19/12/2005

The law voted last Summer created the Polish Film Institute, ensuring that its budget will be as high as the amount spent in 2004 (around €5.2M from the Ministry of Culture). The Institute is in charge of implementing governmental policies concerning cinema, that is, of 'creating the best conditions to develop productions and co-productions, inciting and supporting the development of all cinematic genres, especially artistic ones, supporting beginners and helping young filmmakers develop their artistic skills, providing financial support to new projects, production, distribution and promotion'. The €5.2M should however represent only 20% of the budget of the Institute (€25.4M). The national fund dedicated to promoting culture will add 1.5M but the main financing source of the Institute is the 1.5% tax on all benefits made compulsory by art. 19 of the law for all exhibitors, distributors, TV channels, digital platforms, and cable TV channels which should bring 18.7M. This article is actually controversial: private investors vehemently denounced it as a proof of 'bureaucratic state protectionism'. It was quite uneasy to find a compromise between the artistic operators, in favour of this article, and the investors. After months of hot debate, a large information and promotion campaign launched by the Minister of Culture Waldemar Dąbrowski and supported by artist and intellectuals finally led to the drafting and approving of the new law (read news of 13/7). However, in spite of the fact that the law is compatible with the European system, its most stubborn opponents decided to take it to the Constitutional Court for an alleged violation of two constitutional rights —freedom and equality of all individuals and all business-people.

This argument against the law is mostly based on the fact that old state-studios and private investors (who have existed for fifteen years at most) do not have the same economic potential. Besides their regular activities, studios receive copyright money for all the films produced over five decades and sold to TV channels and they derive great real-estate advantages from the fact that they use premises partially taken care of by the state, which saves them a lot of money. As far as private investors are concerned, their economic potential has not exactly be measured yet, which makes them doubt their capacity to cope with the new fiscal scheme, except for TV channels who are definitely the strongest private operators and should therefore, according to the others, pay more.

The creation of the Polish Film Institute entailed the liquidation of the three agencies attached to the Ministry. The fact that they all passed on their responsibilities to a single institution worries some of the Polish film operators, but Agnieszka Odorowicz, who was appointed in October by Minister Dąbrowski to direct the Institute, uses the economic argument to contradict the pessimists: the Ministry's financial input will only be of 1 million euros, that is, much less than the sum the three agencies used to receive.

What bothers some members of the film industry is not the concentration of all the responsibilities within a single institution so much as the power vested in its director. Indeed, as the investors who will have to pay the new tax underline, the law gives them not way of controlling expenses. It is true that five of the eleven members of the Board of advisors are these investors' representatives, but they are only consultants —the director eventually makes all the decisions.
The other thing the law does not quite make clear is the definition of an 'artistically ambitious film', which according to the text gets higher support (up to 90% of the total budget). Polish producers also criticise the vagueness of the definition of a 'Polish film', saying that, interpreted in a certain way, it could lead to giving more money to multilateral co-productions for which Poland is only a minority partner (cf. infra).
The question of whether state-owned structures (especially studios) should be privatised is a different, but crucial, issue. There again, the new law is ambiguous. Finally, the other problem at stake is of a political nature: the law and ensuing recruitment campaign to complement the staff of the Institute seemed a little overhasty. Wasn't this zeal related to the following October 2005 elections and the change of leaders?

Despite its alleged defects, the vote and enforcement of this law was a necessary response to a critical situation: the Polish film industry was nearly bankrupt and really could not wait. The new law levels things out, at least in principle, and gives Polish filmmakers roughly the same resources as their European colleagues.