11/12/2002

The following question “What consequences has the current financial difficulties had on European film distribution and exhibition?” was thrown at industry professionals with the following results.
Valerio de Paolis of Italy’s BIM Distribuzione said, “In France, Spain and Italy, the main problem is the drop in films being bought by the Pay-TVs. Furthermore, Italy tends to air European films late at night saving the prime time slots for American films. We need money to obtain the prime time slots.” De Paolis highlighted another major obstacle: the promotion of European films when American blockbusters have access to huge amounts of money set aside for just this purpose. Strong pressure is brought to bear on European distributors to make them enter the promotion vortex, without however any guarantee of earnings at the end of all that effort.”

French distributors at the meeting shared De Paolis’s opinion. French films have raised their profile in European markets because the more expensive it is to buy a film, the more you have to invest in promoting it. Under the new policy adopted by Canal+, these risks got even bigger than before since the TV channel now buys European films for less than in past years. As a result: the market has shrunk and is experiencing a phenomenon of concentration in film sales and exports; 20 French films represent 80 per cent of French film sales.
A similar picture was drawn by Belgian distributor and exhibitor Werner Lanneau of ABC Distribution & Cinemien. “In Benelux we have too many films and not enough screens. As a result small independent distributors are weakened or disappear. Today it is almost inpossible to sell films to Pay-TVs. As a consequence small distributors buy fewer products and exhibitors have fewer screens.”
Polish distributor and exhibitor, Marcin Piasecki of Gutek Film Ltd. however had a word of hope for European cinema: “In Poland, Amélie was seen by 750,000 filmgoers, twice as many as turned out for SpiderMan and Minority Report.”