EU Referendum

Showing posts with label films. Show all posts

link[i-link]Perhaps it is nostalgia for my mis-spent youth but I have a weakness for Soviet propaganda films. Actually, all Soviet films were propaganda one way or another but some more so than others. "Putyovka v zhizn" (A ticket into life) was one of the better early ones. In fact, it was the first Soviet talkie and dealt with the fate of the bezprizorniki, the homeless children and teenagers, displaced by the civil war and its aftermath. As it happens, even more were displaced by the murderous collecivization campaign but that was not mentioned then or afterwards.

According to this and one or two other films, the youngsters eventually found themselves in youth camps, organized according to the relatively enlightened educational principles of Anton Makarenko.

There was a good deal of living your lives for the community but also emphasis on physical labour, education and individual responsibility in a non-individual sort of way. Sadly, the reality was not even the way Makarenko would have liked it. Most of the youngsters were rounded up and either killed or sent off to tough adult penal colonies.

The propaganda was powerful though and I still think many of the films were quite good. Many, as it happens, were absolutely terrible and into that category I would place the wretched "Battleship Potemkin".

How does this concern us on this blog? The question has arisen again: does state subsidy produce good art or entertainment. Specifically, does it produce better films. By and large, I would say, no, though some exception must be made for the British quota quickies of the thirties. Most of them were terrible but one can find the odd good one.

The EU, as it is to be expected, is a great believer in subsidizing the cinema in order to overcome American cultural hegemony. I have met people who really do talk that way, unbelievable though that may sound.

To this end, Hollywood Reporter tells us:

European filmmakers can continue claiming government grants for their movies for another 2 1/2 years, until 2009, the European Commission has ruled.

The commission -- the European Union's executive authority -- made the decision just two weeks before the regime for state subsidies was due to expire.

EU information society and media commissioner Viviane Reding said the extension will give businesses and governments the legal certainty needed to keep investing in European films, TV series and other audiovisual works. "Today's decision gives all stakeholders the agenda for the definition of the future rules," she said.

OK, so they have that bit about the Commission wrong - it is far more than the European Union's executive authority - but it is a mistake that is easy to make for people who are not particularly interested in the politics of the EU. And it is not nearly as silly as Commissar Reding's comments about legal certainty and stakeholders having the agenda for the definition of the future rules. Imagine how bad would be the films she made.

Films are exempt from the usual rules of the Single Market and no state subsidy. Other sections of the economy can be exempt in practice but films are in theory as well.

Total government aid for EU filmmakers is estimated at €1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) a year,more than half of which is provided by the French government. Filmmakers argue that they need the exemption from the usual EU state aid rules as cinema is a very specific sector and European films have a very low market share.

Of course, it may be that their market share is low because, being subsidized by the state, the filmmakers do not feel they have to make good films or even films that anybody wants to see.

Certainly, subsidy has not made the films any more popular.

Last year, 926 million cinema tickets were sold in the EU, 3.6% more than 2005. European films accounted for 28% of these, compared with 25% the previous year. The EU's MEDIA program of direct European aid to filmmakers provides an additional €755 million ($1 billion) in subsidies over a seven year period.

There seem to be only two solutions and one of them is completely impractical these days. One can either ban the cinemas from showing any but EU subsidized films (that's the impractical one) or one encourages filmmakers to produce films that people want to see. That is not just impractical but completely impossible.

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donnersmarck_500[i-donnersmarck_500]Many of our readers will feel well-merited contempt when I acknowledge a weakness for the Oscars razzmatazz. I am quite looking forward to all those comments on the forum that show how superior the commenters are to me.

The reason is that I like films, though I rarely prefer films of the last thirty years to those that had been made before. Still, one likes to know what is going on in the film world (which is why I am addicted to the Libertas site) and, beside, the Hollywood luvvies are always good for a laugh.

A good deal of attention has been given to the preposterous spectacle of Leonardo di Caprio looking with deep reverence at Al Gore while presenting him with the Oscar for best documentary for “An Inconvenient Truth”. Some of those who wrote about it, including this blog, pointed out that it is highly unlikely that either of them had arrived to the presentation in a horse and buggy. It is much more likely that they and all the other luvvies, who applauded Gore to the skies, had come in large, gas-guzzling limousines, some, including Gore, having flown in on polluting Gulf-Stream jets. (Oh wait, I forget, they have all purchased carbon offsets. Or something.)

There were a few interesting aspects, not least the fact that quite a few of the prizes appeared well deserved. And, of course, we know who won the Best Actress award: our own Dame Helen Mirren, one of the best actresses of her generation, who had appeared in a spectacularly attractive dress and clutching a Union Flag. Her acceptance speech included words of admiration for the Queen, whom she had played in the eponymous film.

A successful British film (a rarity in itself these days), favourable words about Her Majesty and that Union Flag. Dear me. No wonder the film was ignored by the Commissar responsible for the Media, Viviane Reding, even though, as EU Business reports, she was quick to claim a bit of the Oscars glamour, saying that Europe’s film makers continue to “fight hard and with confidence for market success also outside Europe”. But not, of course, the British ones who show the Queen in a good light.

Well, what are these film makers and how is it that Commissar Reding can claim credit for their success?

When it comes down to it, there was only one: the winner of the Best Foreign Language Film award, a young German director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, with his work: “Das Leben der Anderen” (“The Lives of Others”). It was noted that Cate Blanchett seemed utterly stunned when she handed over the prize. This was …. Sshhh …. Whisper who dares …. An anti-Communist film.

The main character is a Stasi officer who begins to understand the wrongness of the system he serves through one of his jobs. Needless to say, Herr von Donnersmarck was asked by the journalists whether it had any relevance to the United States under Bush and replied tactfully. One does wonder about the sheer idiocy of somebody who can ask a question like that.

One also wonders how the Hollywood luvvies took to him thanking “Schwarzenegger for teaching me that the words "I can't" should be stricken from my vocabulary”.

Now, where does Commissar Reding come in? Well, it seems that the film “benefited from the EU's Media programme of support for the European audiovisual industry”. Not, I hasten to add, in its production, which may be why the EU was omitted from the acceptance speech, but some money had been handed over to help with the distribution.

The 500,000 euros (660,000 dollars) of EU funding for the film went not to producing the film, but to help boost its distribution in cinemas and on DVDs outside Germany.

Is that enough to claim kudos for the European Community?

There are two other reasons for the EU claiming that bit of Hollywood glamour. One is that Al Gore’s somewhat hysterical “documentary” drew on some results produced by the EU-funded EPICA environmental project and the other is that “the technical achievement Oscar went to a collaborative project supported by the EU's Marie Curie Research Fellowships”.

Well, the second one is a little more complicated than that.

Dr. Bill Collis, Simon Robinson and Ben Kent from The Foundry, a British visual effects company, together with Dr. Anil Kokaram from Trinity College Dublin and video processing group Sigmedia were honoured with an Oscar for the development and design of editing software known as the Furnace.

The collaboration between the two teams was supported by the EU's Research Framework Programme through its programme of Marie Curie Fellowships.

The Furnace software helps to delete from the screen any actors, wires or other objects which the director would rather not reveal to the viewer.

The software has been used on a range of high profile films including Casino Royale, The Da Vinci Code and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

What any of this has to do with European film-making or its achievements, is anybody’s guess.

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