Radical Way to Go in the Film Industry
By Nil Kural

"All co-ops are resistance", said Eliane Raheb in the discussion called "Film Co-ops: Making Films with Friends". Although, this is a statement of only one person, it was true for every speaker. They represented film co-ops all around the world and when you hear their stories about starting film co-ops, it is crystal clear that each of them resisted something else. They got together and formed companies called film co-ops that enable them to produce the projects that they believed in, to shoot their own films or exhibit the films that they choose.

Ulrich Gregor, who is the chairman of a co-op called Friends of German Cinematheque, started his film co-ops with his journalist friends around 1960's and their purpose was to create a platform that exhibited different films that had no medium to be represented. They had their own movie theater after a while and got a place in Berlin Film Festival.

Eliane Raheb, who is a director of films like titled Suicide and So Near Yet So Far, thought the audience was not stupid like many people claimed and believed that their image was not represented in Lebanon so they formed a co-op. They started making their own films and got some equipment so they could shoot films for smaller budgets. They faced the problem of their films not being shown so they started their own film festival called Ayam Beirut al-Cinemaiya (Cinema Days of Beirut). Their aim was to change the society.

Her story resembles the story of Amir Muhammad who formed his film co-op with some award money in Malaysia. One of the successes of his co-op was evident since his new feature Village People Radio Show is shown in Berlin Film Festival this year in the Forum section. Patrick Sobelman also has a film screening that he was looking forward to. He was rushing to the premiere of a film called The Latest Mitterand, which was one of the latest productions of his co-op company that he formed with some producers in France. Barbara Albert, who is also a filmmaker, got together with three of her friends and founded a co-op in Austria called Coop99. The difficulty they faced was finding their right places and figuring out if they operate better as filmmakers or producers. One of their productions, Grbavica, was the Golden Bear winner of 2006 in the international competition.

Of course, success is not easy. So at one point in the discussion, they all tried to answer the question about the conflicts they had faced in their co-ops. All the speakers agreed on one point: if you think that your co-op is bigger than you, you will find your way out of the conflict and the ego problems. They all admitted that they were doing some side jobs in order to get the finance needed for the co-op but all of them were happy about this sacrifice.

Nil Kural

top