A century of Swiss film in the spotlight
As the first research of its kind in the history of Swiss film, the study carried out by the Federal Statistics Office (OFS) in collaboration with the Swiss Cinémathèque – ”Swiss film production from 1913-2007” (see here) – paints a revealing portrait of a film industry shaped by its lack of funding.
The data collected by the OFS testify to the glory days of Swiss film: the famous golden age of patriotic films by Praesens Film – which corresponds to a peak in production between 1939 and 1942 (14 features per year) – as well as the birth of New Swiss Cinema 30 years later.
The study above all demonstrates the continuous developments in domestic production, which for a long time amounted to less than ten films per year before reaching an average of 70 features of all genres at the dawn of the new millennium. The report identifies the determining factors of such an increase.
The OFS also looks at films according to their genre. The dominance of documentaries – the pride of the Swiss film industry – comes as no surprise (51% of features), but the historical perspective nonetheless enables us to examine the background to this situation. Indeed, there is a fine documentary tradition, but narrative films often took precedence before they were overtaken by documentaries in the late 1970s.
Documentaries – funded by the Swiss Confederation since 1962 (i.e. eight years before narrative works) – were able to take advantage of digital technology, which is lighter and less expensive than film stock. Moreover, the Swiss refusal to join the European Monetary Union in 1992 undoubtedly benefited the genre, which is easier to finance with domestic funds.
(Translated from French)
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