Cinema and audiovisual media

A Survey on National Cinematography
Conclusions
Maintaining cinematographic diversity

There would appear to be two main conditions for the preserving an equitable degree of image diversity and thus a pluralistic cultural supply: first, and as a pre-condition, the ability of governments to co-finance local production of images and to stimulate quality and quantity. The second main condition is the capacity to exchange these local productions on national markets.

The survey data reveal three main categories of countries, based on production capacity over the past few years. They show that the overall indicators are consistently related to this one central indicator. Large- and medium-producing countries are major exporters and importers as well. Their trade is also proportional to the volume of their own national markets, but it is less significantly related to the size of their economic situation.

A more important correlation appears between the legal and organizational degrees of the cinematographic sectors (indicator = 0.88) than between the number of public grants available to producers, directors and distributors (indicator = 0.61).

It would seem that below a certain level of social and economic status there is no cinema production. With a GNP of less than US$ 1,200 and/or a United Nations Human Development Indicator (HDI) of 0.600, some 88 countries of a total of 185 have never had their own film production. Does this mean that 465 million people in the world will not able to see their own image reflected?

Nevertheless, the rapidly evolving methods of production (video and digitally processed images) are already considerably lowering technical production costs, thus enabling non-producing countries to develop an autonomous audiovisual sector tailored to their own cultural policies and market capacities. Nowadays it is easy to transpose images from one storage medium to another during the production or distribution processes. This is the case in Africa and Asia, where several governments have encouraged cinema owners to adapt their theatres by installing video screens.

To build and maintain national production capacity, state financial support and legislative protection for authors, as well as professional training programmes, are prerequisites. The establishment of such a broad structure demands close co-operation between the state and the professional community. Government regional co-operation with regard to training centres and technical industries seems in most cases inevitable, even in medium-producing nations with a fluctuating production output.

As for those few countries with the largest production capacity, which rely mainly on market forces, the choice of directors and even film topics depends greatly on the expected return on investments. Financially supporting young authors and directors, scriptwriters and independent producers will increase the number of quality films. As the impact of governmental financial interventions in cinema industries might be carefully targeted, a variety of tailored (and temporary) financial incentives could produce quick results without disrupting these fragile markets.

Today government funding exists in fewer than 80 out of the 102 producing countries. This means that those countries with regulatory agencies have developed specific, basic legislation and funding mechanisms for cinema, without which no national film industry can develop.

Therefore, where the political will and regional or national economic conditions exist, the establishment of a governmental cinema policy might be considered as necessary to counter an excess of imported images which would erode the social texture and the sovereignty and cultural identity of a country.

In the final analysis, the capacity of governments to promote cultural industries is rather difficult to grasp through statistics alone. The correlation between the population attending primary school and the number of domestically-produced feature films is rather low (correlation indicator = 0.10). The relation becomes more consistent between the number of released films and that of published books (correlation = 0.46). Nevertheless, some African countries release the same number of films as books, and this, at least, indicates a firm political commitment towards a national audiovisual sector. One reason might be that the funding of film projects in African countries often originates in Western government or private co-operation funds.

As for national markets, the factor best indicating their potential is represented by the volume of national audiences and the number of cinemas (film theatres). These figures are directly linked to the size of the population and, even more, to its urban concentration. The correlation varies between 0.73 and 0.78. However, when we consider national markets in medium-producing countries these figures would seem to be more directly connected with the number of imported films rather than those domestically produced.

An additional remark on film trade is that beyond trade statistics, further study is needed on the attraction of the ‘star system’, advertising and associated merchandising for international productions. In Hollywood these supporting activities amount to 50% of a film’s budget.

Another area remains to be explored: state funding for the audiovisual and cinematographic sectors aims to increase the number of national films, but in order to maintain diversity, the question is not just to stimulate supply; the demand of the consumers for education needs to be taken into consideration as well. It has now become urgent to educate school children through school curricula and to sensitize the public at large through various forms of media. Learning to ‘read’ images might well be the way to increase interest in quality audiovisual productions.

With an average as low as 42 local productions, Africa imports over 2,811 films per year. Cinemas in Arab countries show ten times more foreign than domestically produced films. However, Asia imports only slightly more than one third of the total moving pictures shown in their cinemas. Europe remains the largest importer with 6,000 titles, and produces less than 500 films.

85% of the films shown around the world originate in Hollywood. Copyrights on cultural goods and services generate from US$ 30 to $40 billion yearly. Nevertheless, the excessive difference in film flow worldwide is somewhat compensated by more balanced regional exchanges. Some studies call these ‘cross-border markets’. It appears that several countries in the medium-producing category benefit from a traditional peripheral market defined by a geographical vicinity or common cultural and linguistic identity.

This geographical pattern is recognizable within Asia, where exporting countries such as India, Japan and Hong-Kong SAR may occupy more than one third of neighbouring markets. For instance, Indian films account for 35% of the feature films screened in Bangladesh, and Hong-Kong SAR produces 38% of the films shown in Pakistan. Thanks to strong ‘community’ incentives, European films occupy 20% of most European Union national markets, with the exception of the United Kingdom, which imports a smaller percentage of continental European language films (3%).

As for linguistic homogeneity, the most obvious example remains the English-speaking market, amounting to almost 600 million individuals and accounting for 11.5% of world's population. This is followed by Hindustani films, which amount to 8%, and by French productions, with a potential of 2.5% of the world population.

Despite their potential, several major world languages are not equally reflected in the film trade statistics. This holds for Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Portuguese or Spanish, spoken by nearly 40% of the entire world population.

In 1994, at the conclusion of the so-called Uruguay Round and the signature of the Marrakech Agreement, the World Trade Organization (WTO) succeeded the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was created in 1947. What has been called the ‘cultural exception’ (l’exception culturelle) – a non-written rule by which states reserve the right to keep certain goods like cinema and audiovisuals outside the agreement – was largely accepted during the final negotiations in Marrakech. This issue was on the agenda of the ministerial conference in Seattle in November 1999, but it was never discussed. Despite Seattle’s failure, trade on cultural good and services will undoubtedly remain on the WTO agenda.

Professional associations should therefore advocate the vital role of their governments in protecting artistic pluralism through the promotion of their national cinematographic images and foreign trade. Cultural goods are definitely not simply merchandise. Governments must assume the responsibility of protecting and encouraging a healthy audiovisual sector and, where possible, a specific cinematographic industry through legislation and public funding.

As a consequence of the above-mentioned international trade policy developments, several filmmakers’ associations are already closely co-operating to work out common proposals for the recognition of the specific cultural and artistic role of audiovisual goods.

It is hoped that this survey will provide a contribution to future research focusing on the cultural role of the image industry. Today this sector is the fastest growing economic sector, and official projections for the year 2005 predict an increase of 100% in employment in this sector for some countries compared with the 1990s.

An unbalanced cultural flow would appear to call for a fair equilibration between copyright protection for authors and the general public interest. At stake lies the recognition of a public domain guaranteeing free access to information and the right to the protection of cultural and artistic expression, both recognized by Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Last update 02/10/01