FFA abandons digitisation plan
Last week, the directors of the FFA (German film regulating body) discussed at length and rejected the national digitisation project (instigated by Culture Minister Bernd Neumann), which they proposed in mid-June. The FFA had planned to allocate €40m of its budget (over five years) to this technological restructuring.
The initiative’s secondary objective was, in fact, to settle the legal dispute between the FFA and exhibitors who have protested against the unconstitutionality of the tax on admissions. It thus carried the condition that the exhibitors in question withdraw their complaint and stop making their tax payments "under caveat" (in a way that prevents the FFA from investing this money in production, which in turn jeopardises the whole industry).
However, against the recommendation of the HDF (Germany's main exhibitors' association), the exhibitors concerned refused to withdraw their complaint.
FFA president Eberhard Junkersdorf expressed his regrets that a joint digitisation plan devised by the industry as a whole and the authorities could not be introduced, given the hopes and efforts made on both sides.
(Translated from French)
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