Two Seminars Explore Issues in Contemporary in Film

The Rogers Industry Centre continued its impressive program of Information Sessions with two seminars on 11 September that continued the exploration of contemporary issues on the film scene.

The Face of European Cinema was presented by the European Film Promotion, a pan-European promotional organization that assists in the promotion of European films and talents at the major film festivals in Toronto, Berlin, Cannes and Venice.

Piers Handling, Toronto Festival Director, introduced the session by saying that he felt that European cinema is finally coming out of a dry spell with “the emergence of a new generation of film artists in almost every European country”.

Many of these new auteurs, all of whom have films in this year’s Festival, were present on the panel. Participating directors and their current films included: Asia Argento (Scarlet Diva), Florian Flicker (Austria, The Holdup), Costas Kapakas (Greece Peppermint), Romuald Karmakar (Germany, Manila), Baltasar Kormakur (Iceland, 101 Reykjavik), Laura Mana (Spain, Compassionate Sex), Hans Petter Moland (Norway, Aberdeen), Dominik Moll (France, Harry Is Here To Help), Pierre-Paul Renders (Belgium, Thomas In Love) and Jamie Thraves (UK, The Low Down).

With such a large and diverse panel, there could only be a skimming of issues. However, the central concern seemed to be the issue of globalization of the industry and the challenges for European filmmakers. Hans Petter Moland, whose film is a Norwegian-UK co-production shot in English, offered that the issue was less about nationalism and more about “competing with mega films with mega budgets being produced and distributed by global mega-companies”. He compared the concern of local film industries with the concerns of other native industries that are also losing market share to the multinationals.

Florian Flicker added that it was important for him to make his film using local talent and utilizing local language and dialect, “even though it actually limits the international market”. His opinions were echoed by many of the other filmmakers on the panel, who felt that what was most important was telling the stories that they wanted to tell and then hoping that they have enough resonance to reach out beyond strictly national borders.

Argento shrugged her shoulders about the issue and said that she felt her films “are made to be international, and not specifically Italian”. She confessed that while her current film was entirely shot in her own apartment in Rome, she used footage she took from the Internet for exteriors of Los Angeles, New York and London, where the story seems to be set.

When asked about the pressure that European filmmakers receive about shooting films in English in order to expand their international marketability, the panel reacted strongly. Molland felt that the issue was not so much about making films in English “but in dealing with the problems of access to the mass market”. His latest film Aberdeen is shot in English “but only because that is endemic to the story I wanted to tell”.

Laura Mana told the audience that after the success of her current film in Spain, she was offered to film the next one in English, “as if that was the ultimate compliment”. However, Mana refused the offer, saying that she feels she would only be good at “making films that have a Spanish soul”.

Jamie Thraves, whose UK film The Low Down has the obvious advantage of being in English, said that language was much less the issue. He felt that his own struggles in getting his film seen in his native country is “less a matter of culture than a negative reaction to personal filmmaking”. He said that with the current British film industry in turmoil and the only British hits being light comedies and gangster films, his brand of filmmaking that harkens back to the breakthrough “kitchen sink” films of the early 1960s, was decidely out of fashion and has yet to be widely seen in Britain.

The panel bravely took questions and critiques from the audience, before director Karmakar from Germany shared his frustration. “I am neither a representative of the German culture nor a supporter of a unified Europe”, the director said. “I am an artist who has a story I want to tell who hopes there are audiences interested to listen”.

A second panel presented a variety of experts who discussed The Future of Global Exhibition. Panelists included exhibitors Tsukasa Ariyoshi of Tokyo Theaters (Japan), Tom Brueggemann, Sundance Cinemas (US), Anthony Cianciotta, Cineplex Odeon (Canada) and Joseph Peixoto, United Cinemas International (UK). The lone film distributor represented was Steven Friedlander of Fine Line Features (US).

The discussion was also very wide ranging, ranging from the current shaky financial stability of North American exhibition chains (four theater chains have filed for bankruptcy this year) to shrinking audience for specialized film fare. Cianciotta offered that severe overbuilding has sharply reduced the per screen average for all exhibitors and that a fallout was inevitable but “ultimately healthy for the industry”.

Peixoto said that the reversal was true in other parts of the world, including Europe, which are severely underscreened, and therefore “limit the ability to test the market with specialized fare that must compete for precious screen space with the Hollywood majors”. However, he did see an expansion of theatrical venues in Europe, Asia and the Third World as having the potential for opening up the international markets for all kinds of films.

Brueggemann sees it differently and described the challenge of Sundance Cinemas, which plans to build arthouse multiplexes exclusively devoted to international and independent cinema, to become a home for specialized films in the major markets. Brueggemann even offered that he would be willing to book films that do not find standard US distribution, and would ultimately be able to give undistributed films a kind of quasi distribution by circulating them to Sundance Cinemas around the US, without a US distributor involved. Short films presented before the features is another Sundance Cinemas innovation that Brugeggemann predicted would be widely appreciated by the audiences.

Addressing the coming digital revolution where cinemas will be able to download films from satellites or possibly even receive them over the Internet, Peixote stated that his company has four existing sites that already does digital projection of mainstream films (2 in Germany, 1 in Spain and 1 in the UK), but feels “that unless there is a standardization of technical formats, the growth of digital projection will be delayed”.

Friedlander felt that the digital delivery of films would potentially reduce the high costs of creating and shipping film prints but that other issues will inevitably be raised, most especially the quality of the image. “Quality will need to be approved by directors and cinematographers”, Friedlander offered, “who have been especially critical of the current digital projection quality at the test situations that we have done”.

With no easy solution in sight and with the current theatrical marketplace in financial turmoil, the predictions for the future of theatrical exhibition remain cloudy. However, all panelists agreed that despite the competition from home video, video games and potentially from delivery of films via the Internet, the theatrical experience will continue to be desired by the general public and the preffered method of presentation for filmmakers.

Sandy Mandelberger