Steven Soderbergh, a production that took more than six years to finalize. But the interesting fact is that each section of the three-episode pic is produced by the author, and the Italian section, by more than one partner. And each of the three international partners control a section of territories in which to sell the movie, having divided the world in three major groups. Even if it is a three-episode movie, with very different parts, it has common paintings, at the beginning and at the end of each film, and a song dedicated to Antonioni by Caetano Veloso. Some other examples are La Femme de Gilles (France, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland and TV Belgium) by Frederic Fonteyne. His previous feature, Liason pornographique, was a box-office hit in Italy and in most of Europe. Le chiavi di casa (France, Germany, Italy, Arte, and TV France, Germany, Italy, Sky Canal, Eurimages, Filmboard Berlin) is another interesting co-production.

New Tendencies: Homemade Films

It's the time for homemade films, not only for budget reasons: for instance in China 20-23 year-old directors make movies that, in a clandestine way, arrive at festivals. From there they start to be seen internationally. There are some interesting films that even won prizes, such as Blind Shaft (Golden Bear, 2003), Enter the Clowns and Unknown Pleasures.

There are costs to make homemade digital movies: 4,000 Euros for a mini DV camera, used even for professional films; 8,000 Euros for the transfer from digital to feature film; 10,000 Euros for a cameraman/director of photography, editing man, sound man, rent of a studio and technical props. Total cost: 23,000 Euros, if the actors work for free. Soon, digital movies could be in all theatres of the world, simultaneously. There is the big problem of piracy. It's a problem not only in Europe (where from the first day of the release of a film copies are available on the streets in DVD), but also in the Far East where a DVD copy is enough to show a movie in the forest for many people. Already, many festivals show films in digital version, and there are also festivals devoted only to the digital format. But the cinema of the future is in the short films. Only in Italy there are a hundred festivals solely devoted to shorts.

Daniela Bisogni
© FIPRESCI, 2004

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