Finally: Europe goes digital!

Yesterday it was announced by the AAM (Arts Alliance Media) that a deal has been struck to share the costs of furbishing up cinemas across Europe to suit digital film projection. If you think back at the more than winding road we've been travelling to finally arrive at this junction you may now easily rejoice and hail the new and promising times of a substantially reduced price tag to film productions and ex aequo, a wider range of movies to make it into the theaters.

But easy, not too fast, you might be in for a disappointment if you look at the details. The agreement was reached not with a broad based negotiation partner on the side of content providers like the FIAPF for example, but with Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Pictures International solely. Consequentially, this settlement may affect these studios' back catalogues and current as well as future productions, we may rightfully assume. What with the many countries and their multitude of smaller but at least, I should think, equally creative enterprises that account for all the rest but are not part of the deal, the effect may prove to be less than quite that positive. We all know how it is big Hollywood companies with their blockbusters who firmly hold the reins where control of distribution channels in Europe is concerned, including screens access, it sadly must be added here. If 7.000 screens are now to be thus equipped as has been announced in this context, saving the industry an alleged 1 billion $ in production money a year, an already firm grip on these facilities could very well further tighten and eventually exclude third party content from having access altogether, practically if not nominally.

I'm not wishing for the worst, so I hope, but in my view there is the real danger slowly emerging at the horizon of a soon to be felt technical divide between the big players' monopolized infrastructure and the remainder of independent, well-programmed art-house cinemas, barely surviving – but for how long? Face it, your beloved movie theater that treats you and like-minded aficionados to global content and quality will hardly be able to afford the 50.000 € per screen to meet digital standards by integrating the server/projector set. Taking into account the “way of the world”, which in this case is roughly congruent with the way of the market and consumer behaviour (including your own!), it is easy to see where this will get us, right?

In my opinion this clearly and instantly calls for the right people in the right places to take notice (and action), namely all the respective national, but first and foremost, the European institutional bodies responsible for cultural affairs. Safeguarding cultural diversity and anti-cartel market regulation being their set task and assigned prerogative, ways need to be cleared in order to prevent a dichotomy from taking root in our film landscape that can be nothing but disastrous in its “downscaling” effects. If need be, funds will have to be allocated to ensure independent productions to stay in the market and be lucrative on their own terms. Because obviously, their increasingly preferred option of pursuing an HD facilitated end-to-end work flow would over time see almost any non-aligned film production on a collision course with distribution, meaning: screening outlets. With small, courageous production companies being forced to work on a tight budget anyway, and daring distributors equally happy to avoid the horrendous cumulative costs of any release with 35mm copies at a price of 1.000 € each, you end up with somehow having to cover the expenses for an initial HD to 35mm transfer ranging at about 450-500 $ per minute. Now how do you perform that feat, I wonder?

If anyone concerned is in need of a wake-up call, take this one for a start – and don't say you haven't be warned when it's too late! (You never know what you've got till it's gone, or do you?) Our cultural heritage is deserving of and entitled to state, that is public protection for our common good. And this includes self-expression in the making, the contemporary arts as well.

(pic©Sean Pecknold)