New support scheme
On 30 April, the French minister for Culture and Communications, Jean-Jacques Aillagon announced a series of new and wide-ranging financial measures to help the French film industry
The goal is to diversify the sources of finance and to make shooting films in France more user-friendly. It is hoped these new measures will contribute to pulling the Gallic industry out of its current doldrums. Aillagon said that “a growing number of productions are having trouble getting funded”, the hardest hit being independent productions and companies supplying technical services, which, he said, are experiencing “a crisis without precedent”.
Starting on 1 July the fully comprehensive recovery plan will be put in place. It entails an increase in taxes levied on the sale and rent of home video products that it is calculated will bring in an additional Euros30 to Euros40 million. Home video publishers who invest in French film production will also receive financial support.
Tax incentives and SOFICAs will also be modernised, in order to stem the current trend of producing French films outside France and in countries offering more attractive conditions like the UK, Ireland, Belgium and Germany. Starting in January 2004, French local authorities will be able to set up their very own film production support funds that will be co-financed by the State by up to Euros10million.
The reform also includes a 10 per cent increase in 2003 on box office advances, doubling the current rate of support for development over a two-year period, the establishment of an Observatory of Film production and the opportunity for local institutions to exonerate technical industries from having to pay professional taxes.
In the distribution sector - hit by the contemporary release onto the market of more films than the market can logically sustain - Jean-Jacques Aillagon expressed the hope that industry insiders will come to an agreement and adopt a binding code of behaviour.
On the international front, Aillagon announced an increase in support for foreign sales, that will include pre-financing of films by IFCIC (the Institute for Financing Film and Cultural Industries) according to the given films’ potential to get international distribution. Aillagon promised to defend the French system of financing films both within Europe and at the WTO talks.
(Translated from French)
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