Talk by Elisabetta Brunella
Secretary General of MEDIA Salles
at the 30th Flanders International Film Festival
Workshop on the Distribution of European Films

Gent, 10 October 2003

I should like to thank the organisers of this session for their invitation to MEDIA Salles, which participates in this workshop by presenting a statistical framework with the intention of facilitating the discussion of today's topic: the circulation of European films in Europe.
As you know, MEDIA Salles came into being almost 12 years ago - thanks to an idea which was both simple and innovatory - to record cinema-going in the theatres of 32 territories in the European continent, from Iceland to Turkey and from Estonia to Cyprus.
Since then, the results of this work have been recorded each year in the European Cinema Yearbook, of which a special edition, preceded by an analysis of the circulation of European films, has been produced especially for the latest Venice Film Festival and, in particular, for the informal meeting of the EU Ministers of Culture.
Some figures from this and similar studies carried out by MEDIA Salles - for example on the occasion of the conference "The Taste of Others", held from 5-6 December 2002 in Rome - will help us to provide a framework for today's debate.
No-one challenges the fact that films can offer a window on the world, a way of discovering how others live. Whether or not this potential is translated into facts is, instead, far less certain.
One of the many ways to form an idea of how far the cinema is truly a vehicle of multiculturalism is to analyse where and to what extent films are produced and where and to what extent they are seen, in particular to what extent they manage to travel outside their country of origin.
What is happening in the cinemas of Europe?
If we take as our reference point the countries analysed by MEDIA Salles, we can see that in 2002 the figures available, in some cases estimates, show that there were 967 million spectators in the 18 countries of Western Europe and 101 million in the 14 countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean Rim.

Table 1: Admissions in Europe

Admissions (x 1000)

And although in 2002 Western Europe recorded an increase in the number of tickets sold compared to 2001, whilst the rest of the continent saw a drop in audiences of around 5%, if we look at the trend from 1998 to 2002, we see that, to varying degrees, Europe has seen an increase in audiences (943 million tickets in 1998, 1 billion, 100 million in 2002, or +13.3%).
An analysis of the market shares obtained by films according to their nationality shows that on average Europeans everywhere have seen a large number of US films, in some countries a fair number of domestic films and almost everywhere few films from neighbouring countries.

Graph 1 and Table 2: Breakdown of Admissions in the European Union according to Origin of Film

Over the past 7 years in the European Union, between 65 and 77 spectators out of 100 have seen a film made in the USA, between 14 and 21 a film from their own country, between 7 and 11 a production by their European neighbours. No more than 4, but some years only 1, have chosen a film from the rest of the world. Nevertheless, the differences between one country and another and in individual years are quite pronounced, as emerges from the following four graphs.

Graph 2: Market Shares according to Origin of Films in Western Europe - 2002

Graph 3: Market Shares according to Origin of Films in Western Europe - 2001

Graph 4: Market Shares according to Origin of Films in Central and Eastern Europe - 2002

Graph 5: Market Shares according to Origin of Films in Central and Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean Rim - 2002

* New releases only.            TR: percentage on admissions

Focusing in particular on the graph mentioned, which shows the breakdown of admissions in the European Union according to the origin of films, a two-yearly cycle can be seen for non-domestic European films (1) which, in 1997, 1999 and 2001, manage to cross the 10% threshold in the European Union.
This trend, marked by peaks and troughs, also appears in graph 6.

Graph 6 and Table 3: Market Shares of European Films (excluding domestic films)

The trend should be compared to the observation of another phenomenon, i.e. the concentration of admissions to European films for the 3 titles most widely seen.
This concentration can reach decidedly high levels, as appears in the following tables

Graph 7 and Table 4: Density of Admissions to top three European Titles

In 2002, for example, the density reached 27.2% in Italy, 45.6% in France, 50.2% in Spain. In other words, the fortunes of so-called "non-domestic" European films seem to be linked to a few, or very few, "attractions".
If, in 1999, non-domestic European films in Spain reached the exceptional share of 19.3% (25.2 million tickets), the merit is largely due to a handful of highly successful titles, such as "La vita è bella", "Notting Hill", "Astérix et Obélix contre César".

Graph 8: Share of Admissions according to Origin of Films: Spain

If it is true that Europeans do not, generally speaking, see many films by other Europeans, in 2002, the largest market shares by non-domestic European films were to be found in Switzerland (28.4%) - which enjoys a unique linguistic and cultural make-up, resulting in the fact that films in Italian, French and German are all perceived to some extent as "domestic" - in Belgium (16.3%), in Spain (12.8%) and in Italy (12.9%), what is more striking is the "irregularity" in the amounts (peaks in admissions - concentration on very few titles) as well as in space and time.
Let us follow the "journey" (in other words the results obtained in the various European territories) of the five European films which, according to the European Audiovisual Observatory, obtained most admissions in 2001.
Let us look at their career in 2002, as well, and, where possible, in 2003.
To elaborate this picture, which also includes tickets sold in the films' countries of origin, we have used data from the European Audiovisual Observatory (which covers 70% of the market) and from MEDIA Salles, where our sources manage to cover the whole market.
As far as space is concerned, we can see that not all of these "European champions" have experienced truly international distribution.

Table 5: Top five Films according to Admissions in Europe in 2001

Table 6: Top five Films according to Admissions in Europe in 2001 (number of admissions in 2002)

If Amélie drew audiences in 23 European countries outside France, Der Schuh des Manitu was only released in two other countries outside Germany in 2001 - and these were German-speaking. In other words, as the following table shows, it obtained 82% of its admissions at home in 2001 and 95% in 2002. This situation may improve slightly following its distribution in Poland and in Turkey in 2003.

Table 7: Der Schuh des Manitu (Germany - 2001)

In terms of time, we can see that European films hardly ever manage to achieve "simultaneous" international circulation.
The following figures, which show the circulation of Billy Elliott, Dancer in the Dark and Les Rivières Pourpres, point to a sort of "disharmony" in release dates.

Table 8:
BILLY ELLIOT (UK, 2000)

	2000	2001	2002
A	27 982	49 745
B		249 447
BG		5 333
CH	111 999	343 497
CY		1 766
CZ		32 480
D	549 178	824 057
DK		68 665	2 049
E	250 464	1 935 227
FR	257 958	2 278 036
UK	3 893 407
GR		221 073
HU		25 252
IS		9 534
I		1 154 600	2 652
L		17 350
LV		3 664
NL	5 696	152 718
PL		71 670
P		95 757
S	13 773
SI		33 708
TR		50 943
US	3 108 219	909 101
Total year	8 218 676	8 533 623	4 701

Table 9:
DANCER IN THE DARK (DK, D, NL, F - 2000)

Table 10:
LES RIVIÈRES POURPRES (F, 2000)

We have seen some very fluid trends. But is there any sign of something stable?
Without doubt the leading role of French and English films. The following tables, which show the situation of European films both on the large markets such as Spain, Italy, or France and on smaller ones such as the Czech Republic or Hungary, indicate that, despite clear variations, French and English productions are general at the top of the classifications. Italian films tend to resemble the course of rivers in the desert which at times disappear and at others reappear, sometimes in full force.

Table 11:
Share of Admissions according to Origin of Films: Spain

Table 12:
Share of Admissions according to Origin of Films: Italy

Table 13: Share of Admissions according to Origin of Films: France

Source: MEDIA Salles elaboration of CNC data

We can see that, from the data provided by the CNC, over the past five years Italy's share of the non-domestic European films seen in France is fairly low, with an exception in 1998. Of the roughly 3.6 million French spectators who saw an Italian film that year, as many as 3.2 million chose the same film, i.e. "La vita è bella".
Once again we witness the same phenomenon observed at a pan-European level, in the concentration of tickets for European productions on a tiny number of films with high international appeal.
We can also see that Italian films are generally those most widely seen by Europeans after British ones.
However, if the UK cinema can count on a number of spectators that - always given the previously mentioned differences from year to year concerning European films - remains fairly high, Italian cinema - like Spanish - follows a trend marked by peaks and dips.
It should be remembered, however, that the previously mentioned tendency to consider co-productions as domestic films, means that the weight of non-domestic European films seems to be less than it really is - this is the case of "La stanza del figlio" which, in the CNC statistics, is considered a French film.
This choice means that over eight hundred thousand tickets sold by Moretti's film are missing from the data on the admissions obtained by Italian films in 2001.

Table 14:
Share of Admissions according to Origin of Films: Czech Republic

Table 15:
Share of Admissions according to Origin of Films: Hungary

Given this "irregularity", it would seem that we can confirm our initial statement ("Europeans do not see many films by other Europeans") but we can also locate the crucial problem, that is the lack of a constant supply of those products that would make it possible to at least maintain the rate of admissions found during "peaks" over time, and which prove that there certainly are Europeans that would like to see more films by their neighbours.

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Note:
It should be pointed out that the statistics on admissions obtained by European films suffer from the lack of a definition of "co-production" shared by all European countries, which sometimes makes it difficult to distinguish between admissions in the home territory and those outside it, with frequent over-estimation of domestic shares (cfr. J. PH. WOLFF, Admissions were up. Was it due to European Films?, "European Cinema Journal", 2002, 3).