11/12/2002

“We have finally realised that the problems of distribution and promotion of the various film industries are common to us all,” said Angelo Barbagallo, the president of Italy’s Independent Producers’ and Authors’ Association – API (it recently joined the ranks of AGIS – Associazione Generale Italiana per lo Spettacolo). Barbagallo was speaking at the end of an international conference entitled “Other People’s Taste”, about the circulation of European films in Europe. The producer felt this event was “important not least because precious time was not spent in trying to find ways of entering the American market.”
While underlining the importance of there being more and improved collaboration between countries, today’s meeting highlighted an important ambition that Europe’s film industry operators share: improving the circulation of nationally-produced European films. The conference examined the relative state of health of the various film industries and discovered they all share a determination to assert their European identity.
“In the 70s the concept of national identity was particularly strong,” said Henning Camre from the Danish Film Institute. “But today everything is different. Once again we are trying to find out who we are in the face of continuously mutating socio-political conditions. Our analysis of this opened a hole that American cinema was only too willing and able to step into and fill, thus creating a new taste.”
Before a packed audience of industry operators representing the leading EU countries, it gradually emerged that it is getting more and more difficult to circulate European films. In the United Kingdom, non-UK European films occupy just a 2 per cent quota of the home market, explained Paul Brett of the British Film Institute, although this institution is determined to increase that number. Rodrigo Gordillo, the president of Spain’s FEECE (Federacion de Entitades de Empresarios de Cine de España) painted a much more complicated picture: “The presence of international films is much stronger than that of their domestically produced counterparts and unfortunately, the exponential growth of theatres in Spain over the last 2 years (we have around 3,600), was not matched by an increase in attendance.”
However, a ray of light with regards to the future circulation of European films was revealed by Giorgio Gosetti, the managing director of Italia Cinema, the agency that promotes Italian cinema abroad: “It is always possible to overcome obstacles. One of the characteristics of European countries is the potential quality of our productions. We must therefore work towards producing a European brand that an immediately recognisable guarantee of quality.”