Visions of Europe:
The European Parliament LUX Prize, Cultural Prestige,
and the Negotiation of European Identities
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Research Master Thesis
Research Master Media Studies
Supervisor: Dr. Alexandra Schneider
Emil Stjernholm
Second Reader: Dr. Marijke de Valck
Student ID: 6247393
Third Reader: Dr. Markus Stauff
[email protected]
20 July 2012
Emil Stjernholm 1
Abstract
Although much research during the past decades highlight how European filmmakers
negotiate European identities, few studies go behind the scenes of existing panEuropean film institutions in which different agents debate the meaning of these
concepts. By utilizing a synthesis of discourse analysis and ethnographical analysis––
observing jury deliberations, interviewing leading figures, and studying internal
communications––this thesis interrogates the European Parliament LUX Prize and the
grounded interactions, decisions, and controversies that take place in its celebration of
European cinema. By studying the three distinct phases of production, selection, and
celebration, this thesis reconstructs the tensions involved in the definition of
Europeanness. Whereas the production phase of the competition links the support of
European cinema with the need for a shared European culture, the selection and the
celebration phase brings forward the difficulties in defining said culture. Drawing on
these findings, I argue that the concept of European identities is instrumental to this
cultural competition, even while the inherent ambivalences associated with it cause
the actual celebration of cinematic works to become problem-ridden.
Keywords:
prize
studies,
film
europeanization, european identity.
festival
research,
european
film
culture,
Emil Stjernholm 2
Acknowledgements
When with this thesis, a number of individuals have been particularly supportive. I
want to extend my gratitude to these people. First of all, my supervisor Alexandra
Schneider has been an invaluable discussion partner, contributing to this thesis with
enthusiasm as well as practical and theoretical insights. The administrators of the
LUX Prize, Bertrand Peltier and Marisella Rossetti, have been helpful in facilitating
contacts and assisting in retrieving archival material.
Further, during my time in the Research Master program at Universiteit van
Amsterdam, a number of professors have been instrumental to my own development
as a scholar: Markus Stauff for his balanced observations and critical eye; Charles
Forceville, for his kind assistance and good advice; and lastly, Marijke de Valck for
her inspirational research on film festivals. At Lund University, I want to thank
Anders Marklund for taking time to share his views on my project. Additionally, I
want to extend my gratitude to the organizers and participants of the RMeS Winter
School 2012 at Universiteit van Utrecht for providing inspiring feedback on my
research.
I also want to thank my fellow students in the Research Master program, and
particularly Alaina Piro Schempp for many intellectually stimulating conversations.
Last but certainly not least, I want to express sincere gratefulness to my fiancée Anna
Persson for her continuous support.
Emil Stjernholm 3
Contents
Chapter 1
Introduction: The LUX Prize as a Mediator of Visions of Europe ........................ 5
1.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 5
1.2 The Object of Research: The European Parliament LUX Prize .......................................... 7
1.3 Prize Studies and Cultural Value ....................................................................................... 11
1.4 Methods ............................................................................................................................. 15
1.5 Theoretical Framework ...................................................................................................... 18
Chapter 2
The Production of Visions of Europe: Pan-European Film Culture and the LUX
Prize as an Institutional Instrument ........................................................................ 24
2.1 Producing Visions of Europe ............................................................................................. 24
2.2 Competing Definitions of European Cinema..................................................................... 25
2.2.1 Political-Cultural ....................................................................................................... 25
2.2.2 Economic-Industrial ................................................................................................... 28
2.2.3 Artistic-Aesthetic ........................................................................................................ 30
2.4 The Establishment of the LUX Prize as an Institutional Instrument ................................. 31
2.4.1 The Birth of the LUX Prize ......................................................................................... 32
2.4.2 The Value of Film Prizes ............................................................................................ 35
2.5 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 41
Chapter 3
The Selection of Visions of Europe: Decision-Making and its Role in the
Negotiation of European Identities .......................................................................... 43
3.1 Selecting Visions ............................................................................................................... 43
3.2 The Dynamics of Decision-Making ................................................................................... 44
3.3 The LUX Prize and the Negotiation of European Cultural Identities................................ 45
3.3.1 Pre-Selection Phase.................................................................................................... 46
3.3.2 Selection Phase ........................................................................................................... 52
3.3.3 Voting Phase ............................................................................................................... 55
3.4 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 60
Chapter 4
The Celebration of Visions of Europe: Competition Politics and the Negotiation
of European Cinema ................................................................................................. 62
4.1 Celebrating Visions of Europe ........................................................................................... 62
4.2 Politics of the Prize ............................................................................................................ 63
Emil Stjernholm 4
4.2.1 Entering the Competition ........................................................................................... 64
4.2.2 Positioning the Award within the International Prize Circuit ................................... 66
4.2.3 Competition, Prize Winners and the Negotiation of the Award’s Identity ................. 69
4.3 Negotiating European Identities through Competition Politics ......................................... 77
4.4 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 80
Chapter 5
Conclusion: Imagining Visions of Europe .............................................................. 82
5.1 A New Platform for the Negotiation of Europeanness ...................................................... 82
5.2 Avenues for Further Research ........................................................................................... 84
Works Cited ............................................................................................................... 87
Appendices ................................................................................................................. 95
Appendix 1 – List of Abbreviations ........................................................................................ 95
Appendix 2 – Selection Committee Questionnaire.................................................................. 95
Appendix 3 – MEP Questionnaire ........................................................................................... 96
Appendix 4 – Participation in the LUX Prize Competition ..................................................... 96
Appendix 5 – Films in the LUX Prize Competition 2007-2011 .............................................. 97
Emil Stjernholm 5
Chapter 1
Introduction: The LUX Prize as a Mediator of Visions of Europe
1.1 Introduction
Something unique is afoot in Europe, in what is still called Europe even if we no longer
know very well what or who goes by this name. Indeed, to what concept, to what real
individual, to what singular entity should this name be assigned today? Who will draw
up its borders? - Jacques Derrida (1992a: p. 5)
In the post-Wall era, European cinema has emerged as a medium that navigates
between national and supranational interests, mimicking many of the tensions present
in the contemporary European venture at large. While the concept of an
interconnected European cinema can hardly be described as a new one, primary
scholarly interest has traditionally been focused on national cinemas, individual
auteurs and questions concerning European cinema’s artistic tendencies. Yet, as film
scholar Tim Bergfelder argues, after the fall of the Berlin Wall the political process of
European integration has given the topic of European cinema “renewed urgency”,
particularly through the birth of numerous institutions operating on a pan-European
basis (2005: p. 316). Though the notion of European cinema is inherently uncertain
and synthetic concept, the main focus of this thesis––the European Parliament LUX
Prize (LUX Prize)––can be treated as a structured institution that negotiates European
cultural identities hands-on on a day-to-day basis.
Accordingly, this thesis project centers on the relationship between film
culture, cultural identity, and supranational visions, and especially the challenges this
relationship presents. In the seminal book European Cinema: Face to Face with
Hollywood (2005), film historian Thomas Elsaesser sketches a relationship where the
notion of European cinema is highly contingent upon the fashion in which Europe as
a continent is conceptualized. With regard to this, Elsaesser notes that there has
traditionally been a double perspective on Europe: the first is one from without,
focusing on cultural patterns “layered with connotations” that are “subsumed under a
single notion” that is Europe; the second is one from within, emphasizing “the
struggle to overcome difference, to grow together, to harmonize, to tolerate diversity
while recognizing in the common past the possible promise of a common ‘destiny’”
(p. 35). While the former perspective seems like a mesmeric vision of a venerable
Emil Stjernholm 6
Europe of high art, culture, and civilization, the latter perspective emphasizing a
common European destiny is highly interconnected with the project of the European
Union (EU).
Over recent decades, however, this double perspective has been, if not
replaced, at least transformed. In this vein, some sociologists stress that Europe today
should not merely be conceptualized as a continent consisting of multiple different
national legacies or one supranational constellation; focus should be put on
problematizing the theoretical notion of so-called European public spheres and
analyzing post-national structures (e.g. Habermas, 2001). Similarly, Elsaesser argues
that the aforementioned double perspective on Europe must be replaced with a more
complex one, one which takes into account that the meaning of ‘European’ is
becoming increasingly contested by a multitude of sociopolitical factors (p. 36).
Meanwhile, it is no exaggeration to say that in the wake of the financial crisis, the
increasing economical, political and cultural tensions in Europe are on everyone's
lips. But how do the ongoing turmoil and the changing definitions of Europe affect
the concept of European cinema?
In this context, one must note that a number of pan-European film institutions
and practices have emerged from both within and without the European Union since
the late 1980s.1 While many researchers within the field of social science have
performed empirical studies of institutions and policies with a pan-European outlook,
how such a vision influences European cinema has thus far gained little attention in
film and media studies. For instance, the fourth multi-annual European Commission’s
MEDIA program (1991) has become a cornerstone for the European audiovisual
industry. The MEDIA program also funds multiple projects with a pan-European
outlook, such as Europa Cinemas (1992), which aims to stimulate the circulation of
European films. Moreover, there are multiple European Union film festivals
supported by the EU which circulate European films from Toronto to Singapore.
Parallel to these EU-funded practices and their industrial aims, the Council of
Europe’s (founded in 1949) production fund Eurimages (1998) has emerged as an
important support mechanism for European co-productions.
The most recent manifestation of this pan-European trend within
1
For an overview of European media policies since the late 1980s, see Casado, Miguel Angel. "EU
Media Programmes: Little Investment, Few Results." Media, Democracy and European Culture. Ed. Ib
Bondebjerg and Peter Madsen. Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2008. 37-61.
Emil Stjernholm 7
contemporary film culture is the European Parliament LUX Prize, a tool that aims to
promote European films. Despite of the proliferation of these pan-European
institutions, most studies of European cinema today center on filmic texts––that these
institutions often assist in realizing, distributing, and promoting––and these films’
roles as mediators of European cultural identities (e.g. Everett, 2005; Mazierska &
Rascaroli, 2006; Galt, 2007). Accordingly, how these film institutions frame these
cinematic works––and the intricacies, conflicts, and struggles permeating this
process––tends to be neglected. Turning to these under-researched sites of panEuropean film culture, then, provides new avenues to an improved understanding of
the tensions behind European cinema.
Recent geopolitical changes and socio-political developments not only
highlight the complexity of defining what Europe and European identities are, but
also foreground a continuous search for a distinctively European cinematic selfimage. Drawing on this, what role does a new film cultural award like the LUX Prize
play in negotiation of European identities?
1.2 The Object of Research: The European Parliament LUX Prize
This thesis centers on a case study of the annual film award the European Parliament
LUX Prize, an award that not only epitomizes the pan-European ambitions within the
European film industry, but also takes into account the uncertainties complicating the
notion of European identity today. My primary research question is: how does this site
of pan-European film culture negotiate European cultural identities? Secondly, I will
put forward: what is the role of the promotion of film culture in the processes of
creating European identities? In pursuing these questions, this thesis focuses on three
areas of contention––production, selection, and celebration––mimicking the three
main objectives of the LUX Prize: first of all, the prize aims to produce a vision of
Europe, in the sense that it aims to engender a stronger sense of European identity;
secondly, the prize seeks to select films that represent visions of Europe, shedding
light on various aspects of what is means to be European; and lastly, the prize intends
to promote and celebrate the awarded films through both economic and symbolic
measures, fostering a greater affection for European cinema throughout the continent
and the rest of the world.
This thesis is divided into three levels of analysis, which are reflected by the
Emil Stjernholm 8
division of its chapters: in the second chapter, I will analyze the role of the initiators
and the administrators in the establishment of the award and the prize’s identity; in
the third chapter, I will focus on the role of the selection committee and the Members
of European Parliament’s (MEPs) roles as judges and the definitional activity they
partake in; and lastly, in the fourth chapter, I shall study the interaction between the
LUX Prize and the celebrated agents such as filmmakers, actors, and producers. By
questioning the LUX Prize in relation to these three distinct objectives and these three
distinct layers of analysis, I want to argue that this case study offers an improved
understanding of how local sites of pan-European film practices shape the
conceptualization of European cinema today.
The LUX Prize, founded in 2007, is an initiative by the European Parliament–
–which is the European Union’s elected parliamentary wing––which annually rewards
films that celebrate “the universal reach of European values, illustrate the diversity of
European traditions and shed light on the process of European integration” (LUX
Prize: Supporting culture). Despite being a newcomer within the award industry, the
LUX Prize has quickly gained attention from both the film industry and the media.
Being ultimately awarded by the MEPs rather than film professionals, experts or
audiences differentiates the prize from other contemporary film prizes. The prize
attempts to procure increased visibility through collaborations with established film
festivals such as the Venice International Film Festival, the Cannes International Film
Festival, and the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Annually, the number of
films nominated by the selection panel remains stable while the spontaneous
submissions from MEPs and film professionals increase in numbers. In this sense,
gaining attention from both politicians and film professionals contributes to the LUX
Prize growing reputation.
The prize is commonly highlighted as a result of the French MEP Gérard
Onesta’s (Greens/EFA) idea to create a novel measure to boost European film culture.
In a 2007 interview with Parliament Magazine, Onesta discusses the LUX Prize and
notes, “Europe is a project of change and of culture, but we’ve never found the best
means of communicating this” (Parliament Magazine, 2007). By seeing the LUX
Prize as a tool of communication, Onesta suggests that the prize can fill an existing
gap in European cultural policy: namely the gap between the European Union and its
citizens. In a 2008 interview with the Parliament Magazine website, Onesta continues
to emphasize this, in his view, fundamental function of the film prize: “The EU is
Emil Stjernholm 9
often seen by the public as a cold, aloof and far-away project … but many people love
culture and films in particular and I believe such an event can help generate greater
affection for and understanding of the EU” (Banks, 2008). In this sense, Onesta sees
cinema––and especially this film prize––as a valuable bridge between the sphere of
European politics and individual European citizens.
The political importance of prizes, awards, and medals throughout history
cannot be neglected. As the prize scholar James English has argued, the proliferation
of the number of awards during the past century––especially in the cultural sector––
shows that this kind of “symbolic cultural production” is growing increasingly
important (2005: p. 2). Notably, the European Parliament has created a number of
prizes during the past decades, among which the Sakharov Prize, initiated in 1988 and
named after the Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, has gained particular prominence.
This award is given by the Parliament to people and organizations that have made
significant contributions in defending human rights or freedom of thought.2 Similarly,
the European Parliament Prize for Journalism––awarded between 2007-2011, and
recently suspended after heavy criticism3––celebrates different strands of journalism
and their contribution to the definition of the European Union (Marckmann
Andreassen, 2011). While the Sakharov Prize in this sense serves as a tool to
communicate the Parliament’s outlook on contemporary political issues, the European
Parliament Prize for Journalism has centered on journalism dealing with European
political issues. Accordingly, the focus of these prizes is closely linked to the
legislative and definitional functions carried out by the European Parliament.
What markedly differentiates the European Parliament LUX Prize in relation
2
This award, worth 50.000€, is distributed annually on December 10, which is the day the United
Nations signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. For further information on the
Sakharov Prize, see: European Parliament. "Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought." European
Parliament. Web. 18 July 2012. <http://www.europarl.europa.eu/aboutparliament/en/002398d833/
Sakharov-Prize-for-Freedom-of-Thought.html>.
3
In the past year, there has been considerable debate concerning the appropriateness of the European
Parliament Prize for Journalism. Skeptics, such as the Swedish Member of European Parliament
Cristopher Fjellner (Conservatives), have argued that the award ultimately conflicts with the European
Union’s ideals of freedom of the press and media independence. In his criticism, Fjellner quotes the
May 2011 discharge on the general budget of the European Union which similarly rejects the prize in
point 93 as being “inappropriate” and calls for its abolition in 2012. See: Committee on Budgetary
Control. On Discharge in Respect of the Implementation of the European Union General Budget for
the Financial Year 2009, Section I – European Parliament. By Ville Itälä. Strasbourg, May 2011. Web.
29 Apr. 2012.<http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=REPORT&reference=A7-20110094&language=EN>. As of 2012, the official website http://www.eppj.eu/ has been closed, and the
future of the prize is unsure.
Emil Stjernholm 10
to these awards is that it centers on culture and particularly one form of cultural
expression. Moreover, one must note that politics in general, and European Union
bureaucracy in particular, is not usually associated with the glamour and prestige of
film prizes such as the Academy Awards’ Oscar or the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme
d’Or. Thus the question emerges: how does the tension between these spheres––the
political and the cultural––play out in practice?
Although this conflation of parliamentary politics and cultural awards is
unique in its procedure, it is important to note that the LUX Prize is not unmatched in
its scope. On the contrary, there are several prizes instituted by the European Union
that award different forms of cultural expression. For example, the European Union
Prize for Literature, financed by the Culture Programme of the European Union,
celebrates a large number of novels each year and aims to “touch readers beyond
national and linguistic borders” (EUPL: What is EUPL). The winning books are
selected on a national basis, and juries composed by the European Booksellers
Federation, the European Writers’ Council and the Federation of European Publishers
carry out the selection. Another example of awards initiated by the European Union is
the European Border Breakers Award. This prize centers on music and celebrates ten
debuting artists per annum. According to its website www.ebba-awards.eu, the prize
aims to “stimulate the cross-border circulation of artists’ works and to highlight
Europe's great musical diversity” (EBBA: This is EBBA). Further, the main criterion
for the prize is success “outside the home territory”, which is measured through
statistics and votes from radio stations and festivals. Using a similar rhetoric, the LUX
Prize official criteria state that:
The films selected for the LUX Prize competition help to air different views
on some of the main social and political issues of the day and, as such,
contribute to building a stronger European identity. They help celebrate the
universal reach of European values, illustrate the diversity of European
traditions and shed light on the process of European integration. (LUX Prize:
Supporting culture).
Here, it seems that a point of convergence between these three distinct awards––
celebrating different cultural forms such as literature, music and cinema––is the
questioning of borders, both national and linguistic. Furthermore, the diversity of the
European cultural landscape seems to be put in the forefronted in all three cases.
Yet what distinguishes the LUX Prize from these other contemporary
European Parliament prize instruments is the fashion in which politics, cultural
expression and questions of identity are interwoven. First of all, the fact that the
Emil Stjernholm 11
Members of European Parliament act as the judges of this award connects the world
of politics and cinema in a concrete, tangible fashion. What is more, through the
public image of the LUX Prize––such as press coverage and audiovisual and written
promotional material––this perspective is strongly accentuated. When comparing this
formulation to the guidelines structuring the European Union Prize for Literature and
the European Border Breakers Award, it seems that this emphasis on identity politics
is conspicuously absent. In this sense, one must question why cinema and its visions
of Europe are singled out as a particularly salient constructor of cultural identities.
Drawing on this connection between cinema and supranational politics, one
must note that there are multiple agents involved in the LUX Prize negotiating its aim,
practices and ultimately its vision of Europe. Particularly interesting with regard to
this is the LUX Prize decision-making process. A range of European film
professionals take part in the LUX Prize selection committee and its work in
deliberating, ranking and finally choosing the films in the competition. The work of
these agents constitutes one fundamental, yet hidden, practice influencing the LUX
Prize’s vision of Europe. A central task for these film professionals is to articulate and
interpret the LUX Prize criteria. These individuals are also powerful actors within
their own fields, working within the cultural sector with distinct professional ideals,
interests and visions. Similarly, the MEPs, who cast the final vote, interact with these
cinematic works in distinct ways relating to their own lives. By analyzing this
complex decision-making process, dynamics of power and conflicting visions of
Europe can be brought to light.
1.3 Prize Studies and Cultural Value
The LUX Prize trades in symbolic and cultural capital, and as such adds value to
cultural products. While neither this section nor this thesis aims to evaluate the exact
value of the LUX Prize, primarily because such mathematics generally can be seen as
methodologically problematic, the question of what foundation this kind of value
transaction rest upon is inescapable.
Philosopher Jacques Derrida begins his exploration of the mechanisms behind
the act of giving by questioning whether the act of giving is possible. Given Time: I.
Counterfeit Money (1992) questions the philosophical underpinnings that are so
fundamental to the award, to the film prize and to the field of cultural production.
Gifts, to Derrida, constitute a particularly complex paradox because they disrupt the
Emil Stjernholm 12
constant “economic calculation” of circulation and exchange, but simultaneously
through symbolic return complicate the notion of giving (1992: p. 7). This
poststructuralist account of the process of give-and-take is widely influential mainly
due to its controversial conclusion that the act of giving is essentially “impossible” (p.
10). Although controversial, this fundamental paradox proves to be daunting not only
for this line of thinkers. An influential text, and a great influence on Derrida’s work
within this field, is Marcel Mauss’s The Gift: the Form and Reason for Exchange in
Archaic Societies, which approaches the phenomenon of reciprocity and so-called
“gift exchange” from a comparative, ethnographical point-of-view. In doing so,
Mauss analyzes the function of gifts in Polynesia, Melanesia, and tribes in North
America, and stresses the obligations that come with the ‘voluntary’ act of giving; a
sort of “system of gifts” (1923: p. 26). Commonly, this enterprise of gift exchange has
been labeled as a separate ‘gift-economy’, emphasizing that this alternative market
goes beyond the economic market.
For the literature critic and scholar Lewis Hyde, the relationship between art
and the notion of gift exchange is a particularly problematic one. In the book The
Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World (2007), Hyde, himself the
recipient of a MacArthur fellowship (more commonly known as the “Genius” award),
traces the origins of gift exchange through the review of a vast amount of
anthropological sources. This, in turn, lays the foundations for the author’s enduring
exploration of the question: “how is the artist to nourish himself, spiritually as well as
materially, in an age whose values are market values and whose commerce consists
almost exclusively in the purchase and sale of commodities?” (1983: p. xiii). In other
words, the question is how artists can survive in an economy where their labor is
considered a gift. Whereas the work of both Mauss and Derrida focuses on the
circularity of the gift exchange, Hyde deliberately downplays the negative effects of
the gift economy and instead focuses on its function in relation to “the creative sprit”:
the artist (p. 20). While the dichotomy between the market economy and the gift
economy seems rigid, Hyde’s conclusion showcases myriad gray areas for artists
between the two structures: for instance, commercialization, grants, patronage, second
jobs, and awards are all different modes of negotiating market value (p. 291-298).
It is within this paradox of value exchange that the film prize operates as a
cultural institution: between the world of art and the field of the market economy;
between gifts and contracts; between giving and gaining. According to Merriam-
Emil Stjernholm 13
Webster’s Dictionary, the word prize concerns “something offered or striven for in
competition or in contests of chance”.4 At the same time, the etymology of the word is
not only linked to the word price, meaning “the quantity of one thing that is
exchanged or demanded in barter or sale for another … the amount of money given or
set as consideration for the sale of a specified thing”, but to the Latin word pretium,
meaning worth or value.5 In this sense, the etymology reveals prizes’ intrinsic
connection to this paradox of value exchange.
In this sense, a central function of prizes is to serve as facilitators of different
forms of value. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who discussed value and famously wrote
on “capital in all its forms and not solely in the one form recognized by economic
theory” (1986: p. 241), argued that the realms of capital are threefold: first, economic
capital, which alludes to capital that is “convertible into money” (p. 242); second,
cultural capital, which signifies the acquisition of culture in terms of education,
cultural goods and “educational qualifications” (p. 243); and third, social capital,
which consists of acquired connections in the social world. Being a late adapter in the
European prize circuit, the LUX Prize faces particularly difficult challenges in
relation to the distribution of these forms of value. In terms of economic capital, the
LUX Prize award is geared toward subtitling and distribution, aiming to support the
circulation of European cinema and to foster discussions on the political and social
issues of Europe. In terms of cultural capital, on the other hand, the LUX Prize is an
institution whose work centers on ranking films, distributing prestige, and providing
the competing films with a higher status. At the same time, LUX Prize aims to
facilitate connections within the field of European cinema, and thus it aims to
construct a network of social contacts providing formal and informal benefits for the
recipient. In other words, the LUX Prize aims to facilitate different forms of value
amongst nominees and recipients.
According to the literary scholar James English’s The Economy of Prestige:
Prizes, Awards and the Circulation of Cultural Value (2005), the birth of the modern
form of cultural awards dates back to the turn of the 20th century, when the Nobel
Prize for Literature was established in 1901. While prizes have, according to English,
4
For a broader definition of the word prize, see: "Prize." Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary. Web.
03 March 2012. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prize>.
5
For a broader definition of the word price and the Latin word pretium, see: "Price." MerriamWebster’s Online Dictionary. Web. 03 March 2012. <http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/prize>.
Emil Stjernholm 14
existed for over two millennia, the institution of the Nobel Prize marks a shift in form
where the prize is established “as an instrument … eminently well suited to achieving
cultural objectives along three main axes: social, institutional and ideological” (p. 50).
Not only did the prize have an ambitious scope, with no linguistic or cultural
limitations, but the economical contribution was, and still is, of a substantial kind.6 In
its initial stage, the Nobel Prize oscillated between different realms of value, cultural
and economic, and as such attracted vast amounts of attention (p. 51). The reason the
Nobel Prize is underlined as an important starting point, English says, is that it led to
the structure of the prize being subject to “emulation” in both Europe and America
shortly after its institution (p. 28). In this sense, the mass proliferation of prizes
emulating the Nobel format warrants questions concerning how different prizes
approach and negotiate the paradox of value exchange.
As English notes, to simply imitate the Nobel structure––in terms of scope,
institutional structure, and economic grandeur––does not automatically lead prizes to
earn esteem in the process of value addition. As an example of this, English shows
how The Turner Tomorrow Award for unpublished novels, despite awarding a
substantial sum of money to the winner and enlisting prestigious literary referees such
as Ray Bradbury, failed to earn cultural prestige because of a wide range of problems.
For example, critics noted that the contract with Turner’s publishing company, which
was a prerequisite for acceptance of the award, led to questions about the prize’s
“dubious cultural pedigree and all-too-visible commercial motives” (2005: p. 125).
These tensions, moreover, were replicated in the jury panel where different interests,
artistic and commercial, went head-to-head in a public dispute in newspapers and
other media (p. 129). While this is a blatant example of a clash between different
values in the cultural construction of an award’s status, more often than not these
discrepancies are hidden within the organizational structure of the prize.
This opposition in value constitutes a site of contention that demands further
scrutiny in order to uncover the logic in which the European Parliament LUX Prize
distinguishes its own identity as an award. Another important balancing act is the
desire to fill existent, or non-existent, gaps within the awards circuit. Today, prizes
6
According to the www.nobelprize.org, the Nobel estate’s wealth exceeds 1,702 million SEK
(approximately €200 million). The prize amount has fluctuated depending on the prosperity of the
estate’s investments, but today each recipient collects 10 million SEK (€1.145 million). For further
information, see: "The Nobel Prize Amounts." Web. 03 July 2012.
<http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/about/amounts.html>.
Emil Stjernholm 15
not only compete on the same market, but they have distinct roles in cultural politics,
particularly in relation to one another. In this sense, one must recognize that the LUX
Prize is not the sole film prize today adopting a pan-European perspective. In fact,
The European Film Awards (1987)––which structurally emulates the Academy
Awards’ Oscar, with a broad range of prizewinners from music composition to best
director and a major gala where the elite of the European film industry gathers every
year––predates the LUX Prize by 20 years and as such constitutes at once an
adversary and a jumping-off point. What role does the LUX Prize––a mid-level
distribution prize with a specific aim to engender and celebrate the common heritage
of Europe––fill that the European Film Awards does not? In order to understand the
LUX Prize role within the international prize circuit, it is crucial to pay attention to
these historical points of contention and convergence.
1.4 Methods
In this thesis, focus is placed specifically on this film prize––the European Parliament
LUX Prize––given that it is the most recently initiated channel for pan-European film
practices. Being a late adapter in the film prize circuit, its institutionalization stresses
not only how European cinema can be envisioned, but that the institution itself is
simultaneously searching for an identity of its own. To provide a broad analysis of
this film institution, my research synthesizes the analysis of cultural institutions in
terms of production and decision-making with a text-based analysis centering on the
celebration of films. To perform these different levels of analysis, a methodological
synthesis of discourse analysis (cf. Foucault, 1980) and ethnographical text-based
analysis (cf. Ginsburg, Lughod and Larkin, 2002; de Valck, 2007) will be utilized.
For this thesis project, the LUX Prize is not merely seen as a mediator: the
starting point is that this institution’s structures and strategies fundamentally affect the
relationship between the film text and the audience. In order to comprehensively
understand the aim of this institution, this project must explore how the LUX Prize
produces, selects, and celebrates specific views of European cultural identities. By
closely analyzing a site at which these issues are negotiated regularly, this thesis will
bring to light the tensions involved in the construction of visions of Europe. The
institutional aspect of European cinema, however, tends to be neglected in favor of
analyses centering on imagined pan-European cinematic spaces (e.g. Everett, 2005;
Galt, 2007) from a textual point of view. Further, even though numerous publications
Emil Stjernholm 16
highlight the complexity of European film policy (e.g. Moran, 1996; Herold, 2010),
few scholars have attempted to closely study these institutions’ decision-making.
Accordingly, this thesis argues that in order to tease out the role of these panEuropean film institutions in the conceptualization of European cinema, one needs to
focus on the structures and strategies behind these institutions’ decision-making, not
least in terms of what is included––and what is excluded––in the definition of
‘European’.
Here, however, it is important to make a methodological distinction between
discourse analysis and institutional analysis; while the mechanisms governing the
LUX Prize are in the limelight of this project, the main objective is not to study the
social realm of how individuals and groups interact to construct institutions, but rather
to study the discourse these institutions affect through their nominations, awards, and
promotion.7 As such, less emphasis is placed on organizational theory, and more on
the implications of these institutions’ discourse on the notion of European cultural
identities and the conceptualization of European cinema. In doing so, a synthesis of
interior analysis (e.g. what values the jurors stress and what themes are present in
their arguments) and exterior analysis (e.g. what films are chosen and what themes are
presented) will highlight the hidden structures of this film prize and thus question the
role of the LUX Prize as an institution.
From a methodological point-of-view, this thesis moves beyond the existing
paradigm within film studies that emphasizes abstract conceptualizations of European
cinema and instead highlights a grounded site where the negotiation of Europe is
salient. Since the LUX Prize is a European Union Committee on Culture and
Education initiative, its role is under constant scrutiny from political, economical and
cultural perspectives. In this sense, the transparency of the LUX Prize makes it an
ideal case to study the process of symbolic cultural production. In other words, the
aim of this thesis is not merely to sketch how the LUX Prize operates, but to critically
examine the motivations, discussions, and choices made in the construction of the
7
Institutional analysis is a branch of the social sciences devoted to investigate institutions’
composition and how both formal and informal rules govern the social order within organizations or
groups of people. Institutional theory, meanwhile, focuses on the “deeper and more resilient aspects of
social structure”, or in other words how formal and informal rules come into being (Scott, 2005: p.
408). For a more in-depth examination of the different approaches to institutional theory, see: Scott,
Richard W. “Institutional Theory”. Encyclopedia of Social Theory. Ed. George Ritzer. Thousand Oaks:
Sage Publications, 2005. 408-414. Print.
Emil Stjernholm 17
award.
It is important to note that this thesis is divided into three chapters, each
utilizing a synthesis of discourse analysis and text-based ethnographical analysis in
distinct ways. Chapter two centers on the production of the LUX Prize and essentially
how a grounded vision of Europe is produced. In doing so, methodological emphasis
is put on analyzing the public image of the case study (e.g. media image, events,
published material, websites) as well as the hidden process of constructing the award.
Further, ethnographical observations and interviews with leading administrators bring
the role of these key agents to light. Lastly, through the transparency of the
organization I had access to more than 10.000 archival documents covering the LUX
Prize, ranging from 2007 to 2011, upon which I base my analysis of the network in
which these agents operate. Applying a methodological synthesis of quantitative data
research and qualitative interviews, I argue that the production of the LUX Prize
vision of Europe emerges from a position between politics and prestige.
In chapter three, I study the negotiations of European identities involved in the
LUX Prize decision-making process. In terms of methodology, I have observed a
five-hour long jury deliberation in the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium.
From this meeting, the second of the 2012 LUX Prize, I made valuable observations
upon which I draw in my reconstruction of the selection process. Through
interviewing selection committee members, administrators, and Members of
European Parliament, I illustrate the hidden deliberations involved in the selection of
a film to award. Additionally, internal communications between the selection
committee members and the organizational staff serves as crucial data to gain insight
into the intricacies involved in this process. By utilizing this film ethnographical
methodology, I want to argue that the decision-making process is saturated by a
tangible sense of ‘double occupancy’––a concept that I shall elaborate on in the next
section––which both jury members and Members of European Parliament draw upon.
Lastly, in chapter four, I examine the celebration of European cinema in the
context of the LUX Prize. To reconstruct a timeline for the LUX Prize competition
between 2007 and 2011, I have studied a broad range of data, including promotional
material, press coverage, and internal documents. Most centrally, interviews with
nominated and winning filmmakers, actors, and producers have offered an insight into
the negotiations involved in the participation of the LUX Prize. Additionally, film
critics’ and audiences’ reactions to the celebration have been scrutinized. Drawing on
Emil Stjernholm 18
this, I want to highlight that the notion of European identities is mobilized both as a
means to profile the prize within the international prize circuit, but also as a means to
spark a discussion about what the concept of Europe entails.
1.5 Theoretical Framework
The issues that this thesis raises concerning cinema as a mediator of Europe are not
novel. On the contrary, the relationship between media and cultural identity has
gained attention from a wide variety of fields during the past decades. Of particular
interest for this thesis are the theoretical discussions on this topic coming from critical
sociology, anthropology and lastly the ethnography of media. This thesis’s key
theoretical notions will be cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1993), imagined communities
(Anderson, 1983), and double occupancy (Elsaesser, 2005). These concepts constitute
a conceptual toolkit that adds both subtlety and complexity to my grounded
methodological approach. By taking an interest in the complex relationship between
film and European identities, I aim to uncover the deliberations that permeate the
LUX Prize and its production, selection and celebration of visions of Europe. Before
detailing how I will use these concepts in practice, I will first clarify in what sense
these writings will assist me when exploring these deliberations.
First of all, one must note that the concept of cultural identity is by no means
stable or deterministic. For instance, cultural theorist Stuart Hall says, “identifications
change and shift, they can be worked on by political and economic forces outside of
us and they can be articulated in different ways. There is absolutely no political
guarantee already inscribed in an identity” (1997: p. 57). Drawing on the Gramscian
notion of war of positions, Hall highlights how identities are “retold, rediscovered,
[and] reinvented” in relation to cultural politics. In Selections from the Prison
Notebooks (1971), Gramsci shows that ideological struggles do not involve one
refined, integrated system being replaced by other comprehensive systems; instead,
ideological shifts constitute a struggle between positions. Therefore, the analysis of a
social formation––in this case, European identities––centers on historical links and
the construction of ideology within the “terrain of a particular society” (Hall, 1996: p.
42).
Even though the task of defining the concept of cultural identity is an arduous
one––to which the vast amount of historical studies of the subject attests (e.g.
Hobswahm, 1990; Anderson, 1991; Billig, 1995)––the theoretical view on media as
Emil Stjernholm 19
salient negotiators of identity politics is both a longstanding and a persistent one. As
Benedict Anderson notes in his book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the
Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1991), the invention of the printing press made the
book “the first modern-style mass-produced industrial commodity” (p. 34); this
medium, meanwhile, not only “made it possible for rapidly growing numbers of
people to think about themselves, and relate themselves to others, in profoundly new
ways”, but also created links between individuals, leading to the formation of socalled imagined communities (p. 36). In these imagined communities, the
identification of common traits in cultural expression, tradition, and ideology creates a
feeling of kinship within the nation. In other words, print as a mass medium was seen
as a central component in the “origin of national consciousness” (p. 37). Accordingly,
Anderson’s emphasis on the role of the printing press has lead to numerous reports
within media studies detailing the intricate connection between mass media and the
notion of national identity: for instance, radio (e.g. Schildt, 2001), television (e.g.
Fickers, 2005) and film (e.g. Higson, 1995).8 In this sense, all of these different forms
of media have been underlined as important factors in the construction of imagined
communities in specific historical moments.
Accordingly, I will utilize the notion of imagined communities as a starting
point to analyze what is included, and what is excluded, in the LUX Prize definition
of ‘European’. Anderson’s notion of imagined communities is particularly useful to
this regard because the questions his concept raises are in essence fruitful for this
project: what and who are doing the representing of the imagined community, and
which mechanisms are used to produce it? As mentioned before, there is an
interesting tension between the emergence of novel forms of communication and
cinema’s privileged position in relation to the negotiation of cultural identities; why is
this relatively old medium still invariably and centrally linked to this kind of identityforming practices?
As the title “Visions of Europe: The European Parliament LUX Prize, Cultural
Prestige, and the Negotiation of European Identities” indicates, this thesis makes use
8
In recent years, new media studies has taken a step away from the mentioned connection between
communication technologies and the nation-state. Increasingly, the notion of transnational imagined
communities, maintained through new media phenomena such as social, political, and cultural
communities online, has been used to signify an imagined sense of kinship without a connection to the
nation-state. For an example of recent scholarship investigating this new form of imagined
communities, see for instance: Aunio, Anna-Liisa, and Suzanne Staggenborg. “Transnational Linkages
and Movement Communities.” Sociology Compass 5.5 (2011): 364-375.
Emil Stjernholm 20
of the plural form ‘identities’ rather than the singular form ‘identity’. This is a
conscious decision based on the multiple different identities individuals have––
European or otherwise. According to film scholar Thomas Elsaesser, these multiple
identities are particularly relevant in the context of the new European cinema,
resulting in what he states as a feeling of ‘double occupancy’ (2005: p. 116).
In the influential chapter “Double Occupancy and Small Adjustments: Space,
Place and Policy in the New European Cinema since the 1990s” in his book on
European cinema, Elsaesser develops a concept to discuss the borders of what he
phrases “the new Europe” (p. 108). In his view, this concept is useful because it
acknowledges that there is no European whose identity in some way, shape or form is
not “already hyphenated or doubly occupied”; linguistically, religiously, ethnically, or
otherwise (p. 108). What makes the concept of double occupancy particularly
important in the case of the LUX Prize is its sensitivity to the multiple identities and
power structures that affect what is included and what is excluded in the concept of
the European. Seeing cinema as a particularly powerful allegory for these
negotiations, Elsaesser argues that the new European cinema of today brings forward
palpable spaces where identities and cultures communicate. What Elsaesser does,
then, is to broadly investigate a spectrum of films that embodies this double
occupancy, not only in terms of theme, but also more centrally as a form of symbolic
action that acknowledges the value structures of Europe. In contrast to Elsaesser,
however, I do not primarily center on cinematic texts, but instead illustrate how his
concept of double occupancy is particularly attuned to tease out the ambivalences and
insecurities involved in the contemporary pan-European film cultural spaces such as
the LUX Prize.
From Elsaesser to Hobsbawm, the theoretical debate concerning European
cultural identities has been in the limelight in the past two decades. Here, the
European Union and its constitution has become a primary site of contention. For
example, much critique has argued that the European Union is aiming to create an
imagined community in a top-down manner. Despite grand ideals, then, the European
Union’s legal constitution is a politically sensitive issue. For example, one of the
fundamental ideas governing the European Union as well as the European Parliament
LUX Prize––exemplified by the motto ‘United in diversity’––is that the increased
Emil Stjernholm 21
exposure to cultural diversity can lead to a greater sense of unity.9 Marxist historian
Eric Hobsbawm notes that the European Union was constructed as a “marriage”,
between nation-states who found the thought of a common union profitable for their
own interests, and an ideologically based group which supported the idea of a
confederate or federal Europe (1997: p. 269). Instead of a strong European
community, which fought for violently in the 19th and the 20th centuries, Hobsbawm
describes the European Union as based on weakness (p. 267). In other words, there is
an inherent ambivalence in the European Union’s construction––between the
encroachment of nations’ independence and the strengthening of the union. This
duality goes on to permeate the LUX Prize’s different levels of decision-making.
Drawing on this complexity, this case study highlights that prizes moreover
can negotiate the relationship between media and supranational constellations. When
analyzing the formation of this prize, Anderson and Hobsbawm’s theoretical concepts
can serve as particularly helpful critical tools. In the introduction to the anthology
Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain (2002), Faye Ginsburg, Lila Abu
Lughod and Brian Larkin put forward that both of these theorists have been
particularly influential in studies of “the cultural effects of flows of people, ideas, and
objects, flows crucially mediated by communication technologies” (p. 3). Drawing on
this notion, the authors propose an “ethnography of media”, distinguishing an
anthropological approach to the study of cultural formations particularly attuned to
integrate these theoretical queries. First of all, the ethnography of media follows the
so-called “social players”––the various agents involved in for instance a film ranging
from the director to the audience––in multiple contexts (p. 2). Secondly, the authors
highlight media “as a social practice” which concretely navigates the constantly
“shifting political and cultural frames” of our day (p. 3). Accordingly, my
methodological approach to the European Parliament’s LUX Prize resonates well
with this approach, particularly in that I root my analysis in a local, tangible case
study while linking it to a broader discussion about European cultural identities.
Moreover, in my attempt to tackle this complex issue, I will aim to focus not solely on
9
According to the European Union’s webpage, this motto means that “via the EU, Europeans are
united in working together for peace and prosperity, and that the many different cultures, traditions and
languages in Europe are a positive asset for the continent.” For further information, see: European
Union. "The Symbols of the EU - United in Diversity." Europa. Web. 19 July 2012.
<http://europa.eu/abc/symbols/motto/index_en.htm>.
Emil Stjernholm 22
the awarded film texts, but the context in which myriad “social players” contribute to
the production, selection, and celebration of cultural identities.
Drawing on the principles of the ethnography of media, my case study of the
European Parliament LUX Prize is “firmly grounded in the local” whilst remaining
connected to the multifaceted transformations that the world has undergone in the past
decades (p. 2). My understanding of locality, meanwhile, is gathered from
anthropologist Arjun Appadurai’s definition of this phenomenon: “I view locality [as]
primarily relational and contextual rather than as scalar or spatial. I see it as a
complex phenomenological quality, constituted by a series of links between the sense
of social immediacy, the technologies of interactivity, and the relativity of contexts”
(1996: p. 178). Locality, in this sense, constitutes a discursive site of communication
or interaction. From a European point of view, this complexity has only increased
with globalization and new patterns of migration. While it is important to note that the
actual advent of globalization constitutes a scholarly site of contestation of its own,
one cannot disregard the manner in which certain foundations of today’s society are
being affected by global flows of cultural forms and communication. As the
influential communications researcher Manuel Castells argues: “not everything or
everyone is globalized, but the global networks that structure the planet affect
everything and everyone. This is because all the core economic, communicative, and
cultural activities are globalized” (2008: p. 81).
In the introduction to his book European Cinema (2005), film historian
Thomas Elsaesser traces what these shifts entail for contemporary Europe:
It is the crisis of the nation state, transforming itself within the new political
framework of the European Union, and being transformed by the demographic
and de-territorialising forces of globalisation, that demands a re-assessment of
the kinds of loyalties, affiliations but also the conflicting allegiances that bind
individuals to their community, territory, region, language and culture,
including film culture (2005: p. 25).
In other words, political, demographic and geographical aspects profoundly influence
not only culture as a whole, but film culture as well. Meanwhile, Elsaesser argues that
the concept of ‘double occupancy’ is instrumental in coming to terms with these
shifts. In this sense, he maintains that Europe has always been a place where cultures
and identities overlap in multiple different layers; this, moreover, is not a
fundamentally new globalization phenomenon but historically entrenched (p. 109).
According to Elsaesser, “the state of double occupancy applies to every part of
Emil Stjernholm 23
Europe, and to all of us: our identities are multiply defined, multiply experienced, and
can be multiply assigned to us, at every point in our lives, and this increasingly so” (p.
109). By taking Elsaesser’s sensitive and historically grounded understanding of
European cultural identities as a starting point, I want to investigate the spaces in
which the tensions involved in this concept are made visible. And as Elsaesser
himself suggests, pan-European film institutions such as the LUX Prize, and their
practical handling of what Europe is, could well be “the basis for a definition of what
we now understand by European cinema” (p. 17).
Emil Stjernholm 24
Chapter 2
The Production of Visions of Europe: Pan-European Film Culture and the
LUX Prize as an Institutional Instrument
2.1 Producing Visions of Europe
As an initiative of the European Parliament in the field of culture and education, the
LUX Prize is an institution with a pan-European outlook aiming to highlight
European film culture. However, following the financial crisis in the late 2000s,
growing tensions between regional, national, and supranational perspectives have
created friction within the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union,
leading critics to question whether this will lead to the demise of the EU as a whole.10
Consequently, the EU is under significant pressure and the project of European
integration has rarely been more disputed. These tensions are also visible in the
cultural politics of the union, which invariably affect pan-European film practices
launched during the past decades; in this sense, the existence of cultural support
mechanisms within the EU has become a point of controversy of its own. Notably, it
is commonly argued that the European Union struggles with disinterest from the
general public toward their activities. While this problem is widely acknowledged––
often cited as a “communication deficit” between the EU and its citizens––the best
way to deal with it is less obvious.11 In this context, as part of the European
Parliament’s updated communications strategy, the LUX Prize was founded in 2007
under the wings of DG Communication.
In this chapter, I will examine the historical foundations underlying the
institutionalization of the LUX Prize as a pan-European support mechanism and as a
promotional tool. In doing so, I will first study the history of pan-European film
practices in an effort to trace the historical obstacles, incentives, and tensions
10
For an accessible overview of the financial crisis written with a consideration of the consequences
for Europe, see Hodson, Dermot, and Lucia Quaglia. “European Perspectives on the Global Financial
Crisis: Introduction.” JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 47.5 (2009): 939-53. Print. For a
recent comment on the current state of the European Union, see Kupchan, Charles A. “As Nationalism
Rises, Will the European Union Fall?” The Washington Post. 29 Aug. 2010. Web. 06 Mar. 2012.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/27/AR2010082702138.html>.
11
The notion of a European Union communications deficit is based on a concern that European
citizens’ lack of insight into the European political process may damage the democratic credibility of
the Union. For a further exploration of the communications deficit in the European Union, see: Meyer,
Christoph. “Political Legitimacy and the Invisibility of Politics: Exploring the European Union’s
Communication Deficit.” JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 37.4 (1999): 617-639.
Emil Stjernholm 25
preceding the birth of this film prize. By examining influential reports, books, and
articles on the notion of European cinema written primarily during the past two
decades, my goal is not to evaluate this concept per se, but to situate and contextualize
the emergence of the LUX Prize within the broader discourse on pan-European film
culture. Drawing on this discourse, then, this chapter distinguishes three historically
established issues of particular contention: political-cultural, economic-industrial, and
artistic-aesthetic. By analyzing the institutionalization of the LUX Prize, then, I will
investigate how the administrators and politicians producing this award overcome the
complications involved in the conceptualization of European cinema.
2.2 Competing Definitions of European Cinema
The focal point of much contemporary research on European film culture––in
yearbooks, anthologies and journals––is a constant search for the current status of socalled ‘European cinema’. This persistent intellectual interrogation offers an insight
into which visions have been dominant in the discourse on pan-European film culture
historically. Although my investigation of these accounts is divided into three layers,
it is important to note that these discourses are interwoven to a high degree. First, the
political-cultural discussions about Europe are in the limelight, with a starting point in
the emergence of the European Union as a political entity. Second, I will focus on the
concept of European cinema from an economic-industrial point-of-view, centering on
the ideological tensions within this debate. Lastly, I will bring artistic-aesthetic
definitions of European cinema to the fore, illustrating the conceptual difficulties
involved in such discussions. Drawing on this, I will argue that one should not view
the emergence of pan-European film institutions such as the LUX Prize as an
evolutionary result of these kind of discussions, but rather as continuation of a
circular process in which these different logics are renegotiated.
2.2.1 Political-Cultural
Let us first examine the political-cultural axis on which many of the tensions involved
in the production of the LUX Prize first occur. From a historical point of view, it is
important to note that the European Union began as an economic project. For
example, early initiatives to stimulate a shared market within Europe––such as the
European Community (1957)––focused significantly more on abolishing trade
barriers than on stimulating the culture industries (Dyer & Vincendeau, 1992: p. 5). In
Emil Stjernholm 26
fact, it was not until the year 1987 that the first official policy on culture was adopted,
titled A Fresh Boost for Culture in the European Community. As Ib Bondebjerg and
Peter Madsen note in the book Media, Democracy and European Culture (2008), this
policy was still quite limited, and it was not until the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 that
the EU “developed a cultural dimension and a still stronger cultural policy” (p. 18).
From this point the project of European integration gained momentum, with the
cultural dimension attracting attention through institutions such as the MEDIA
program (1991).12
Furthermore, the enduring tensions around the construction of a joint cultural
policy serve as an indication of the many conflicting views on the notion of a
European cultural identity. Fundamentally, the debate on European identity revolves
around two different philosophies: a discursive view and an essentialist view.
According to media scholar Tessa Hauswedell, the discursive perspective holds that
European identity is dependent on the moment when Europeans “draw on a defined
sense of ‘Us’ or ‘We’” and as such form a community. From this relativist
perspective, European identity is “what Europeans define and construct as such: the
values, norms and ideas that they consider to be ‘European’ – and those that are not”
(2008: p. 243).13 In other words, this stance emphasizes that European identity hinges
on how people identify themselves and others. The second perspective, on the other
hand, is an essentialist view on identity formation, which views certain kinds of
traditions, values and characteristics as primordial. According to Hauswedell, the
essentialist view has lost influence because of numerous historical factors, among
them the two world wars that arguably proved the dangers of such essentialist visions.
At the same time, a nationalist right-wing movement is on the rise in almost all
European nations, and certain Christian, “European” ideals are frequently brought to
12
The European Commission’s MEDIA program was founded in 1991, but went into practice in 1994.
For a detailed overview of its inception, see Casado, Miguel Angel. “EU Media Programmes: Little
Investment, Few Results.” Media, Democracy and European Culture. Ed. Ib Bondebjerg and Peter
Madsen. Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2008. 37-61. Print.
13
In short, relativism is a theme within philosophy that stresses that our thoughts and experiences are
relative to other ones. See for instance: “Relativism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Web. 02
May 2012. <http://plato.stanford.edu/>.
Emil Stjernholm 27
light as a means to exclude the “Other” Europe of diasporas, immigration and
religious conflict.14
The absence of a European Union policy on culture before the Maastricht
treaty in 1992 further highlights the sensitivity of this issue. While European Union
cultural policy remains a topic of heated debate for policymakers, the policy is not
officially supposed to exist. This is due to the fact that the EU is organized around the
subsidiarity principle, which means that the confederation “should not interfere in
matters that can be dealt with effectively at a lower, national level” (Xuereb, 2009: p.
30). As cultural analyst Banu Karaca notes in the article “The Art of Integration:
Probing the Role of Cultural Policy in the Making of Europe”, there is an inherent
clash between this principle and the so-called “founding myth” of the European
Union—namely that the EU is “the logical result of a shared ‘European history and
culture’” (2010: p. 123). In other words, Karaca suggests tension between the
conceptualization of Europe as joined through a common cultural history and the
EU’s ability to steer the cultural policy of its member states.
Conversely, the European Union does have official cultural goals. First of all,
many leading figures, both then and now, have stressed the value of culture for the
European integration project. For instance, Manuel Barroso, president in office of the
European Commission, famously spoke on the topic of “Europe and Culture” in 2004:
[The] EU has reached a stage of its history where its cultural dimension can no
longer be ignored…now is a time when we must reflect on our foundations,
and on the degree not only of economic, but of political unity we want to
reach.
Moreover, Article 151 in the Treaty of the European Union stresses the vision the EU
has on culture: “The Community shall contribute to the flowering of the cultures of
the Member States, while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the
same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore” (EU, 2006). The launch
of numerous cultural programs, such as the 2008 European Year of Intercultural
Dialogue and the European Capital of Culture would indicate culture and media are
seen as key factors in the production of an understanding, or even affection, for the
EU. But how do these political and cultural tensions inherent in the European Union
14
It has been suggested that this right-wing movement, which defends the traditional notion of the
nation-state, is often Eurosceptic. At the same time, researchers have noted that alongside the national
narrative, an emphasis on a historically based Christian European identity has been commonplace in
right-wing rhetoric. For a recent examination of the notion of European identity in these far-right
movements, see: Fligstein, Neil, Alina Polyakova, and Wayne Sandholtz. “European Integration,
Nationalism and European Identity.” JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 50 (2012): 106-122.
Emil Stjernholm 28
project influence the different conceptualizations of European cinema?
2.2.2 Economic-Industrial
Another common description of European cinema centers on economic qualifiers,
particularly in relation to the dominating US film market. After the fall of the Berlin
Wall, there were frequent political discussions concerning the prospect of a unified
Europe. In this debate, the ideological divergence between liberal emphasis on a nonregulated free market and social-democratic or conservative stress on state regulations
and subsidies emerged as one of the most prominent points of contention.
Within the European film industry, these discussions are similarly prominent.
In Budgets and Markets: A Study of the Budgeting of European Film (1996), film
business scholar Terry Ilott examines budget and marketing strategies in the European
film industry in the early 1990s. Looking at subsidies offered to filmmakers across
Europe at the time, Ilott critiques a lack of sensitivity to what the market wants. In
this sense, he says that subsidy-givers are cast as “saviours”, while instead their role
should be problematized (p. 3). Parallel to this, in the book Europa Europa:
Developing the European Film Industry (1992), film scholar Martin Dale makes one
of the first attempts to comprehensively approach this ideological discord from a panEuropean film cultural point of view. For Dale, the most crucial factor for the future
of the European film industry is the European production market, which he regards as
the European film industry’s main weakness, concluding: “the lack of risk makes it
possible to produce sub-standard products” (p. 67). In this sense, Dale and Ilott share
a skeptical attitude toward subsidies as a form of film financing.
This skepticism with regard to state regulation is often echoed in discussions
of European Union support mechanisms. Though Dale describes the European
Union’s MEDIA program (1991) as Europe’s first self-proclaimed “major”––a
dominant vernacular film company––he critically notes that the program “is caught in
the contradiction of wanting to establish an entrepreneurial European industry while
being itself a form of state intervention” (1992: p. 47). In other words, the economical
model of direct intervention and the non-interventionist policy of the free market exist
at odds. While many scholars both noted and problematized the potential of MEDIA
programs in the mid-1990s (e.g. Dale, 1992; Hill, 1994), these programs’ effects have
subsequently been heavily criticized. As Anne Jäckel argues in the book European
Film Industries (2004), one should be critical concerning the achievements of the
Emil Stjernholm 29
European Union’s MEDIA program given that “a common film market is no more a
reality today than it was at the inception of this programme. A strong and effective
pan-European distribution system still does not exist and the restructure of the film
industries is far from complete” (2004: p. 89).
From a political point of view, meanwhile, European cinema has been used as
a political weapon in trade debates with the United States. This sentiment was
substantiated in the fierce General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade debate in the early
1990s concerning “cultural exception” (GATT, 1994: p. 8).15 According to media
scholar Ted Madger, a number of European states, with France as the strongest voice,
spoke out against US media dominance and required exceptions from the general
agreement on free trade, highlighting the crucial importance of tools such as screen
quotas for the protection of a pluralistic cultural field; in contrast, the US Americans
argued that these measures led to unfair market benefits (2004: p. 381). This debate
did not merely highlight a “European” position on culture in opposition to an
American view but also, according to some researchers, fueled a rediscovered desire
to engender a pan-European film production network.16 In the book The State of
European Cinema: A New Dose of Reality (1996), film businesses researcher Angus
Finney examines how these problems were addressed from a political and institutional
point of view. Although Finney notes that the GATT negotiations are commonly
considered a starting point for the development of a pan-European support system for
cinema, he counters that, contrary to emphasizing a unified front, these debates served
to “expose how fragmented Europe’s nation states are” and displayed a lack of joint
European film policy (p. 5). For film historian Thomas Elsaesser, the disagreement on
the status of cinema has led to uncertainty concerning its position as an industrial
sector. This, furthermore, has led to questions of “copyright, subventions, ownership
and a film’s nationality” becoming increasingly complex (2005: p. 17). Meanwhile,
15
In particular, see the paragraph on “Special Provisions relating to Cinematograph Films”, General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Text of the General Agreement. Geneva: GATT, 1994. Print.
16
The word rediscovered is important, seeing how joint European ventures in the cinema business are
not a new phenomenon. In the silent era and beyond––as Andrew Higson and Richard Maltby explore
in their book “Film Europe” and “Film America”: Cinema, Commerce and Cultural Exchange, 19201939. Exeter: University of Exeter, 1999––it was transnational aspirations and film practices, through
which actors, filmmakers and producers moved between countries and films were produced catering to
a European market, “that some commentators at the time referred to as Film Europe” (Higson, 2010: p.
71). Tim Bergfelder has written on how the GATT debates reignited these aspirations; see: Bergfelder,
Tim. “National, Transnational or Supranational Cinema? Rethinking European Film Studies.” Media,
Culture & Society 27.3 (2005): 315-31. Print.
Emil Stjernholm 30
Elsaesser argues, the fact that European Union initiatives such as Eurimages and the
MEDIA program have been launched following these debates signals that there is a
persistent political wish to “create the legal framework for subsidizing the audiovisual
industries” (p. 17). As these contrasting ideological perspectives on European cinema
indicate, neither private initiatives nor state or supranational support mechanisms
automatically result in a unified European cinema.
2.2.3 Artistic-Aesthetic
Historically, another conceptualization of European cinema as interconnected has
been based on artistic merits. As Elsaesser suggests, European cinema has primarily
been characterized as an entity in relation to the global vernacular Hollywood cinema;
moreover, he argues, this duality has proved pervasive through to the contemporary
period.17 In her exploration of the roots of the European film festival in the book Film
Festivals: From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia, film scholar Marijke de
Valck points out that this longstanding conceptual opposition is not solely based on
economic factors, such as the duality between the studio system and the state
subsidized system. Instead, an ongoing discursive opposition between the Hollywood
star and the European auteur—as well as between US American entertainment and
European art cinema in general—has been established throughout the past decades
(2007: p. 14). In an effort to debunk the common artistic traits of European cinema, a
broad range of researchers have published extensively on European auteurs and art
cinema throughout the past two decades (e.g. Mazierska & Rascaroli, 2006; Everett,
2005; Galt, 2007). Here, a range of connections and inconsistencies––thematic,
linguistic and cultural––are in the limelight from a pan-European point of view.
A point of convergence between these lines of discourse is the fashion in
which European films thematically and stylistically intertwine. As film scholars
Richard Dyer and Ginette Vincendeau note in the introduction to their anthology
Popular European Cinema (1992), the most common feature of European cinema––
besides economic-industrial factors such as limited exportability––is its prominent
positioning of high culture (p. 10). While there is little historical consistency in the
17
For more on the global vernacular Hollywood cinema, see Hansen, Miriam. “The Mass Production
of the Senses: Classical Cinema as Vernacular Modernism.” Modernism/modernity 6.2 (1999): 59-77,
where the author describes how film industries such as the European revolved around a “competition
with and resistance to Hollywood products” (p. 66). For an in-depth exploration of this relationship, see
Elsaesser, Thomas. European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood. Amsterdam: Amsterdam
University Press, 2005.
Emil Stjernholm 31
applications of the term European, these authors argue, there exists a coherence
within the European film canon: “What do we mean by the popular if we include in it
Europe, the non plus ultra of high white culture? And what do we mean by Europe, if
its identity is not coterminous with that high white tradition?” (p. 2). The celebration
of the European auteur, then, is a symptom of this high-culture tradition. While the
cult of the auteur, instigated by the influential journal Cahiers du Cinéma in the
1950s, is no longer a dominant analytical model, its high-culture mark on European
cinema remains. One of the reasons for this, film scholars Ib Bondebjerg and Eva
Novrup Redvall argue, is that popular cinema tends to perform poorly on a European
level (2011: p. 28). These discrepancies, as we shall see in chapter three and four,
recur both in the decision-making process and the competition process of the LUX
Prize.
To conclude, in the definition of European cinema there are multiple areas of
contention––political-cultural,
economic-industrial,
and
artistic-aesthetic––all
showcasing historically specific tensions: first, between the fashions in which Europe
is conceptualized as a cultural and a political entity; second, between opposing
ideological economic visions; and lastly, between inclusive and exclusive
mechanisms, especially in relation to the notion of artistic quality. How these
political, economical and artistic negotiations materialize in practice within
contemporary film institutions with a pan-European outlook, however, may well
provide a starting point for a novel way of thinking about European cinema. In the
following, I will study how these tensions are produced, maintained and transformed
in the production of the LUX Prize.
2.4 The Establishment of the LUX Prize as an Institutional Instrument
Why are film prizes established? Given that a political decision has been taken to
create the European Parliament LUX Prize, this example should reveal some of the
numerous objectives behind the inception of an award. Moreover, the fact that the
initiative merges the political sphere with that of so-called symbolic cultural
production adds another layer of complexity to this question. Prizes today exist as a
form of celebration, but significantly they are also producers of economic, social and
cultural capital. In order to gain insight into the institutional process of establishing
the LUX Prize, then, this section does not solely focus on the factual economic
realities of the prize, but rather on the structure and logics governing its symbolic
Emil Stjernholm 32
cultural production. Accordingly, I will analyze a vast amount of internal and external
documents––including strategic documents, promotional material and press
coverage––in order to shed light on how such a prize is conceived and executed.
2.4.1 The Birth of the LUX Prize
Given that the LUX Prize invariably acts as an agent within the field of symbolic
cultural production, we must first have a closer look at the manner in which political
symbolism handles cultural identities. From anthropologists such as Benedict
Anderson to the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, theorists have long underlined the
importance of myth and symbol in the construction of collective identities. According
to Anderson, the production of books, magazines and pamphlets––so called ‘print
capitalism’––were seminal in the social construction of nationalism and the imagined
community. In these print media, symbols and myths were key signifiers in the
production of a shared past (1991: p. 37-45). Bourdieu, meanwhile, coined the
theoretical notion of habitus that pinpoints how social factors can influence the
process of identity formation. For Bourdieu, identity is a process of becoming in
which the individuals’ social surroundings play an instrumental role (1984: p. 467).
Drawing on this, the fashion in which a discourse is shaped symbolically emerges as a
crucial factor to understand the negotiation of cultural identities. Therefore, it is of
particular importance to study the sites where these negotiations take place habitually,
such as in the case of the LUX Prize.
The LUX Prize is the result of a political initiative and as such it is possible to
trace the construction of the event in official documents. First of all, one must note
that the film prize came into being two years after the “action plan” to improve
communication within the European Union. The prize is an initiative from both the
Bureau of the European Parliament and the European Parliament’s Committee on
Culture and Education. It was first endorsed by the Bureau of the European
Parliament, which is responsible for the EP’s budget, administration and organization,
in April 2006. Subsequently, the Bureau approved the official arrangements in
October 2006, which meant that the Committee on Budgets officially added the
Emil Stjernholm 33
specifications for the LUX Prize in Section I in the European Parliament.18
But how did this film prize get produced, and who drew up its structure?
Already in early 2006, the idea of creating a European Parliament film prize was
being discussed by Members of European Parliament as well as officials working for
DG Communication. In particular, former Vice President of European Parliament
Gerard Onesta (Greens/EFA) and the LUX Prize administrator Bertrand Peltier are
attributed central roles in turning this vision into practice. As a Member of European
Parliament’s Bureau Working Party on information and communication policy,
Onesta took the first initiative to found the then-untitled “European Parliament Film
Prize” in 2006. Considering how the LUX Prize was communicated to decisionmakers in its infancy, it was crucial to anchor the film prize in a political context
before sketching its exact structure. When analyzing documentation from the early
stages of the award, such as proposals and strategic texts, the importance of
streamlining the award with current political tendencies within the EU in mind is
substantiated by the consistent emphasis put on the argument that the European Union
needs to include a cultural dimension.
Almost all early drafts describing the unnamed film prize reference Jean
Monnet, a French politician who usually is considered one of the founding fathers of
the European Union. Monnet has famously been quoted concerning the EU: “If I
could start again I would start with culture” (Rumford, 2009: p. 2).19 In the early
stages of the LUX Prize, these oft-cited words function as a kind of slogan, reprinted
in application letters, official press releases and promotional material. For instance,
drawing on Monnet’s idea, Onesta argues in a proposition for the Bureau of the
European Parliament dating February 2006 that the Parliament has powers beyond its
institutional role and that it could take initiatives with so-called “symbolic impact”
(Bureau of the European Parliament, 2006: p. 2). The fifty years that had elapsed
since the Treaty of Rome was signed––an economic agreement from 1957 which
subsequently led to other forms of pan-European cooperation––are emphasized as a
central source of motivation for establishing the prize. Notably, the founding of the
18
For the minutes (protocol) from this procedure, including the budget appropriation, see: European
Parliament Bureau. “Minutes of the meeting 23-10-2006”.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/questions/bureau/2011/0028/BUR_QE(2011)0028_EN.pdf.
Strasbourg, October 2006. Web. 3 Jan. 2012.
19
Despite the fact that this quote is regularly ascribed to Jean Monnet, it is not mentioned in his own
memoirs: Monnet, Jean. Memoirs. Garden City: Doubleday, 1978. Print. The exact origin of this quote
thus remains uncertain.
Emil Stjernholm 34
LUX Prize coincided with the drafting of the new Treaty of Europe, also known as
the Lisbon Treaty. Accordingly, it seems that the political symbolism of the fiftieth
anniversary of this treaty was seen as a benchmark of the importance of visibility in
the European Parliament’s activities.
In these early proposals, the initiators put great emphasis on the establishment
of the prize’s symbolism. In early strategic documents, for instance, it is interesting to
note that the hypothetical construction of the award also includes film events to
debate Europe’s cultural diversity. The notion of cultural diversity is omnipresent as a
key theme not only in the LUX Prize terminology but also more generally in
communications from the European Union. Political theorist Bhikhu Parekh notes in
his book Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory (2000)
that the term cultural diversity alludes to the notion that human nature is “culturally
reconstituted and diversified” (p. 123). In other words, humans might share certain
features, but ultimately “different cultures … define and constitute human beings and
come to terms with the basic problems of human life in their own different ways” (p.
124). The notion of unity through diversity is arguably one of the founding principles
of the European Union; as mentioned, Article 151 of the European treaty stresses that
the EU should help individual national cultures “flower” while simultaneously
highlighting what they have in common.20 In Article 22, it is similarly stressed that:
“The Union shall respect cultural, religious and linguistic diversity” (European Union,
2006). To associate the film prize with the celebration of this diversity––and
ultimately to make this diversity more accessible to the people of the European
Union––was thus a central strategy in order to gain support for its institution.
At the same time, there has been considerable opposition to the LUX Prize
within European Parliament. The criticism draws attention to the political and
economic tensions discussed in the previous section; for instance, whether a nonregulated free market or national and supranational support mechanisms best support
cinema today. In having a closer look at the official European Parliament reports and
inquiries discussing the LUX Prize, it becomes obvious that many points discrediting
the validity of the prize are based on the question of Europe’s economy. For instance,
20
“The Community shall contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the Member States, while
respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural
heritage to the fore” (European Union, 2006).
Emil Stjernholm 35
in Article 86 of a European Parliament budgetary report entitled “On discharge in
respect of the implementation of the European Union general budget for the financial
year 2009”, the Committee on Budgetary Control takes a firmly skeptical position; it
“considers the LUX Prize to be inappropriate and does not consider that Parliament’s
budget should be used for film competitions”. In the wake of the financial crisis, this
individual MEPs have taken up a similar line of argument. According to the British
MEP Martin Callanan (Conservatives) the films awarded by the LUX Prize might be
worthy of praise, but: “we're right to ask whether MEPs should be in the business of
running a film contest when budgets all over the world are being cut and all our effort
and attention should be on what to do with broken Europe” (Banks, 2011). In a to a
questionnaire from the author, Callanan simply contends that the prize is “a total
waste of money” (2012).
2.4.2 The Value of Film Prizes
In this context, there is obvious disparity in how much value is ascribed to the LUX
Prize by different politicians. Whereas certain legislators focus on the prospective
cultural value of this award, others dismiss it on the grounds of the monetary strain it
puts on the European Parliament’s budget. For Pierre Bourdieu, these different forms
of value constitute capital that is unevenly recognized in contemporary society.
Focusing on “the totality of the practices which, although objectively economic, are
not and cannot be socially recognized as economic”, Bourdieu’s research shows with
clarity the difficult intellectual task involved in measuring cultural value (1986: p.
242). In other words, the interconnectedness of economic value, material value and
other forms of value within the contemporary economy makes it difficult to define the
exact value of, for example, an award. While this contention reasonably applies to the
LUX Prize as well, it is important to analyze these different components of value in
order to tease out how the pan-European vision of the award negotiates the
distribution of cultural value.
When Parliament’s DG Communication developed the film prize’s scope,
form, and so-called “visual identity”, the most fundamental aspects of the LUX
Prize’s role were decided. The actual structure of the award––the material, economic
and symbolic award offered to the winner––are key in the production of a cultural
award. In the case of the LUX Prize, it is noteworthy that the award is neither a grant
nor a donation. Instead, the awarded films receive economical assistance in the
Emil Stjernholm 36
production of subtitles in the European Union’s 23 official languages; additionally,
the prize assists in the production of either 35mm copies or Digital Package (DCP)
copies of the film for each EU-27 member state. Meanwhile, if the production
company behind the awarded film has already expedited this work, the LUX Prize
offers a monetary grant reimbursing the company’s expenses. While this budget is not
set in stone, the awarded films have been compensated with sums ranging from
around €90,000 to €105,000 (Peltier, 2012). Most recently, it was decided that the
LUX Prize would organize LUX Film Days, during which the circulation of the three
films in competition will be guaranteed in all of the European Union’s 27 member
states synchronously.21
Given that the LUX Prize is a late adapter within the competitive field of film
prizes, it is important to note that the award exists in relation to both competitive film
festivals and other film prizes. In other words, there is an ongoing struggle to gain
power and prestige within a limited circuit of actors. Besides the monetary value of
the actual grant, the LUX Prize further uses its resources to promote the films in
competition through promotional material and participation at film events. The
general budget of the EP LUX Prize was €325,000 until 2012, when it was almost
doubled to €600,000 to accommodate its new aims.22 While vying for attention and
prestige, the LUX prize is also in competition economically with small, medium and
major scale film festivals and prizes. To situate the LUX Prize within the film prize
circuit, then, it might be fruitful to have a close look at a number of related film
festivals’ and prizes’ economies.
To gain a sense of perspective, it may be useful to compare the prize’s
financial situation with what FIAPF, the coordinator of common policies and
regulations for 31 of the world’s largest film festivals, designates as competitive
21
In 2011, it was decided that the budget of the LUX Prize was to be doubled: from €325,000 to
€600,000. The Bureau’s Working Party on Information and Communication Policy and the
Parliament’s Committee on Budgets have accepted this in order for the LUX Prize to expedite the
creation of a transnational, cross-border event. The costs for this event are not yet settled, however, the
event will take place in relation to the presentation of the LUX Prize winner in November 2012. For
more information on this, see: LUX Prize. Official Selection of the European Parliament’s 2012 LUX
PRIZE Unveiled. 1 July 2012. Web. 2 July 2012. <http://www.luxprize.eu/v1/images/download/kviffen.pdf>.
22
Currently, 2½ full-time positions are allotted from DG Communication toward the organization of
the LUX Prize. Whether the organization will expand with the new communications strategy remains
unclear (Peltier, 2012).
Emil Stjernholm 37
festivals.23 For comparative purposes, however, we must first take a brief look at an
example of a non-FIAPF accredited film festival. According to film festival
researcher Ruby Chung’s broad investigation of small and medium-scale thematic
film festivals’ economies, it is common for budgets to oscillate between £45,000 and
£50,000, with the majority of the budget going toward organizing the event (Cheung,
2010: p. 85-91). For example, the annual London Kurdish Film Festival (2001) has a
budget of £45,000 and its Yilmaz Güney Short Film Competition does not include a
grant.24 By comparison, the LUX Prize budget is considerably larger. So, how does
this compare to the FIAPF accredited competitive festivals that include both
competitions and awards? For example, the Stockholm International Film Festival
(1990), ranked as a ‘competitive specialized’ festival, has grown from an initial
turnover of €5,000 to an approximate turnover surpassing €1,000,000 (Björling,
2006). Its top award, the Bronze Horse, however, does not come with a monetary
grant. The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival is a ‘competitive feature’ and its
annual budget exceeds €5,000,000 a year (Borovan, 2012). Its main award, the
Crystal Globe––given to the best feature film––is worth $30,000.25 Additionally, a
range of prizes are awarded from $5,000 to $20,000, with a total sum exceeding
$70,000.26
In terms of operating budget, it seems that the LUX Prize is positioned
economically between the non-FIAPF accredited film festival and FIAPF accredited
“competitive specialized”-festival. Meanwhile, the monetary value of the LUX Prize–
–between €90,000 and €105,000––exceeds even that of the top awards given at wellestablished film festivals such as Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Despite its
relative newness, the LUX Prize has become an active player within the field of film
prizes, using its resources to gain visibility––through print commercials, banners and
other promotional material––at film festivals such as Berlinale International Film
23
The International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF) ranks film festivals as
follows: “competitive features”, such as Cannes and Berlin; “competitive specialized”, such as
Stockholm and Brussels; “non-competitive”, such as Haugesund and Vienna; and lastly “documentary
and shorts”, such as Krakow. See more in the festival directory: FIAPF. "Accredited Festivals
Directory." FIAPF. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. <http://www.fiapf.org/pdf/directoryFIAPFv3.pdf>.
24
Approximately €56,000 on 2012-05-08.
25
Approximately €23,000 on 2012-05-08.
26
Approximately, $5,000 equals €4,000, $20,000 equals €16,000, and $70,000 equals €56,000. For
recent information about the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival prizes, see:
KVIFF. "Final Press Release (July 9th, 2011)." KVIFF. 9 July 2011. Web. 7 Apr.
2012. <http://www.kviff.com/download/docs/history/2011_FinalPR_en.pdf>.
Emil Stjernholm 38
Festival and the Venice International Film Festival. Yet, as James English suggests,
economic resources do not by definition guarantee that a prize will succeed in
acquiring prestige (2005: p. 128).
Instead, the prestige of prizes depends to a greater degree on their cultural
legitimacy in “the production and distribution of symbolic capital” (English, 2005: p.
76). For prizes, it is of crucial importance to create an arrangement that makes the
institution trustworthy in its judgment of culture. Here, it is important to note that
many scholars interested in prizes emphasize that the prestige of the award relies
heavily on the prestige of its judges. According to de Valck, for instance, film festival
juries often consist of what can be considered peers, whose expertise warrants them
the right to distribute cultural prestige (2010: p. 297). For James English the decisionmaking arrangement is vital, as he suggests that “it is the first axiom among prize
administrators that the prestige of a prize is reciprocally dependent on the prestige of
its judges” (2005: p. 122). In the case of the LUX Prize, it is important to note that the
selection process involves two distinct phases: the first uses a traditional jury whose
members are all professionals working within the film industry in one capacity or
another; next, the Members of European Parliament step in and cast their votes on one
out of three films selected by the committee.
The fact that politicians act as cultural judges in this context has not gone
without internal criticism. For MEP Martin Callanan (Conservatives), who utilized
Rule 29 (2) in the European Parliament’s Rule of Procedure to question the work of
the Bureau of the European Parliament, the main concern regarding the LUX Prize’s
existence is note merely budgetary; he questions “the role of a parliamentary body in
awarding a prize of this kind” (Callanan, 2011). Fundamentally, this critique is based
on the question whether politicians are suited to judge in a cultural competition,
interpreting films’ artistic, aesthetic, and thematic value.
As a means to counter this criticism, the decision-making process is carefully
planned to add legitimacy to the event. This arrangement, however, was not easily
achieved. According to English, the role of administrators such as Bertrand Peltier
and their social capital cannot be overestimated in the initial phase of the award
(2005: p. 123). For the prospective jurors, the participation in an established event
lends them the possibility of associating themselves with other judges “belonging on
the same tier of the symbolic universe” (English, 2005: p. 128). Because the prize was
not established among the professionals who were profiled for the selection
Emil Stjernholm 39
committee, Peltier notes that the process of acquiring their participation was rather
difficult (2012). However, after the initial jury construction, more prominent figures
have been persuaded to participate in the event, assumedly drawing on the legitimacy
added to the jury by their peers.
Through consistent exposure of the participants in the selection committee––
particularly on the LUX Prize webpage––the prize aims to bring forward the cultural
capital of these decision-makers. Furthermore, it is important to note that the rules
governing the inclusion of new jury members functions to connect the LUX Prize
selection committee with professionals working within the film industry. In this sense,
two-thirds of the selection committee is re-elected annually, while among the new
members, a professional representing last year’s winner is required to participate ex
officio. In other words, a formal criterion for the acceptance of the award is the jury
participation of at least one film professional such as a director, producer, or
scriptwriter in the jury for the next LUX Prize. As de Valck suggests, this ritual does
not merely serve to elevate these film professionals into the “establishment”, but it is
a kind of “self-affirming” practice by which prizes aim to raise the status of their own
competition and establish it as a “site of passage” (2010: p. 297). To link the LUX
Prize to the prestige of its selection committee members might serve as a solution to
the problem of politicians’ lack of cultural capital. At the same time, the multiple
layers involved in the decision-making process, as well as the ambitiousness in
procuring a sustained engagement from the selection committee members,
emphasizes the complexity of the underlying problem involved in merging politics
with the distribution of cultural prestige.
Beyond the material value of economic capital, the value of the
administrators’ social capital and the cultural capital of the selection committee
members, the formal elements of the prize’s public image are important to the
symbolic value of the award. This is highlighted by the fact that the LUX Prize uses a
considerable portion of its resources towards branding the prize as well as the films
involved in it. The highly symbolic form of the trophy is one example of this form of
branding. First of all, the trophy is a relatively large steel construction with numerous
parallel holes representing the film perforations commonly associated with traditional
35mm film print. On the inside of the film reel, the aforementioned words of Jean
Monnet are reprinted in the European Union’s 23 official languages. The Belgian
artist Jocelyne Coster constructed the piece with inspiration from the original LUX
Emil Stjernholm 40
Prize logo. Even though these kind of physical objects are a “basic and enduring
feature of prizes”, English argues that their composition and symbolic impact has
been afforded little attention (2008: p. 155).
The logo, as well as the trophy, is thematically based on the myth of the
Tower of Babel (LUX Prize: Proposition D’identité). This myth, based on a biblical
account from Genesis 11:1-9 in the Old Testament, describes people gathering in one
place after the so-called Great Flood to build a tower reaching the heavens. Some
interpretations of these biblical accounts claim that the construction of the tower was
a defiant act towards God; they further see the division of the people into different
countries and languages as a punishment from God for their hubris. Here, one must
note that the LUX Prize’s play on this myth coincides with an Internet meme
highlighting the similarities between the Babel myth and the founding of the
European Union. Most widely distributed online are images comparing the
architecture of the Louise Weiss European Parliament building in Strasbourg to
pictoral representations of the Tower of Babel. Following this observation (first made
by Fox News anchor Glenn Beck) online rumors persist that this architectural
similarity signifies the European Union’s hidden agenda: to create a supranational
European state that aims for uniformity in terms of language and religion.27 On the
other hand, another common interpretation of the same Bible passages sees the Tower
of Babel myth as a form of etiology––according to Merriam-Webster’s Online
Dictionary, “a branch of knowledge concerned with causes”––explaining cultural
diversity and linguistic difference.28 In a pamphlet explaining the LUX Prize’s visual
identity, it is noted that the logo and trophy draw on the later, more positive
interpretation of the Tower of Babel myth. Presumably out of an awareness of the
double nature of this myth, the LUX Prize confirms that it works from the
interpretation viewing linguistic diversity not as punishment but as an asset.
Given that the concept of European cinema encompasses numerous political,
economical and artistic differences, the establishment of the LUX Prize as a support
27
For the meme highlighting the similarities between the Tower of Babel (as represented by Pieter
Bruegel the Elder in 1563) and the European Parliament building in Strasbourg, see: Fox News.
“Glenn Beck: Lessons From the Tower of Babel” FOX News Network. 17 Nov. 2010. Web. 06 July
2012. <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,602223,00.html>.
28
For a further exploration of this positive interpretation of the Tower of Babel myth, see: Hiebert,
Theodore. "The Tower of Babel and the Origin of the World's Cultures." Journal of Biblical Literature
126.1 (2007): 29-58. Print.
Emil Stjernholm 41
mechanism within this field is not uncontroversial. Instead, it seems that the
administrators and politicians involved in the prize aim to confront these competing
conceptualizations of European cinema directly.
2.5 Conclusion
The vision behind the European Parliament LUX Prize is inextricable from the fierce
debate on European cinema during the past two decades. This is not least indicated by
the main objectives of the film prize, which could all be said to navigate between
different approaches to the genre: political-cultural, economic-industrial, and artisticaesthetic. In each of these areas, moreover, the fact that the LUX Prize oscillates
between European politics and the production of cultural prestige means that these
problems are handled in a quite unusual manner.
The emergence of the European Union has brought questions concerning
Europe’s cultural dimensions into the limelight. In this sense, debates concerning the
existence of a joint European culture, let alone a European identity, inherently
influence the conceptualization of European cinema today, particularly in terms of the
question whether a European Union cultural policy should exist or not. Before the
LUX Prize was established as an institutional instrument, the prize was anchored
politically, making reference to symbolically important figures and concepts such as
Jean Monnet, the Treaty of Rome, and the Tower of Babel. By stressing not only the
need for a cultural dimension to the European Union but also the importance of
communicating the European Parliament’s activities to the citizens, the LUX Prize
established a clear trajectory towards a prize that was also viable politically. While
these complexities are normally dealt with politically on the level of policymaking
and legislation, they are further negotiated through the increase of pan-European
audiovisual support mechanisms during the past decades. In the case of the LUX
Prize, its establishment and the subsequent political debate have put the finger on the
pulse of contrasting political visions of European cinema. For example, this debate
concerns which economic model––state regulation or a non-regulated free market––
best assists European cinema, and consequently whether the LUX Prize’s hands-on
approach to supporting cinema is appropriate.
In the third chapter, I will perform a close reading of the LUX Prize decisionmaking process and how the active interpretation of what European cinema means
Emil Stjernholm 42
corresponds to European cultural identities. By studying this process, I will further
problematize the fashion in which the LUX Prize oscillates between European politics
and the production of cultural prestige.
Emil Stjernholm 43
Chapter 3
The Selection of Visions of Europe: Decision-Making and its Role in the
Negotiation of European Identities
3.1 Selecting Visions
In this chapter, I aim to uncover how films have been debated, selected and ultimately
awarded by the European Parliament LUX Prize from 2007 to 2012. The central
function of the prize is to award cinematic visions of Europe. This vision is
established through a process of interpretation where criteria, values, and personal
taste all influence which films the prize celebrates. However, through the institution
of the LUX Prize, visions of Europe are also produced. Accordingly, this chapter will
scrutinize the LUX Prize’s decision-making and how the selection process works to
construct visions of Europe.
Despite the fact that the concept of European cinema is inherently uncertain
and the many definitions––political, economic, and artistic––often conflict, little
empirical research has been undertaken to analyze the actual cultural institutions
where this concept is negotiated. For this chapter, I participated as an observer in the
second selection committee meeting of the LUX Prize 2012 held in Brussels, Belgium
in April. Based on my ethnographical observations, I have attempted to reconstruct
the internal dynamics involved in this crucial phase in the decision-making process. In
doing so, I have had access to over 10,000 internal documents (2007-2012), including
selection committee minutes, internal communications, and reports, as well as press
coverage, the LUX Prize webpage and promotional material. Additionally, I have
interviewed administrators, selection committee members, and MEPs in an effort to
trace patterns in the LUX Prize’s selection process.
While much theoretical work centering on a European cultural identity
highlights that it can be a both limiting and problematic concept (e.g. Derrida, 1992;
Hobsbawm, 1997), the debate about this concept, focusing on the political,
economical and artistic exchange within the European landscape, still persists. Recent
work from the emerging field of film festival studies has focused on festivals’ role in
the definition of what Anderson famously dubbed “imagined communities” (e.g.
Iordanova, 2010; Segal, 2010; Santaolalla and Simanowitz, 2010) and particularly
how local sites negotiate cultural identities. This chapter draws on these few existing
Emil Stjernholm 44
investigations of cultural organizations and imagined communities. To contribute to
this discourse, this chapter comprehensively examines the LUX Prize’s role as a
cultural institution and its multiple layers of decision-making. Based on my findings, I
shall argue that the LUX Prize’s selection process is not likely to bring forward a
strong vision of a European cultural identity—not because individual agents do not
aim to consolidate this perspective in their selection, but because the decision-makers’
own professional roles, national identities, and varying sense of Europeanness each
play a vital role in their interpretation of the LUX Prize criteria.
First of all, I will discuss how local actors can influence the discourse on
Europe and European cultural identities. Secondly, I will present my case study on the
LUX Prize’s decision-making. Lastly, I will consider how an ethnographical analysis
of a cinematic award can improve our understanding of how European cultural
identities are negotiated.
3.2 The Dynamics of Decision-Making
This chapter focuses on a film prize that caters to a range of groups––from cultural
producers to Members of European Parliament––and the fashion in which these
different agents engage with cinema as a mode of expression. This study intends to
examine how this film prize and the agents involved in its decision-making process
produce a grounded transnational, European cultural space where the production and
management of European cultural identities are significant. In the case of the LUX
Prize, cinema is seen as a key mediator of this discourse, resembling the central role
that media, and especially the printing press, are afforded in Anderson’s writings on
the “imagined community”.
Given that the LUX Prize is a European Parliament initiative, this discussion
is intimately linked with the ongoing theoretical discussion about the European Union
as a supranational constellation. For Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm––who has
theorized about the emergence of so-called “national consciousness” (e.g. Hobsbawm,
1990)––the European Union today is an accepted part of many citizens’ lives, but
“there is still no positive ‘European consciousness’” (1997: p. 274). In order to tackle
the difficult question of the borders of “the new Europe”, Thomas Elsaesser develops
the concept of “double occupancy” which highlights the multiplicity of identities in
today’s Europe. This, in turn, brings forward the power structures at play within the
“imbrication of inside and out, self and other, singular and collective” (2005: p. 110).
Emil Stjernholm 45
Inspired by the philosopher Jacques Derrida’s notion of sous rature, or “under
erasure”—which refers to a word that is “inaccurate or unstable but is nevertheless
necessary”—Elsaesser aims to displace rigid definitions of national and European
cinema (Barker, 2004: p. 204). In so doing, the author focuses on how double
occupancy and ensuing confusions materialize in film texts such as Dogville (Lars
von Trier, 2003) and Submission (Theo van Gogh, 2004). Although the concept of
double occupancy is useful in Elsaesser’s analysis of textual spaces, I believe it can
also be instructive when analyzing how a multiplicity of cultural identities influences
the LUX Prize’s selection of a European film to celebrate.
The LUX Prize not only actively awards a cinematic vision of Europe, but
also negotiates European cultural identities through discussion, selection and voting.
In this forum, the notion of European identities is not abstract; the LUX Prize
administrators, selection committee and MEPs face this concept regularly and as such
need to tackle the concept in a practical manner. By focusing on each of the
participants in the decision-making process, I will show that interpretation of the
evaluation criteria varies and depends on the particular discursive contexts within
which the different agents operate. By drawing up a detailed timeline, I will further
argue that a number of particularly salient tensions affect the decision-making
process: first, the distinction between inclusion and exclusion in the concept of
“European”; second, the difficulty of consolidating a national and a European
outlook; and third, the challenge of weighing the political profile of the prize against
economic and artistic considerations, such as the impact of the prize, the form of the
film, and lastly the risk, or chance, of controversy.
3.3 The LUX Prize and the Negotiation of European Cultural Identities
While the European Parliament LUX Prize is a relatively small-scale event, it is a
unique mixture between cultural institution and parliamentary politics. In the process
of celebrating European cinema, a large number of agents, representing different
interests, are involved. First of all, the selection committee consists of film
professionals from various positions and nationalities (Peltier, 2012). In 2011, for
example, the jury consisted of one film director, one festival programmer, three film
critics, two film producers, three festival directors, four film distributors, one event
administrator, and one film consultant; additionally, two supervisors from the MEDIA
Emil Stjernholm 46
program and the Council of Europe’s production fund Eurimages are invited to
participate in the jury as observers. Although there is no exact quota specified in the
LUX Prize strategic documents, generally a geographically diverse jury is desirable;
moreover, while there are no rules governing for how long one can be seated in the
committee, two thirds of the jury is re-elected each year. Following the restructuring
of the selection committee, the European Parliament's Committee on Culture and
Education must approve its composition. Their role in the selection process is to
narrow down the number of films—in other words, to choose ten films for the first
shortlist and ultimately the three films which the Members of European Parliament
will watch and vote on. To do so, the selection committee members meet in three
sessions before which the films are watched––through video-on-demand via the
online platform Festival Scope––and preliminarily ranked.
Following this stage, the films are screened to the MEPs through various
sources: cinema, internal television networks, the distribution of DVDs, and an online
platform. With the announcement of the LUX Prize, construction began on a
temporary cinema on the 3rd floor of the European Parliament building in Brussels.
This cinema serves not only as a physical location for MEPs to attend screenings, but
also, importantly, as an in-house promotional tool for the prize itself. The 754
Members of the European Parliament are subsequently invited to vote electronically
via the Parliament’s intranet website.29 The winning film then receives the award in
the plenary hall of the European Parliament, with the European Parliament’s president
acting as presenter.
3.3.1 Pre-Selection Phase
Already at the stage of pre-selection, the debate on inclusion and exclusion is
emergent, particularly when considering the criteria of what is “European”.
According to prize researcher James English in his investigation of the general logic
behind awards, the administrative structure of the nomination process plays an
integral––yet often neglected––role in the award process; as such, it must be taken
into account in the analysis of this award’s decision-making procedure (2005: p. 131).
29
Between 2007 and 2011, 736 seats were available in the European Parliament. In 2011, 18
additional Members of European Parliament were added. See: European Parliament. "Ratification of
Parliament's 18 Additional MEPs Completed." European Parliament. 1 Dec. 2011. Web. 19 July 2012.
<http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/pressroom/content/20100223BKG69359/html/Ratificationof-Parliament's-18-additional-MEPs-completed>.
Emil Stjernholm 47
In this sense, it is important to note that the exclusion of films begins already at the
administrative stage of eligibility for nomination. As mentioned, the LUX Prize
nominations follow a set of explicit criteria––which are both practical and open for
interpretation––stipulating which films can be considered for the prize. According to
English, these types of constraints are utilized in order to “limit the range of possible
winners” which in turn is accomplished through a number of measures (2005: p. 130).
Because of the large amount of films produced annually in Europe––with over 1200
feature films produced in 2010 alone, according to the European Audiovisual
Observatory––such limiting protocols are of paramount importance (Kanzler, 2011).
Interestingly, however, the eligibility criteria are initially broad and inclusive, and
only narrow down further along in the selection process.
The most fundamental eligibility criteria guides which films are allowed in the
competition for the prize. For the LUX Prize, these kind of practical criteria stipulate
that the nominated films necessarily are: fictions or so-called “creative
documentaries”; feature films longer than 60 minutes; or premieres between 1 June
and 31 May each year (LUX Prize: Eligibility criteria). Another central criterion
stipulates which films are eligible under the label of European cinema: “They result
from productions or co-productions eligible under the MEDIA PROGRAMME
produced or co-produced in a European Union country or in Croatia, Iceland,
Liechtenstein, Norway or Switzerland” (LUX Prize: Eligibility criteria). In the LUX
Prize selection, both administrators and jury members are required to follow what the
European Commission’s MEDIA program defines as a European film. According to
Nils Koch from the MEDIA program, the films’ Europeanness is assessed on the
basis of a point system where the lowest is zero and the maximum point is nineteen
(2012). This complex point system gives different points based on the nationality of
everything from the director to the laboratory in which the film is printed.30 In order
to be eligible for support, and thus qualify as a European film, the film needs to
acquire ten points or more.
To interpret how these points are awarded, however, is easier said than done.
First of all, many contemporary European co-productions are ambivalent in terms of
30
For a detailed schema over the point system and the MEDIA program’s eligibility criteria, see:
MEDIA (2007-2013). Permanent Guidelines 2012-2013 - Support For The Transnational Distribution
Of European Films – The "Selective" Scheme. Rep. European Commission, n.d. Web. 7 Mar. 2012.
<http://ec.europa.eu/culture/media/programme/distrib/schemes/select/docs/30_2011/di_sel_guidelines_
final.pdf>.
Emil Stjernholm 48
origin. Today, films are often funded by multiple national and regional funds, set in
several places, and populated with a nationally diverse cast. Accordingly, in order to
specify the nationality of a film, and essentially whether a film meets the eligibility
criteria, the administrators of the LUX Prize need to contact the European
Commission’s MEDIA program. Given that each case is assessed individually, a final
decision can take time. Because of this decision-making structure, Peltier says, the
eligibility debate in the jury is a recurring one. This is problematic because, in
contrast to many juries governing the selection of prizewinners at film festivals, the
LUX Prize selection committee is scattered all over Europe. In the preliminary
selection phase, the amount of films the selection committee must watch over
approximately a month often numbers fifty or more, giving the selection committee
members limited time to fully consider them all. In interviews with former and
current selection committee members, it appears that the task of assessing films
whose Europeanness remains uncertain is regarded as time-consuming.
Meanwhile, by utilizing the MEDIA program’s practical definition of European
cinema, the LUX Prize hinges on an established delineation of Europe, while
concurrently offering its own unique visions of Europe through its selection process.
This unique interpretation of Europeanness is intimately connected to the fourth
eligibility criterion, which is of a more subjective nature: asking the selection
committee to assess how the films “help celebrate the universal reach of European
values, illustrate the diversity of European traditions, shed light on the process of
European integration and provide insights into the building of Europe” (LUX Prize:
Eligibility criteria). As we shall see in the next section, the question of which film
best reflects this criterion is one that is subject to contention among the selection
committee members and the MEPs.
In addition to these eligibility criteria, guidelines indicating a range of socalled “implicit criteria” are distributed among the selection committee members prior
to their meetings. These considerations are four-fold, and aim to further reduce the
number of candidates: first, the importance of cultural diversity is underlined by
asking the selection committee for a multifaceted geographical representation;
secondly, the LUX Prize asks for multiplicity in terms of form, for instance in terms
of genre; third, the commercial potential and life cycle of the films should be
considered; and lastly, the potential impact of the LUX Prize on the film should be
taken into account. Notably, individual selection committee members are seldom
Emil Stjernholm 49
involved in the formulation of these eligibility criteria.
So how do these agents interpret these explicit and implicit criteria, and how
do they envision Europe? While taking these eligibility criteria into account, the preselection phase centers on an open debate about possible nominations for the award.
Before the first meeting with the selection committee, usually held in March each year,
the jurors are asked to produce a list of films to be briefly presented and discussed. More
specifically, each juror is asked to rank three films of their own choice prior to this
meeting. Given that the pre-selection occurs without the selection committee members
meeting officially, the initial selection reflects their respective professional backgrounds
to a high degree, often being productions they have encountered in their trade (Peltier,
2012). Here, there is an interesting tension between the pan-European vision of the
award and the national perspective adopted by individual selection committee members.
First of all, let us consider the formal construction of the selection committee’s
participants. The directors, producers, distributors, administrators and festival
employees making up the committee arguably represent “the diversity of the
European film landscape” (LUX Prize: Supporting culture). Meanwhile, one must
notice that the jury participants from 2007 to 2011 have exclusively represented the
EU-27 member states. In other words, while the films eligible for the competition are
all productions supported by the MEDIA program, which includes productions from
non-EU countries such as Croatia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway or Switzerland,
there are no decision-makers partaking in the selection committee from non-EU
countries.
In internal communications, press coverage, and my interviews, moreover, this
tension reveals itself in how the transnational perspective of the prize is weighed against
the national perspective of many jury members. One juror comments: “It seems that each
member of the selection committee tends to nominate at least one film from his own
country. This is often the area where he or she knows more than his/her colleagues”.
This view is substantiated by a closer look at the pre-selection for the 2011 LUX Prize.
This year, fifty-one films were nominated, out of which two were “spontaneous
submissions”; out of the forty-nine remaining films, approximately one-third had the
same national background as their promoter. The same juror clarifies that, for him, this is
not necessarily a problem given that “during the discussion, this ‘patriotic bias’ tends to
disappear and one concentrates on the cinematic value of the individual films”.
However, as we shall note, this conflict between national and European perspectives
Emil Stjernholm 50
recurs in both the selection and voting phases of the prize.
In the pre-selection phase, a further point of contention arises over the form of
the films the LUX Prize celebrates. In particular, this discussion revolves around how to
interpret the implicit criteria set up for the award. One juror involved in distribution
suggests that it is reasonable that “mid-budget, festival selections with some profile”
dominate the selection because these films often have “a certain message”. Another juror
notes the LUX Prize’s symbolism––and particularly the structure of the grant that
supports subtitling––and argues that a major reason for the prize’s existence is to support
films’ circulation: “It is not the aim of the prize to award clearly commercial films, nor
films which are already successfully distributed. They don’t need the LUX Prize to get
the attention of European audiences”. In terms of form, the juror further explains that:
“The films that enter into the selection process are what you would classify as ‘art-house
cinema’”. One juror likewise notes the predominance of art-house cinema and “critics’
favourites”, although noticeably with the most “experimental” of their number excluded.
Bertrand Peltier (2012) suggests that this emphasis derives from a form of “festival bias”
because it is in this forum the different selection committee members come across the
films they nominate.
Here, it is important to note the timeline of the LUX Prize in relation to the major
European film festivals and prizes. The Berlin International Film Festival takes place in
February, the Cannes International Film Festival in May, and the Venice Film Festival in
August; the LUX Prize selection process runs parallel to these influential events, and
many of the participants in the jury are not only attending but also working
professionally within these festivals. In the 2012 jury, for instance, the participation of
Karel Och, artistic director of Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Christophe Leparc, secretarygeneral of the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes, and Catherine Buresi, co-director of the
Berlinale’s film market, establishes a clear link between the film festival circuit and the
LUX Prize. As such, the internal discussion within the jury is tied to ongoing debates
within a large network of film festival professionals.
Along these lines, a recurring point of discussion involves what the impact of
the LUX Prize will be on the celebrated films. Given that the European Union
comprises of 27 individual nation-states and as many film markets, the debate
concerns whether to celebrate films with an established status or films in need of
exposure and support. Many films that have received other prestigious awards––both
prior to and after their participation in the LUX Prize competition–– have gone on to win
Emil Stjernholm 51
the LUX Prize as well. For example, LUX Prize winners Auf der anderen Seite (The
Edge of Heaven, Fatih Akin, 2007) and Le Silence de Lorna (Lorna’s Silence, JeanPierre and Luc Dardenne, 2008) both received other top awards in national and
international venues.31 However, Peltier notes, in recent years the LUX Prize has moved
away from the celebration of already acclaimed, canonical films (2012). While I will
examine this dynamic in more depth in chapter four, it is important to note how this
debate takes form in the actual decision-making process. Commenting on the selection
process, one juror asserts that “films already awarded with the main prize on a big
European festival” tend to be excluded from the competition. Speaking on a 2012
festival hit, for instance, one juror contended, “the film has been released all around
the world. It is pointless and behind the times”. In this sense, the life cycle of the film
has a strong influence on which film is chosen as winner. The film Die Fremde (Feo
Aladag, 2010), for example, was picked up after having been met with indifference on
the film festival circuit, according to jury member and film critic Paul Peter Huth:
“The film was badly presented in the Berlin International Film Festival. In this sense,
the LUX Prize was a compensation for a bad start for the film” (LUX Prize: Selection
Panel's First Meeting). This debate indicates that the selection of a European film to
celebrate does not merely depend on taste, but also on factors such as the accessibility,
reputation and life cycle of the film.
While the palpable connection between the award and the film festival circuit
offers the prize a valuable communication and promotion platform, internal
communications occasionally stress the lack of multiple kinds of films in the selection as
a problem. Comedies, for instance, are repeatedly highlighted as an underrepresented
genre. Similarly, blockbusters that never enter the film festival circuit tend to be
excluded from the start. So while most jurors agree with the LUX Prize’s implicit
criteria, and prefer to exclude films that have been successful commercially, some find
the results of this kind of streamlining troubling. This, furthermore, raises questions
about which visions of Europe stand a chance in this competition.
31
Auf der anderen Seite was lauded for its screenplay at numerous international film festivals as well
as at the European Film Awards. For further information, see: IMDb. "Awards for Auf der anderen
Seite." IMDb. Web. 18 July 2012. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0880502/awards>. Although Le
Silence de Lorna procured relatively few awards in relation to the Dardenne brothers other successes,
the film did get lauded at both Cannes and the French César Awards. For further information, see:
IMDb. "Awards for Le Silence de Lorna." IMDb. Web. 18 July 2012. < http://www.imdb.com/
title/tt1186369/awards>.
Emil Stjernholm 52
3.3.2 Selection Phase
In the selection phase, formally taking place at two official meetings in April and in June
in Brussels, Belgium, the initial selection is slimmed down from approximately fifty
contestants to the three to be screened before the Members of European Parliament.
Besides these meetings, informal debates take place not only through email
communication but also at the prominent film festivals these different film professionals
attend. Noticeably, the same agents who contribute in the pre-selection phase are in
charge of narrowing down the selection. Further, it is during this process the most
concrete negotiations of Europeanness take place, as different visions intersect and
collide. I will aim to reconstruct the nature of this process and bring to the fore the
tensions that arise.
First of all, one must notice that the format of these transnational meetings
represents a negotiation of what it means to be European in itself. Only meeting
physically on three occasions, the jury members have a limited time to engage in faceto-face conversations about the nominated films. Meanwhile, the meetings, taking
place in the European Parliament building in Brussels, brings together film
professionals with a variety of national backgrounds. The fact that these people have
distinct linguistic preferences has a major impact on the structure of the meetings. In
consequence, French, English, German, Italian, and Spanish translators are available
to assist during the three-hour session. Because of this, the jurors speak into
microphones, upon which their views are translated and become audible in the
participants’ headphones. According to one juror, this results in the tone of the
conversation becoming rather formal, contrasting strongly with other jury
experiences. In other words, the lack of a common language becomes an important
factor influencing the fashion in which European citizens communicate.
In terms of content, the discourse of what is European and what is not permeates
all layers of discussion––whether regarding aesthetics versus content, novelty versus
quality, or effect versus risk of controversy. As de Valck and Soeteman note in their
case study of the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam, there is a
near-“universal tension in the history of prizes” between “politics” and “artistic
quality” (p. 298). In the case of the LUX Prize this tension is particularly crucial
because it recurs both in meta-debate concerning the decision-making tools and also
in the discussion of prize’s political profile. Many of the jurors in the LUX Prize
selection committee single out the debate on politics versus artistic merit as
Emil Stjernholm 53
particularly challenging and heated. One juror describes this as a tricky balancing act
since the prize is supposed to celebrate “a film and not an issue”. Another juror
concurs, “I think the film chosen for the LUX Prize should speak about the diversity
of Europe today but they should not be political pamphlets”. In other words, the
question is whether only issue-driven films can say something about Europe and
European cultural identities.
In a 2012 interview, jury member Nick James states: “My kind of position on
the panel is quite a pointed one in the sense that I represent a film magazine [Sight
and Sound] which is mostly concerned with the aesthetics of cinema. Yet, the LUX
jury has to take into account how European a film is and whether it deals with
European issues” (LUX Prize: Selection Panel’s First Meeting). Drawing on his role
as a critic, James further contends: “I want to defend the films that are aesthetically
beautiful as much as I want to defend the films that are about specific European
issues” (Cineeuropa, 2010). In my interviews with jurors, a general pattern indicates
that while James is not alone in putting the aesthetics in the forefront, a majority of
the jurors emphasize that a synthesis of “effective storytelling” and relevant European
thematic is of most importance. This is further indicated in how certain wordings
recur in my interviews; for instance, many members stress the importance of
“meaning”, “values”, “profile”, “stories” and “themes”, particularly in connection
with the adjective “European”. In this sense, many jurors stress that this film prize is a
political award, entailing certain responsibilities to award films that navigate the
political realm.
During its six years in existence, the LUX Prize has received criticism for
choosing political films that support the European Union’s vision of Europe. In the
British newspaper The Telegraph, for instance, columnist Ed West (2010) suggests
that it is particularly troubling that the films chosen seem to be those that “portray
nationalism as evil and promote the EU agenda”, which he illustrates sarcastically by
citing the synopses of the 2010 contenders Akadimia Platonos (Plato's Academy,
Fillipos Tsitos, 2010), Illégal (Olivier Masset-Depasse, 2010) and Die Fremde (When
We Leave, Feo Aladag, 2010). West further contends that the prize is geared toward
“arthouse cinema” and, as such, themes without commercial interest garner
unwarranted attention. This recurring criticism centers both on the content and the
form of the celebrated films. British Euroskeptic Member of European Parliament
Tom Wise (UKIP), for instance, commented on the selection for the 2007 LUX Prize
Emil Stjernholm 54
by saying: “selecting this bunch of films, that would never be the popular choice,
epitomizes the European ‘we know best’ approach to the public” (Waterfield, 2007).
Some commentators on online forums, similarly, have argued that the overt political
themes
of
the
films
chosen
make
them
resemble
propaganda
(www.democracyforum.co.uk). Drawing on this kind of critique against both the
issues these films represent and their intended audience, it seems that the overarching
focus of the LUX Prize is not uncontroversial.
So how does the selection committee come to terms with what European
issues are? Drawing on the vast number of films potentially eligible for competition,
the LUX Prize administrators use a ranking tool to structure the discussion concerning
the films. Prior to the meetings, the selection committee members are asked to review
the films and subsequently indicate their favorites from one to fifteen. While the
administrators see this as a crucial tool in the decision-making process, certain
members of the jury have argued that it is far too bureaucratic a strategy for a film
jury. One juror explained that for him, this kind of a ranking tool could overshadow
the discussion of the artistic merits of the films, which is troubling in relation to his
role as a professional. The same juror further argues that this tool becomes
particularly difficult to use in this context because the prize is not merely for “the best
European film” but the variables for selection are multifold.
That there exist “parallel objectives” is not something that LUX Prize
administrator Bertrand Peltier denies (2012). What these parallel objectives entail is
that the winning film should not only be an excellent film per se, but it should
optimally discuss a current European social issue, attract a European audience and be
of interest to the politicians of the European Parliament. To come to terms with these
different objectives, then, the jury members need to negotiate what qualifies as
European. Here, the LUX Prize’s fourth eligibility criterion is instructive:
[The films] help celebrate the universal reach of European values, illustrate the
diversity of European traditions, shed light on the process of European
integration and provide insights into the building of Europe (LUX Prize:
Eligibility criteria).
A particular point of the debate on Europeanness centers on the difference between
diversity and universality. On the one hand, multiple jurors stress the importance of
films showing the “realities” of people’s lives in countries and places that are usually
inaccessible to the audience. For a film to portray these realities authentically, one
juror notes, it must be grounded in individual, regional, or national existence. In this
Emil Stjernholm 55
sense, the jury members showcase an affinity for the European Union motto “Unity
through diversity”; in other words, what makes Europe unique is its diversity and a
will to learn more about other cultures. This “European” attitude, however, does not
necessarily translate into real life. Director Fillipos Tsitos’ film Akadimia Platonos,
competing for official selection in 2010, concerns a Greek man who suddenly finds
out that he is actually Albanian. This synopsis proved difficult to market elsewhere in
Europe because the film’s theme connoted “foreign” rather than “Greek”. According
to Tsitos, the lack of a rigid national framework could potentially scare audiences
away (CineuropaTV). While the jurors recognize the difficulty of exporting cinema
within Europe, most jurors stress that the support this prize prospectively offers could
overcome these obstacles of commercial cultural diversity.
Although what makes films culturally specific in this context is quite clear,
what makes them specifically European remains more ambivalent. For film director
and 2011 LUX Prize winner Robert Guédiguian, universal themes are what bind
Europeans together: “Les neiges du Kilimandjaro (The Snows of Kilimanjaro) is about
universal values that are fundamental elements of the European identity. It’s about
‘Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité’” (European Parliament: LUX Prize 2011). Among the
jurors, meanwhile, these kind of universal values function as an abstract foundation
for the notion of European cultural identities. While one juror argues that this
universal value is intimately connected with a film’s ability to attract European
audiences, another juror notes that a universal feeling of Europeanness “develops in
the mind of the viewer”. Yet, while universal stories concerning love, death, life and
joy are an inherent part of European cinema, there is no firm definition of what makes
them European in either official documents or my interviews. Accordingly, it seems
that universal values are a far more abstract criterion, which in turn leads to a wide
variety of interpretations of what European cinema is from the individual jury
members. This, in turn, further highlights the difficulty associated with the
negotiations of European cultural identities.
3.3.3 Voting Phase
The final phase of the European Parliament LUX Prize competition is where the
Members of European Parliament watch, vote and ultimately decide which vision of
Europe shall be celebrated. By analyzing interviews with MEPs, the discourse
surrounding the LUX Prize within the Parliament, and participation statistics, this
Emil Stjernholm 56
section investigates how this prize––being positioned between politics and prestige––
negotiates a vision of Europe. In this selection process, questions emerge concerning
these politicians’ roles as judges in a cultural competition, as well as how they select
visions of Europe. Especially, I will problematize the collision between a national
framework and visions of Europe in the evaluation of cultural works, emphasizing
how Elsaesser’s notion of double occupancy becomes visible on the level of
policymaking.
Today, almost all European countries have national film awards, for instance
the French César Award, the British BAFTA Awards, and the German Deutscher
Filmpreis. Geographical delineations such as these are not merely evoked for
practical purposes; the attention these events attract can aid the construction of what
Anderson calls the “imagined community”. English elaborates:
As a kind of competitive spectacle, it attracts attention … not merely to
particular artists or works or forms of art, but to the individuals or groups who
present the awards and to the site—the neighborhood, town, city, nation—in
which the event is held. It can thus be a nodal point for communitarian
identification and pride, a means of positing an “us” and an “our” around
which to rally some group of individuals, as well as a means of raising the
status of that self-avowed community within the symbolic economy of all such
groups.
In this sense, the delimitation of the films’ Europeanness, taking place at an
administrative level, in the selection committee’s negotiations, and ultimately in the
fashion the MEPs engage with the competition, has a symbolic effect. Although the
LUX Prize on an institutional level emphasizes a European symbolism, and the
selection committee’s work centers on negotiating the controversial subject of
European values and identities, the European profile of this prize fundamentally rests
upon the participation of the MEPs. As such, the question is raised: how do individual
politicians, working within the supranational apparatus that is the European Union,
engage with the film prize and its aims?
When considering how the LUX Prize frames European cinema, one must
note that the whole selection process revolves around a mutual dependence between
two otherwise distinct groups with different logics: a cultural awards jury and a
legislative body. On the one hand, the LUX Prize selection committee’s focus on peer
review mimics the role of juries in many other cultural awards. High-profile selection
committee members such as Radu Mihaileanu, the award-winning director of Train
de vie (1999), Feo Aladag, LUX Prize winner and director of Die Fremde (2010), and
Emil Stjernholm 57
Marc Bordure, producer of Les neiges du Kilimandjaro (2011), illustrates that the
LUX Prize likewise places importance on the link between professional expertise and
jury work. As we have seen, these selection committee members go through a vast
number of films, debating, ranking and ultimately choosing the top three films. But
the actual deliberation process where these experts interact and confer is hidden from
the public eye. Instead, a final consensus is made public when the jury’s decisions are
finalized. What distinguishes the European Parliament LUX Prize from all other film
awards, however, is that at this stage the 754 Members of the European Parliament
step in and cast their vote. In this final phase, a parliamentary, democratic process is
initiated, in which the 754 members of European Parliament each have one vote, and
the film with the majority of votes is the winner. Notably, in absolute terms, this jury
is the world’s largest one for a cultural award.
The accumulation and distribution of cultural capital is one of the most
important fundaments for the modern prize circuit. In prize studies, much emphasis is
traditionally placed on the cultural capital of the judges participating in the
distribution of prestige. Such cultural pedigree is commonly associated with
Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital and how such it accumulates over time through
the acquisition of the proper conceptual framework. Cultural capital can become
further institutionalized, for instance, through different forms of formal qualifications.
English notes that the participation in prize juries commonly functions for members
as an “index of their status” resulting in them “profiting symbolically from the
transaction” (2005: p. 122). Drawing on the established professional background of
the jurors and the “status” that they have attained through other jury commitments,
one can assume that their cultural pedigree lends some form of credibility to the LUX
Prize as a distributor of cultural value. But how do the Members of Parliament’s roles
as final decision-makers affect the status of the event? Discussing the role of
politicians in the evaluation of culture is difficult, since each politician has a distinct
background with specific values, tastes, and identities to be considered. Suffice to say,
however, their primary occupational role is within the field of legislation rather than
within the culture industry. Accordingly, this opens up for questions concerning these
agents’ ability to judge in this kind of cultural award.
In the realm of European political legislation, there is recurring tension
between national and supranational perspectives. European politicians are habitually
accused of following the Brussels agenda rather than doing what might be profitable
Emil Stjernholm 58
for their own nation, losing track of why they were elected in the first place.32 How
does this go together with the LUX Prize’s European symbolism and its emphasis on
the controversial subject of European values and identities? Here, a closer look at the
participation statistics could offer an insight into which political groups actually do
engage with these issues. The voting statistics for the LUX Prize 2011 provide some
insight:
Table 1. Participation statistics for the LUX Prize 2007-2010.
2007
736
54
7.5%
Electorates
Participants
Increase of participation
Percentage of Electorates
2008
736
131
143%
18%
2009
736
164
25%
22%
2010
736
221
35%
30%
Table 2. Detailed participation statistics for the LUX Prize 2010.
2011
Electorates
Participants
Percentage
EPP
264
99
38%
S&D
185
54
29%
ALDE
85
15
18%
Green
s/EFA
56
29
52%
ECR
56
8
14%
GUE/
NGL
34
11
32%
EFD
28
4
14%
NI
28
0
0%
Ranking
2
4
6
1
8
3
7
9
33
736
221
30%
These statistics show that although the participation in the event has increased
substantially since the inception in 2007, only about 30% of the MEPs participated in
last year’s competition. Participation, moreover, varies depending on which political
group the members are involved in. On the one hand, there are groups with a
relatively high participation rate. Among the Greens/EFA, more than 50% of the
MEPs cast a vote in 2011. Noticeably, in terms of number of participants, the largest
group in European Parliament, the European People’s Party (EPP), makes up
approximately 45% of the total number of participants. For the Progressive Alliance
32
In the case of the European Union, the main question is whether conflicting allegiances––
supranational and national––are fostered in this context. Trondal (2002) investigates this issue by
conducting interviews and collecting survey data from civil servants. In doing so, the author notes that
a common source of apprehension is whether “not being reminded of their ‘national missions’ on a
daily basis in Brussels, the actors can easily lose sight of the nation-state as their primary locus of
loyalty” (p. 473). According to Trondal, established allegiances tend to trump supranational allegiances
in this particular context.
33
These abbreviations indicate the names of the parliamentary political groups in European
Parliament. These groups are based upon political ideologies and it is up to each Member of European
Parliament to organize oneself within such a group. The following groups are represented in
Parliament: EPP – European People’s Party (Christian Democrats); S&D - Progressive Alliance of
Socialists and Democrats; ALDE - Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe; Greens/EFA - The
Greens–European Free Alliance; ECR - European Conservatives and Reformists; GUE/NGL European United Left–Nordic Green Left; EFD - Europe of Freedom and Democracy; and NI – Noninscrits (non-attached members).
Emil Stjernholm 59
of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and the European United Left–Nordic Green Left
(GUE/NGL), around 30% of the members participated. On the other side of the
spectrum, however, four groups have low participation figures: among The European
Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), a conservative, non-federalist group, attendance
is low in relation to the number of electorates, with only 14% participating. For The
Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD), a Euroskeptical alliance comprised of ten
parties, only four members participated in the competition. Lastly, the non-attached
members (NI), mostly comprised of nationalist parties skeptical toward the EU, 0%
participated in the competition. What these participation statistics indicate is a
correlation between a relatively low participation rate and a general skepticism toward
the European Union as a political entity.
The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) constitutes the
third-largest parliamentary group, but is only ranked sixth in terms of participation in
the LUX Prize voting process. However, in contrast to the ECR, EFD and NI, this
parliamentary group can hardly be described as skeptical against the European Union.
Rather, their low participation rate might be contingent upon a liberal ideological
position in relation to European cultural policy. As noted in the second chapter, a
common obstacle in the conceptualization of European cinema centers on a conflict
between different economic models. Whereas the LUX Prize assists and subsidizes
individual European films hands-on, liberals traditionally oppose such interventions
as problematic to the free market.
Given that the LUX Prize is positioned between politics and prestige––
between a national discourse and a supranational discourse––it is reasonable to
question what evaluation criteria the MEPs have in their assessment of films. As the
industrial relations researcher Guglielmo Meardi says, one wonders whether the
MEPs base their decisions on “political calculation” or other factors (2010). Along the
same lines, one wonders how well the prize, given its pan-European, transnational
outlook, succeeds in fostering an appreciation among the politicians for European
cinema. One questionnaire asked two hundred randomly selected MEPs to describe
their main evaluation criteria. Though this questionnaire received few responses,
those politicians who participated emphasised the “quality” of the film as well as the
“issue” brought to the fore (see Appendix 3). Although it is impossible to offer a
conclusive empirical investigation of this issue, a search for patterns in the 2011
participation report––from the year in which the Swedish, Danish and Finish co-
Emil Stjernholm 60
production Play (Ruben Östlund, 2011), the Greek film Attenberg (Athina Rachel
Tsangari, 2011), and the French film Les neiges du Kilimandjaro (The Snows of
Kilimanjaro, Robert Guédiguian, 2011) all competed for the award––might indicate
some points of contention.
First of all, examining the participation within different European Parliament
party groups in relation to the support given the three films, one can note that the
votes were split in a relatively equal manner between the nominated films regardless
of party group affiliation.34 To find a decisive correlation between choice of a film
and political viewpoint therefore becomes problematic. On the other hand, looking
closer at the 2011 participation statistics, one can deduce a tendency toward national
favoritism amongst the MEPs whose home country has a film in competition. Among
fifty MEPs who cast a vote in the 2011 LUX Prize competition under these
circumstances, 74% voted on a film produced in the same country as their own
electorate. This indicates that, despite working within an institution that on a daily
basis interrogates and defines what is means to be European, national framework
remains important even in a celebration of cultural expression.
3.4 Conclusion
Thus far, fifty films have been shortlisted, fifteen selected for the competition, and
five lauded as winners (see Appendix 4). Naturally, what complicates this process is
that there is no objective way of evaluating a film, because disparate tastes and
differing interpretations of criteria influence which films receive acclaim.
The LUX Prize selection phase seems especially riddled with complex
negotiations of the perspectives adopted by the agents involved in the process, from
administrators to panelists to Members of European Parliament. By ethnographically
studying this decision-making process, the specific tensions involved in the discussion
of pan-European cinema are clearly brought to the fore. First of all, one can conclude
that the selection committee, through their discussions, debates, and selections,
negotiate what is European. Secondly, the fashion in which selection committee
members weigh the LUX Prize implicit criteria––centering on economic and artistic
34
Without disclosing the names of the involved European Parliament groups and the names of the
films, one can contend that with the exception of two parties, the votes were evenly distributed among
the three contending films. For anonymity purposes, this examination cannot detail which films
received votes from which European Parliament groups. The statistic evaluation is in the author’s
possession.
Emil Stjernholm 61
considerations versus the prize’s overarching political aim––accentuate the problems
involved in this new conceptualization of European cinema. Although these decisionmakers aim to consolidate the LUX Prize criteria and its specification of European
identities, they largely fail to conjure a strong definition of European cultural identity.
Here, it becomes clear that a central point of contention in the jury work revolves
around which aspects of the nominated films relate to the European imagined
community. While certain jurors use the adjective “European” to describe cinematic
features such as the themes or plots of the nominated films, others decidedly focus on
the films’ life cycles, aesthetics, and potential impact on the European film market.
Furthermore, that many films that the jury members bring forth are productions from
their home countries, that much emphasis is put on debates of cultural authenticity,
and that most jurors stress abstract conceptualizations of Europe, all indicate that the
nation does not completely vanish, but remains a fundamental reference point—even
for the agents who, through their roles as jurors, attempt to rise above it.
Further, the Members of European Parliaments’ roles as cultural judges further
underlines a number of tensions involved in the negotiation of European cinema and
European cultural identities. First of all, there is an inherent tension between politics
and cultural prestige, stemming from the fact that these politicians lack the cultural
capital normally associated with the judges in cultural competitions. This tension is
further visible in the collision between national and supranational perspectives during
the voting phase. First of all, the participation statistics indicate that there is a link
between a low participation and skepticism against the European Union. By analyzing
the participation and voting statistics, one can further conclude that while these agents
have experience acting as European legislators––dealing with issues on a panEuropean level habitually––the national framework remains key in their celebration
of cinema.
Drawing on my ethnographical analysis, it seems that even if these different
agents attempt to consolidate a European perspective for the purpose of this award,
other aspects of their identities––profession, nationality, and so on––also influence
their decision-making. This, in turn, makes the LUX Prize a transnational discursive
space in which many of the complications involved in Elsaesser’s concept of double
occupancy become visible in practice.
Emil Stjernholm 62
Chapter 4
The Celebration of Visions of Europe: Competition Politics and the
Negotiation of European Cinema
4.1 Celebrating Visions of Europe
This chapter aims to further analyze the institutional dynamics of the European
Parliament LUX Prize by studying the prize competition between the years 2007 and
2011. Specifically, my goal with this chapter is to illustrate how this competition is
intimately linked to the geopolitical interests of the LUX Prize as a film institution.
By closely examining how the prize aims to position itself within both the political
landscape and the global prize circuit, this chapter shows how tensions materialize in
the LUX Prize competition.
Over the decades, European cinema has frequently been described by the
merits of a common European style, culture or artistic quality. At the same time, the
proliferation of pan-European film institutions has prompted a debate on whether
these kinds of abstract visions of Europe are compatible with a grounded, panEuropean perspective with primarily practical goals. In conjunction with this
discussion on European cinema, the LUX Prize has, despite its small-scale nature,
established its position as an institution that explicitly encourages this kind of
definitional debate. As indicated in its policy statement, the goal of the LUX Prize is
not just to celebrate cinema per se, but also to incorporate numerous other objectives,
such as to stimulate a debate on Europe:
Since 2007, the European Parliament LUX prize casts an annual spotlight on
films that go to the heart of the European public debate. The Parliament
believes that the cinema, a mass cultural medium, can be an ideal vehicle for
debate and reflection on Europe and its future. Cinema is popular, attracts
different generations and is affordable (LUX Prize: Supporting culture).
As a result of the competitive nature of this film award, this debate tends to revolve
around which films the LUX Prize supports and what social, political, and cultural
issues are brought forward as European. Meanwhile, despite the prominent role of the
European Union’s support mechanisms in the film industry today, the scholarship
centering on these issues largely neglects to study the relationship between these
European institutions and the individuals working within the film industry.
Accordingly, the specific relationship between the European Parliament LUX
Prize and European film professionals deserves further attention. This relationship,
Emil Stjernholm 63
furthermore, raises a series of questions: how are the European Parliament LUX Prize
and the European film industry connected? How does this interaction correspond with
how individual filmmakers position themselves and their work? If one of the aims of
the LUX Prize is to promote European cinema, to what extent has the award
accomplished this over the past five years? And lastly, how is this relationship
negotiated by the fact that the LUX Prize has established the notion of European
identity as a primary feature of this award?
In order to understand the process by which this competition negotiates the
notion of European cinema, I will examine this phenomenon from both a film
ethnographical and discourse analytical point of view. Whereas the former
perspective allows me to make sense of the specific roles of different agents in this
event, the latter helps make visible the socially constructed process of inclusion and
exclusion involved in this competition. By doing so, this chapter provides an
understanding of the specific rules and logics governing this prize and the fashion in
which these agents negotiate them.
Accordingly, my primary research material comprises of the discourse
surrounding the shortlisted and competing films, mostly in the form of interviews,
promotional material, and press coverage. This decision was based on the fact that
printed and online texts serve as the LUX Prize’s main channels of communication; as
such, it constitutes a fundamental part of the prize’s public image. In his exploration
of the Sundance Film Festival, social scientist Daniel Dayan argues that to capture the
dynamic nature of this sort of film event, one must not simply observe the “visual
festival of films”, but also turn attention to “pamphlets, programs, photocopies,
postcards, maps, essays and excerpts” (2000: p. 45). These documents, Dayan says,
epitomize the constant quest for “self-definition, identity and character” that the
different participants in the event undertake (p. 45). In other words, the multitude of
opinions, perspectives and views that these individuals express form “a fragile
equilibrium, an encounter between competing definitions” (p. 45). Likewise, the over
10,000 documents concerning the LUX Prize––directly and indirectly, publicly and
internally––offer a unique insight into the “definitional activity” in which
administrators, jury members, MEPs, filmmakers, actors, and producers take part.
4.2 Politics of the Prize
Through the European Union’s cultural policy in general, and through concrete
Emil Stjernholm 64
support mechanisms in particular, the European film industry touches base with
European politics. These support mechanisms have become particularly salient in the
fields of production, distribution, and promotion. Concurrently, as noted in chapter
two, there seems to exist a more implicit connection between these domains,
articulated by the fashion in which cinema is envisioned as an edifying medium.
Speaking on the LUX Prize 2010 selection at the Venice Days, former vice-president
of the European Parliament Stavros Lambrinidis says there is a tangible link between
legislators’ work in the European Parliament and the topics that European films
address: “the decisions we make and the laws we make change peoples lives. At the
same time, many of the topics that those movies address––immigration, integration,
violence against women, poverty––are issues that no law can in itself solve alone”
(CineuropaTV: LUX Prize 2010). Lambrinidis goes on to stress that the prize not only
instigates debate among European audience, but also showcases films which play a
didactic role for politicians:
What we are trying to do with the LUX Prize is to bring those topics to the
movies and to the citizens of Europe, and, I should add, educate Members of
the European Parliament as well and touch their hearts too. Because making a
law is not a cold process. You are affecting millions of actual human beings.
(CineuropaTV: LUX Prize 2010).
Taking heed of the competing films’ themes, then, Lambrinidis stresses how different
topical themes can invigorate politicians’ lives as legislators. In other words, these
films are arguably of particular relevance to these agents because of the themes they
address. Looking closer at how these themes are framed by this competition, then, this
case study may reveal different, sometimes conflicting, perspectives on the notion of
European identity. In addition to my interrogation of the institutional dynamics
permeating the European Parliament LUX Prize in previous chapters, I will now focus
on how these dynamics have been transformed throughout five years of competition.
4.2.1 Entering the Competition
Film prizes, like film festivals, come with both advantages and responsibilites for the
participating films. In this process, administrators, jury members, politicians, and
filmmakers all play different parts. In a case study of the Venice International Film
Festival, film scholar Marijke de Valck argues that performances such as these are
central to the to value-addition strived for by film festivals and film prizes alike. This
is because the films that enter competitions are invited to participate in “ritualized
Emil Stjernholm 65
honors” (2007: p. 132). Within the film festival circuit, these rituals, de Valck notes,
often include screening, press, and photo opportunities, but are quite diverse and all
“contribute to the value of the festival” (p. 132). Even though the LUX Prize clearly
differs from this prestigious, longstanding film festival in terms of form, scope and
institutionalization, it seems crucial to investigate these ritualized dynamics and the
fashion in which these rituals frame the winning films’ “Europeanness”.
The primary advantage of the LUX Prize emphasized to filmmakers is the
award itself, which covers the expenses of subtitling and distribution. In order to be
eligible for competition, however, the filmmakers must accept a number of duties:
first, the LUX Prize label should be included in all promotional material such as
posters, DVDs, and online advertisement; and secondly, at least one representative of
each film––such as a director, actor or producer––is required to attend a number of
promotional events.35 These events include the Venice Days at the Venice
International Film Festival where the films in competition are uncovered, a Cine-Club
meeting in Brussels, and the award ceremony, taking place in the European
Parliament in Strasbourg, France; notably, the European Parliament covers the costs
for participation in these events. In addition to this, the films in the selection are
promoted through various platforms, primarily via www.luxprize.eu and the European
Parliament’s website www.europarl.europa.eu. The LUX Prize allots approximately
38% of its total budget to online promotion and these aforementioned events.36
How different agents relate to these advantages and duties forms a crucial part
of the cultural value of the film prize. James English argues concerning cultural value:
“its production is always a social process. Neither can it emerge in a political vacuum,
the participants uncolored by and indifferent to prevailing hierarchies of class, race,
gender, or nation; its production is always politicized” (2005: p. 27). By looking
closer at statements, interviews and controversies related to the competing films, this
chapter improves our understanding of how these performances are part of a process
35
Peltier (2012) notes that these duties are not legally binding, but are binding for the acceptance of
the award.
36
Approximately 37.8% of the budget is allotted to this cause. Out of the total budget of €308,382,
€116,695 was devoted to online communications and events. This approximation was based on
calculations from the 2010 budget as included in a response to a European Parliament Discharge 2009.
See: Committee on Budgetary Control. On Discharge in Respect of the Implementation of the
European Union General Budget for the Financial Year 2009, Section I – European Parliament. By
Ville Itälä. Strasbourg, May 2011. Web. 29 Apr. 2012.
<http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=REPORT&reference=A7-20110094&language=EN>.
Emil Stjernholm 66
of negotiating the notion of European cinema.
4.2.2 Positioning the Award within the International Prize Circuit
I will examine how this relationship plays out in two different sections: the LUX
Prize shortlist and the LUX Prize competition, although with a clear emphasis on the
latter. Within the emerging field of film festival research, how films are framed within
the structure of festivals has been stressed as a particularly important feature to
understand the film festival logic. Film scholar Liz Czach, for instance, has argued
that the selection of a film for a prestigious festival can result in the acquisition of
value, but this value is also further distinguished through its placement in relation to
other films and events (2004: p. 82). By placing a film in a certain context, then, a
hierarchy is established (p. 83). Although in a completely different context, it is
instrumental to study this kind of positioning to gain an understanding of how the
phases involved in the LUX Prize competition indicate films’ different roles in the
discursive negotiation of Europeanness.
As mentioned, the LUX Prize competition is comprised of two distinct phases.
First, ten films are shortlisted and made public at an official press event. In recent
years, Prague has hosted the unveiling of the ten shortlisted films in the framework of
the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. In 2011 the launch was led by Member
of European Parliament Olga Sehnalova (S&D) and featured the previous award
winner Feo Aladag (Die Fremde, 2010), actress Sibel Kekilli (Die Fremde, 2010),
and the artistic consultant of KVIFF Eva Zaoralova, who also sat on the LUX Prize
selection committee. A range of the shortlisted films is screened during the festival,
from which the jury selects three to be screened before the Members of European
Parliament for approximately two weeks. Drawing on Czach’s observation of the
hierarchical placement of films within a particular context, then, a closer look at the
distinction between the shortlisted films and the competing films might prove useful.
Table 3. Films on the EP LUX Prize Shortlist 2007. Original title, director, production country.
Winner
Competition
Competition
Shortlist
Shortlist
Shortlist
Shortlist
Shortlist
Auf der anderen Seite
4 Luni, 3 Saptamini Si 2 Zile
Belle toujours
Exile Family Movie
Kurz Davor Ist Es Passiert
Kalinovski Square
Iszka Utazasa
Import/Export
Fatih Akin
Cristian Mungiu
Manoel de Oliveira
Arash T. Riahi
Anja Salomonowitz
Yury Khashchevatskiy
Csaba Bollók
Ulrich Seidl
Germany, Turkey, Italy
Romania, Belgium
France, Portugal
Austria
Austria
Estonia
Hungary
Austria, France, Germany
Emil Stjernholm 67
Shortlist
Fräulein
Shortlist
California Dreamin’
Source: www.luxprize.eu.
Andrea Stacka
Cristian Nemescu
Switzerland
Romania
Established in 2007, the LUX Prize is a late adapter within the international prize
circuit. Therefore, the administrator of the first award Bertrand Peltier says that “big
names” were, and have been since, mobilized to raise the profile of the event (2012).
At the same time, the LUX Prize aims to use its promotional tools to support less
established, independent, and small-budget films. The inaugural competition
illustrates the tensions involved in this process. Notably, the ten shortlisted films are
diverse in authorial background, form, and nationality. This first year, the shortlist
comprised of both feature film debutants such as Anja Salomonowitz’s Kurz Davor
Ist Es Passiert (It Happened Just Before) and prominent, internationally established
directors such as Ulrich Seidl, Manoel de Oliveira, and Fatih Akin. In terms of
budget, there is a noticeable gap between the newcomers and the more established
filmmakers. For instance, Csaba Bollók’s Iszka Utazasa (Iska's Journey), his second
feature film, cost approximately €500,000 to produce; Anja Salomonowitz’s debut
had an even lower budget of around €160,000.37 Likewise, Christian Mungiu’s film
festival favorite 4 Luni, 3 Saptamini Si 2 Zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) was a
low-budget feature, costing less than €600,000 (AFP, 2007). According to the
MEDIA program’s definition of films eligible for selective support, these films
qualify as small budget films, costing less than €3,000,000 to make.38 By comparison,
the €3,500,000 budget of Fatih Akin’s winning film Auf der anderen Seite qualifies as
medium size (Hölzl, 2009). It seems that, despite varying budgetary conditions, the
selection for the shortlist provides a space for a diverse set of less well-established
filmmakers to gain exposure in the same light as their more recognized peers.
37
Information collected from the Internet Movie Data Base: Iska's Journey (HUF 150,000) and It
Happened Just Before (USD 200,000, converted to Euro on 2012-06-02). See: IMDb. "Box Office /
Business for Iska's Journey." IMDb. Web. 18 July 2012. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0867329/
business> and IMDb. "Box Office / Business for It Happened Just Before." IMDb. Web. 18 July 2012.
< http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493139/business>.
38
This distinction is important because the selective support offered to films depends on the budget
size of the films. In the section “Budget available”, it reads: “A maximum of 10% of the budget
available will be allocated to ‘old’ films. From the remaining budget, around 30% will be allocated to
‘small’ films, while 70% will be allocated to ‘medium’ films” (p. 9). For further information, see: The
MEDIA program defines small and MEDIA (2007-2013). Permanent Guidelines 2012-2013 - Support
For The Transnational Distribution Of European Films – The “Selective” Scheme. Rep. European
Commission. Web. 7 Mar. 2012.
<http://ec.europa.eu/culture/media/programme/distrib/schemes/select/docs/30_2011/di_sel_guidelines_
final.pdf>.
Emil Stjernholm 68
In terms of form, one should note that both fiction and documentary films
were included in the 2007 selection––which featured the documentaries Exile Family
Movie and Kalinovski Square––although the former category arguably dominated the
competition. The films’ production companies are based in twelve European
countries, of which ten (all except Switzerland and Turkey) are members of the
European Union. Looking at the fifty films that have been shortlisted for the LUX
Prize during the past five years (see appendix 4), one can also note that this relatively
widespread representation of the European Union’s 27 member states recurs. In fact,
22 out of the European Union’s 27 members have been represented in this stage of the
competition, with the only countries yet to be represented being Cyprus, Malta,
Latvia, Slovakia and Ireland. By contrast, in the final stage of the prize, the selection
is far more homogenous, with a strong predominance of Western European films.
Between 2007 and 2011, a total of 32 countries were listed as involved in the
production of the 15 competing films; of these, only 6 lay outside Western Europe.39
Although to investigate the historical factors behind this imbalance would go beyond
the scope of this thesis, these numbers do indicate that geographical diversity is far
stronger in the shortlist stage of the LUX Prize competition.
Drawing on Czach’s analysis of programming politics, one must note that the
qualifications for inclusion in the selection’s shortlist differ from the qualifications for
inclusion in the final stage of the competition. Here, one must further note that it is
primarily the three films in competition––and most centrally the winner––that receive
attention from the media, the general public, and MEPs. Marijke de Valck argues that
despite the difficulty of measuring “the exact effects of an award or nomination”, one
must consider what value the prize adds to the winning film (2007: p. 150). This
becomes especially important when the prizes in question center on celebrating films
from the art-house circuit; in this context, one must remember that contemporary
films have increasingly long lifespans, and premieres are seldom parallel but rather
highly idiosyncratic in time and space. So at what stage of the three competing films’
life cycles were they affected by the influence of the LUX Prize?
39
The concept of Western Europe arose in relation to the Iron Curtain of the Cold War and the EastWest divide. During this time, Western Europe became synonymous with the following loosely
connected countries: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg,
The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland, Spain, Great Britain, Sweden, Germany and Austria.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the divide between East and West has become increasingly diffused
(Nationalencyclopedin: Västeuropa).
Emil Stjernholm 69
Whereas the LUX Prize winner Auf der anderen Seite was praised on the film
festival circuit for its screenplay––for instance winning the Best Screenplay award at
the Cannes International Film Festival––its opponent in the competition 4 luni, 3
saptamâni si 2 zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, Christian Mungiu, 2007) took home
both the Palme d’Or at Cannes and the prize for Best European Film at the European
Film Awards. While Belle toujours (Manoel de Oliveira, 2007), the third film in the
contest, premiered out of competition at the Venice International Film Festival and
was Portugal’s submission to the Academy Awards for best foreign film, the film fell
short and did not procure any awards.40 This shows the LUX Prize choosing three
films for competition that had already ventured spatiotemporally through a number of
the world’s leading film festivals and film awards. Moreover, all three of the
competing directors were at the time of the nomination well-known filmmakers,
corresponding to what strategic documents and the award organization alike describe
as “big name” directors.
4.2.3 Competition, Prize Winners and the Negotiation of the Award’s Identity
By placing these three films in the competition category, questions concerning the
films’ connection to the prize’s identity are raised. Here, one must notice that this
prize is geared not only toward the general public, the media and the film industry,
but essentially toward politicians and legislators as well. For Auf der anderen Seite, 4
luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile, and Belle toujours, the fact that these films were selected
for the competition further led to an opportunity to screen the film in front of these
officials. This, I would suggest, has become a central motivation for many filmmakers
to participate in the competition. To gain a better understanding of how the
celebration of European cinema functions in practice, let us more closely examine the
films the LUX Prize supports, and the social, political, and cultural issues it brings
forward as “European”. Furthermore, how does this interaction match how individual
filmmakers position themselves and their work?
40
For the full list of awards and nominations for the shortlisted films, see: for Auf der anderen Seite
IMDb. "Awards for Auf der anderen Seite." IMDb. Web. 18 July 2012. <http://www.imdb.com/title/
tt0880502/awards>, for 4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile IMDb. "Awards for 4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile."
IMDb. Web. 18 July 2012. < http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1032846/awards>, and for Belle toujours
IMDb. "Awards for Belle toujours." IMDb. Web. 18 July 2012. < http://www.imdb.com/title/
tt0475224/awards>.
Emil Stjernholm 70
Table 4. Films in the EP LUX Prize Competition 2007-2011
Year
Original Title
Director
Country
2007
-
Auf der anderen Seite
4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile
Fatih Akin
Cristian Mungiu
Germany, Turkey, Italy
Romania, Belgium
-
Belle toujours
Manoel de Oliveira
France, Portugal
2008
Le Silence de Lorna
Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne
2009
Delta
Občan Havel
Welcome
Kornél Mundruczó
Pavel Koutecký
Philippe Lioret
Belgium, France, Germany,
Italy
Germany, Hungary
Czech Republic
France
-
Sturm
Hans-Christian Schmid
2010
-
Eastern Plays
Die Fremde
Illégal
Kamen Kalev
Feo Aladag
Olivier Masset-Depasse
Akademia Platonos
Fillipos Tsitos
2011
Les neiges du Kilimandjaro
Robert Guédiguian
Play
Ruben Östlund
Attenberg
Athina Rachel Tsangari
Source: www.luxprize.eu. Winners indicated in bold.
Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Denmark, The Netherlands,
Sweden, Germany
Bulgaria
Germany
Belgium, France, Luxemburg
Greece, Germany
France
Sweden, Denmark, France
Greece
Given its key role in being the first film to be linked to the LUX Prize’s
identity, let us turn first to the 2007 winner, Fatih Akin’s Auf der anderen Seite. In a
speech at the 736-seat hemicycle in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the
Parliament’s former president Hans-Gert Pöttering (European People’s Party) offered
his view on the selection of Auf der anderen Seite as the competition’s winner. He
began by congratulating the filmmakers and subsequently lauded the importance of
films which address contemporary European integration issues:
50 years after signing the Treaty of Rome, the European Parliament is
awarding for the first time the newly created cinema prize LUX. With this
prize we want to award annually a film that raises attention to current social
questions that affect our continent and highlights European integration
especially (European Parliament: And the LUX Prize, 2007).
In this sense, Pöttering takes heed of cinema––and centrally this particular film––as a
tool to illuminate social issues. The film follows the main protagonist Nejat (Baki
Davrak) in his trip from Bremen, Germany, to Istanbul, Turkey, and the individuals
who cross his path: the widower Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz) who is Nejat’s father, the
prostitute Yeter (Nursel Köse) who moves in with Ali, and Yeter’s daughter Ayten
(Nurgül Yesilçay) who lives in Turkey and is active in the Kurdish resistance
movement. By interweaving geographically displaced individuals through the
characters’ crossing of borders, the fashion in which people interact within and
Emil Stjernholm 71
without their homelands becomes one of the main focal points of this film. Financed
by German, Turkish and Italian production companies, this film constitutes Fatih
Akin’s fifth feature film. Similar to Pöttering’s statement, the press release published
on the European Parliament’s website www.europarl.europa.eu, praises that the film
concerns “human relationships between German and Turkish people” (European
Parliament: Edge of Heaven Takes). By placing the film in the context of the LUX
Prize competition, then, the question arises whether a cinematic story concerning
these kinds of relationships can be said to be European.
From the filmmaker’s point of view, this question does not have one essential,
definite answer. In a round table discussion on European cinema broadcast by France
24, Fatih Akin is asked if the message of his film is a European one. In his response,
Akin says that it is, in a couple of different ways: “Somehow it is because it deals
with the borders of Europe. The film is about the relationship between Turkey and the
European Union … and the film is funded mostly by European money”
(france24english). At the same time, according to Akin, his background as a “bastard
of two cinemas”––being a Turkish diaspora filmmaker in Germany––has raised
questions of how to frame his filmmaking (Jaafar, 2007). In an interview with the
magazine Variety, Akin comments on Auf der anderen Seite and notes that he
“wanted to add an extra dimension and perspective to how the media have presented
Turkey joining the European Union, as I feel that their view can be at times limited”
(Jaafar, 2007). While the LUX Prize aims to celebrate films and to construct a
particular image of European cinema, Akin self-reflexively uses this forum not only
to question the meaning of Europe, but also to bring his ambivalence to a new
audience: namely, European politicians.
After having its premiere in the official competition at the Cannes
International Film Festival in May, the film opened in Germany at the end of
September. The LUX Prize, meanwhile, was awarded to the film in late October,
around the same time the film opened in a majority of the European Union’s 27
member states.41 The film became an art-house success, reaching approximately 1.6
million European spectators and collecting numerous awards; thus, the inaugural
41
The film opened in Cannes on 23 May 2007, and subsequently had its domestic premiere in
Germany on 27 September 2007. Meanwhile, between October 26 and November 14, the film opened
in the Czech Republic, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Belgium, France, Greece, and Denmark. By comparison,
the 2004 Golden Bear winner Gegen die Wand (Against the Wall, Fatih Akin) reached approximately
1.7 million spectators, although with a greater percentage of a domestic audience.
Emil Stjernholm 72
winner of the competition became a sort of ambassador for the prize, and as such
indicated a direction for the prize in the future (European Audiovisual Observatory).
In 2008, the likewise renowned directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne won the prize
with their film Le Silence de Lorna in competition with the feature film debutant
Pavel Koutecký’s Občan Havel and the Hungarian Kornél Mundruczó’s film Delta.
The Dardenne brothers are well-known and much celebrated filmmakers. Besides
being two of few who have won the Palme d’Or two times, the Belgian filmmakers
are frequently applauded for their social pathos. With regard to the LUX Prize winner
Le Silence de Lorna, film critics have commented that this film, a co-production
between Belgian, French, Italian and German film companies, has “a very European
provenance” (AFP, 2008). The film follows Lorna (Arta Dobroshi), a young Albanian
migrant, and the difficulties she faces when attempting to secure Belgian citizenship,
instead finding herself drawn into an organized crime syndicate. Sharing a house with
the Belgian drug-addict Claudy (Jérémie Renier) and forced to associate with a
heterogeneous mix of Eastern European immigrants in Liège, Lorna’s moral compass
is put to the test. Like Auf der anderen Seite, this film failed to procure the Palme
d’Or but did manage to win the Cannes prize for best screenplay.
Parallel to this success within the film festival circuit, the film was awarded
the LUX Prize, which led to much media attention being paid to just how these
filmmakers represented European social issues. In magazines and newspapers
covering the European Union, for instance, the directors Jean-Pierre and Luc
Dardenne’s visions of Europe were scrutinized. After receiving the prize, the
Dardenne brothers shared their views on contemporary Europe, immigration, and
education in an interview with EUobserver.com. Luc Dardenne argues, “For us,
Europe is a fantastic chance to deal with these problems” but at the same time, “it
seems that EU governments react little by little. One moment they give a little pity to
immigrants, then suddenly renewed hardness, then a little bit more pity” (Küchler,
2008). The fate of immigrants in Belgium lies close to the hearts of the filmmaking
brothers, whose engagement with the Belgian organization Union de Défense des
Sans Papiers is widely known. Together with this human rights organization, which
works to defend the rights of immigrants without documents, the Dardenne brothers
have criticized a lack of political action, even calling for public demonstrations in
Brussels (Dardenne, 2006). Concurrently as Le Silence de Lorna was selected as top
film in the LUX Prize competition, the Dardenne brothers were appointed as
Emil Stjernholm 73
ambassadors for the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue, which commenced in
January 2009 under an initiative of the European Union. In this sense, it seems that
the Dardennes’ strong interest in social issues has given them an elevated position
within the European public debate. Furthermore, this case shows how the LUX Prize
interacts with individual filmmakers, offering them a chance to gain publicity for their
cause in the realm of European politics. On the one hand, the award negotiates a form
of mutual dependence between the filmmakers and the institution, offering them a
place to make their film visible and spark debate. On the other hand, how the LUX
Prize celebrates these established filmmakers corresponds with the need for this film
prize to profile itself and create its own artistic identity.
Whereas both Fatih Akin and the Dardenne brothers have received prizes at
some of the world’s top competitive film festivals in the past, it was not until the third
edition of the LUX Prize that a less internationally acclaimed director took home the
trophy. Accordingly, in the 2009 edition, the prize took a new direction. The French
film Welcome (Philippe Lioret) received the 2009 LUX Prize in competition with
Eastern Plays (Kamen Kalev) and Sturm (Storm, Hans-Christian Schmid). While
Philippe Lioret has had a long career in the French domestic market, being twice
nominated for the French César Award, it was not until the release of the film
Welcome that he garnered attention from a range of the world’s top competitive film
festivals (IMDb: Awards for Philippe Lioret). The winning film Welcome centers on
Bilal (Firat Ayverdi), a seventeen-year-old Kurdish boy who has travelled through the
Middle East and Europe to join his émigré girlfriend who now lives in England. In
France, Bilal is stopped in the northern city of Calais, where he is one of thousands of
sans-papiers (non-documented) immigrants who dream of crossing the border.
Aspiring to swim across the English Channel, Bilal takes swimming lessons from
Simon, a French instructor (Vincent Lindon) who gradually becomes more and more
involved in the boy’s fate. In accordance with article L622-1 of the French law,
Simon faces imprisonment and a fine up-to €30,000 for the crime of assisting a
refugee, but continues to aid him.
In an interview with the regional newspaper La Voix du Nord in January 2009,
Lioret drew a parallel between the tracking of illegal immigrants in Calais, France,
and raids against Jews in occupied France in 1943 (Adjoudj, 2009). Two months
before the premiere of Welcome (2009), Lioret’s comments caused commotion as the
debate on the code des étrangers (“code for foreigners”) article L622-1 spread from
Emil Stjernholm 74
the cinema to the Parliament of France. In an interview with Le Figaro, French
Immigration Minister Éric Besson (The Progressives/Union for a Popular Movement)
criticized the filmmaker for making “outrageous” comparisons (“Eric Besson
Critique”, 2009).
On Wednesday March 18 2009, Welcome was screened in the French
Parliament following an initiative of the oppositional socialist party Partie socialiste.
According to Sandrine Mazetier, a socialist party députée in the National Assembly,
over 4000 French citizens were arrested under the L622-1 article in 2008 (Brothers,
2009). In its first three weeks in cinemas, the film drew 780,000 viewers, making it
one of the most attended French films in the month of March.42 Commenting on this
debate in an article in The New York Times, the renowned French actor Vincent
Lindon said, “I hope it changes things in France … I never do a film for political
reasons, but if this article disappeared thanks to the film—and it has to—it would be a
source of pride” (Brothers 2009).
That actors and filmmakers get involved in public debates concerning politics
is not uncommon. In fact, the social pathos of cinema and its creators frequently
draws attention in the media. For example, journalists and critics have hailed Lioret as
the French equivalent of Ken Loach, British social realist auteur par excellence
(Fornerod, 2011), for his characteristic emphasis on social issues and the daily lives of
his compatriots. Evidently, with Welcome, this filmmaker not only influenced debate
among cultural commentators, but among leading legislators as well.
When Welcome received the 2009 prize, the debate made its way beyond
French borders and into European Parliament. On receiving the LUX Prize,
Emmanuel Courcol, Lioret’s co-scriptwriter, commented: “The Amsterdam Treaty
aimed at establishing an ‘area of freedom, security and justice’ for Europeans. The
selection of Welcome by the LUX Prize is an encouraging sign. We see this as a sign
of support for the values which the film defends––commitment, solidarity and openmindedness––against all attempts to go backwards” (LUX Prize, 2009). While a
majority of the Members of European Parliament voted for this film, the fact that this
prize won also sparked criticism from commentators. In an article entitled “French
film about illegal immigrant trying to enter Britain wins top EU award”, the major
42
For box office statistics for the film Welcome, see: IMDb. “Box Office / Business for Welcome.”
Web. 25 May 2012. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1314280/business>. Further, for weekly French box
office statistics, consult: Box Office Mojo. “France Weekend Box Office Index for 2009.” Web. 25
May 2012. <http://boxofficemojo.com/intl/france/?yr=2009>.
Emil Stjernholm 75
British newspaper Daily Mail reported: “A French film about an illegal migrant who
tries to swim across the Channel from Calais to Britain has won a top EU award for
its celebration of ‘integration’ in Europe. The controversial movie called Welcome
dramatises a ‘likeable’ migrant’s illegal attempt to reach our shores” (Sparks, 2009).
By putting the words “integration” and “likeable” in quotation marks, the paper
implies dissatisfaction with the LUX Prize’s celebration of this film. The article goes
on to cite local sources in Calais, where a council chief comments: “I think we would
be disappointed if it made breaching frontier controls look like some kind of noble
quest” (Sparks, 2009). Although this film had a controversial life cycle prior to
receiving the LUX Prize, Lioret never minced his words, instead utilizing events
related to the competition to promote his cause—the abolition of the article L622-1 in
the European Court of Justice (Cineuropa, 2009). It seems that tension between
different interpretations of the film’s political message permeates the celebration of
Welcome, which, in turn, reveals the challenges that come with the institution of a
parliamentary film prize.
In the 2010 LUX Prize competition, no fewer than two out of three films were
made by feature film debutantes. Whereas the film Illégal (Olivier Masset-Depasse,
2010), the director’s second feature film, shares a thematic emphasis on the detention
of immigrants with Lioret’s Welcome, Akademia Platonos (Fillipos Tsitos, 2009)
stands out as one of few comedies to reach the competition stage of the award. These
choices further displayed a new emphasis on less established European filmmakers in
the LUX competition. Two aspects distinguishing the 2010 competition from previous
years are its first female director selection, Feo Aladag, and that her film had received
a mild response in the film festival circuit. Her film Die Fremde explores the power
relations behind honor killings and centers on Umay (Sibel Kekilli), a young woman
of Turkish origin, who takes her son and flees to Germany in an effort to gain
independence from her abusive husband. In Berlin, she and her family are put under
immense social pressure, forcing her fight for her existence.
The Austrian-born director Aladag gained first hand experience of honor
violence working with Amnesty International’s “Violence against Women” campaign.
With Die Fremde, Aladag says she wanted to move beyond controversial polemics
and center not only on cultural issues but also on the dynamics behind the universal
wish to be loved by one’s family (Aladag, 2010). On November 24 2010, Aladag and
the award-winning actress Sibel Kekilli went to Strasbourg to receive the LUX Prize
Emil Stjernholm 76
from European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek (European People’s Party). After
receiving the LUX Prize, Aladag commented:
I made Die Fremde because I believe we live in a multicultural society which
can no longer rest on promoting consensus but must rather find new ways in
dealing with arising divergence. The LUX Prize is an essential bridge between
national identities and beyond (Aladag, 2010).
Focusing on the film’s topic, Member of European Parliament Doris Pack (EPP)
opined: “the film impressively deals with the issue of ‘honour killings’. Without
blaming anybody, the director contrives to take the audience into the history and let
the audience witness the conflicts of the persons involved” (EPP Group Press, 2010).
During the ceremony, Buzek reportedly focused on the notion of cinema negotiating
European cultural identities, saying: “the three films deal in a very sensitive way with
the issue of identity, and the differences between a collective identity and an
individual one. This is an important topic because in an ever more integrated Europe
we will have to answer the question what it actually means to be European”
(European Parliament: Parliament's 2010 LUX).
In recent years, a number of European films on the topic of honor violence
have stirred controversy and raised debate. In the short film Submission (Theo van
Gogh, 2004), for instance, texts from the Qur’an are projected against a veiled
woman’s naked body, criticizing women’s roles within Islam. The film, and the
subsequent murder of its director, caused heated, highly polarized public debate in the
Netherlands on the topic of honor-related violence against women within families. On
the other hand, Fatih Akin’s Gegen die Wand was widely praised throughout the
international film festival circuit for its portrayal of this thematic. But Die Fremde’s
controversial topic drew a fair amount of negative responses regarding the Members
of European Parliament’s selection of this film as the winner. Guglielmo Meardi,
professor of industrial relations and expert on European enlargement policies
commented:
Die Fremde won, which is a sad political sign about the feelings in the
European Parliament. For MEPs, honour killing is a more urgent problem than
the human treatment of undocumented migrants and of xenophobia - and
probably just because for honour killing they can blame somebody else. I wish
Die Fremde had won the artistic prize it deserves, instead of a political one.
Film critic Zornitsa Staneva was likewise skeptical:
Ironically, the winner of the European Parliament’s 2010 LUX prize, Feo
Aladag’s feature debut When We Leave [Die Fremde’s English title], would
Emil Stjernholm 77
probably serve well the cause of some member states opposed to Turkey’s
entrance into the Union … in the four years of LUX’s existence, this is the
second film treating the subject of intergenerational Turkish-German strife.
While shedding zetetic light onto the cultural schism gnawing the union, When
We Leave at times entangles its characters into ethno-cultural stereotyping,
albeit as a counterpoint to its unmistakably humanistic, not to say feminist
drift (2011).
The quotations above signal that there exists a divergence in attitudes between how
the LUX Prize celebrates certain films and how this selection then is received on a
global scale. Though the LUX Prize’s goal is to highlight European social issues in its
competition, its choices have instead become a European social issue in themselves.
4.3 Negotiating European Identities through Competition Politics
Arguably, as Thomas Elsaesser suggests, the poor circulation of European cinema
inherently limits its possible role in the public debate in Europe (2005: p. 119). Yet,
the LUX Prize highlights the stimulation of debate as an absolutely fundamental part
of its existence. In 2010, a strategic document entitled “Laying the foundations for the
LUX Prize in the future” underlined the need to not only celebrate cinema, but also
construct a European public space in association with the competition. This space,
echoing the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas’s notion of the public sphere,
would then serve as a grounded platform for European debate. In 2011, the LUX
Prize organized a synchronized screening of Aladag’s Die Fremde in all 27 European
Union countries as a pilot project to test the feasibility of creating a LUX Prize film
week. Simultaneously, this event served as a promotional tool for a 23-language
subtitled DVD of the film, produced in cooperation with the Goethe Institute. After
the event attracted over 10,000 visitors, Bertrand Peltier, co-administrator, concluded
that the event was positively evaluated and subsequently green-lighted as a new
communication strategy (2012).43
Within critical theory, the notion of a European debate taking place in a
European public sphere has been widely discussed in the past twenty years (cf.
Habermas, 1962). For example, as demonstrations against the US invasion of Iraq
43
In an interview with the author, Bertrand Peltier notes that the prize initially was geared toward a
business-to-business communication model where the primary aim of the prize was to support local
film producers. With the expansion of the LUX Prize to include a film week, Peltier says that the prize
is now best described as business-to-consumer award, which attempts to supply the audience with a
product. See: Peltier, Bertrand, Administrator of the LUX Prize (2012) Interview with the author, 25
April.
Emil Stjernholm 78
flooded the streets of many European capitals in February 2003, philosophers Jürgen
Habermas and Jacques Derrida wrote a manifesto in which they argued that the
protests on the streets might “go down in history as a sign of the birth of a European
public sphere” (2003: p. 291). The emergence of this public sphere, they argue,
emphasizes a number of core features of the European identity, such as secularization,
trust in the welfare state, skepticism toward the market, low tolerance for force as a
political tool et cetera (2003: p. 295). According to Habermas and Derrida, the
European Union has failed to give a voice to these shared identity traits.
The idea of a European public sphere has given European leaders food for
thought in the past decades. Historically the European Union has been criticized for a
“communications deficit” between European politics and European citizens; this
critique has centered on, among other things, the European Union’s institutionalized
approach to the building of a European public sphere. Whereas the media is seen as
imperative for a functioning public sphere, questions have been raised concerning the
feasibility of engaging European citizens in a debate in which they seem to show little
interest (Vucheva, 2009). However, in recent years, the omnipresence of the debt
crisis in the Eurozone has forced commentators to question whether the intensive panEuropean debate around this issue could constitute the definite birth of a European
public sphere.44 While this crisis affects people’s lives all around Europe, the question
facing European Union communications strategists is how this kind of debate can be
sustained.
Parallel to this, one must note that the films competing for the 2011 LUX
Prize shared a thematic emphasis on relationships between different classes. While
Ruben Östlund’s Play deals with a sophisticated method of manipulating privileged
children to surrender their belongings, Attenberg looks at the lives of two women on
the desolate streets of Athens in the wake of the financial crisis. This year, the LUX
Prize was awarded to Les neiges du Kilimandjaro (Robert Guédiguian), a film that
revolves around Michel (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) and Marie-Claire (Ariane Ascaride),
a happily married couple whose lives are shaken up by the financial crisis. After
Michel is fired from his job as a Union representative in the docks of Marseille, his
friends and family raise a large amount of money so that the couple can travel to
44
Articles such as Ojala, M, “European Publics”, (2012) have emphasized that the so-called European
sovereign debt crisis has sparked more intense communications within Europe than ever before. What
distinguishes this current crisis, commentators note, is that these communications center on a
specifically European issue.
Emil Stjernholm 79
Africa for a vacation. One night, however, the couple is subject to a brutal robbery,
whereupon Michel notices that the perpetrator actually is one of his former work
colleagues. In the light of this theme of financial inequality, around which Les neiges
du Kilimandjaro is arguably built, the selection of films for the 2011 LUX Prize
emerges as another distinct approach toward engendering a pan-European debate on
this topic.
As noted previously, the LUX Prize requires attendance of a number of events
as an obligatory ritual for the participants. These events, however, also function as a
pretext for European politicians and European film professionals to interact. A closer
look at the overhead costs for the prize serve as a concrete indication of this. Whereas
the prize sum oscillates between €90,000 and €105,000, the total budget for the award
has ranged between €300,000 and €325,000. In other words, the overhead costs for
the prize are about 70% of the monetary value of the award. That a substantial amount
of this overhead cost is devoted to funding events, in-house promotional material, and
collaborations with film festivals further signals that the prize aims to construct a
meeting ground between European politicians and the European film industry.
Meanwhile, it is noteworthy that no other cultural award managed by DG
Communication matches the LUX Prize in its emphasis on European identity issues
and public debate. In this light, one must further notice that in recent years the LUX
Prize has increasingly moved away from the European Parliament and begun to
negotiate its position as a more hands-on promotional tool in relation to the European
film industry. As an example of this, the LUX Prize has existed as a festival category
at the Venice Days and the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival during the past
years. Bertrand Peltier, co-administrator of these events, notes that there have been
difficulties in establishing that the LUX Prize should be seen not as a “threat but as a
partner” in these proceedings (2012). However, by developing these industrial links—
through promotional events, professional exchange, and shared media exposure––the
LUX Prize has found a yet underexplored avenue influencing the award’s survival in
a competitive market.
According to film scholar Dina Iordanova, there is a constant struggle for
prominence between older and newer festivals, leading to some proliferating while
others disappear (2003: p. 30). The European Film Awards, originally titled the Felix
Awards, constitute the most prestigious award centering on European cinema. At the
formation of the European Film Academy in 1988, the first president, Swedish
Emil Stjernholm 80
director Ingmar Bergman, came together with 40 colleagues with the explicit aim “to
advance the interests of the European film industry” (EFA). With the creation of the
European Film Awards, the greatest achievements in European cinema found a venue
for celebration. By the mid-1990s, the Awards had grown substantially and have now
become a well-covered media event. Both on the red carpet and in the award
ceremony, the participation of Europe’s biggest film stars has raised the profile of the
prize. The European Film Awards, in this way, have become the European equivalent
of the Oscar gala, being broadcast in approximately 40 countries worldwide each
year. Upstaged by the European Film Awards in terms of glamour, scope, and media
exposure, the LUX Prize’s self-reflexive negotiation of its goals seems like a
deliberate move to differentiate itself from the competition. At the same time, the
LUX Prize’s new strategy to create a shared European public space is not only an
effort to distinguish the prize, but centrally an approach to further anchor the prize’s
identity with the notion of European identities.
4.4 Conclusion
The celebration stage of the LUX Prize finds the different realms of European politics
and cinema sharing common ground. In the introduction to this chapter, I raised a
series of questions concerning the relationship between the LUX Prize and European
film professionals, especially where interaction occurs and what the points of
convergence and conflict are. By tracking the timeline of the LUX Prize competition
from 2007 to 2011, this chapter illustrates how the geopolitical interests of the LUX
Prize shape this mutual celebration of visions of Europe.
One of the LUX Prize’s clearest institutional aims is to promote European film
culture. As the investigation of the timeline indicates, in the two first editions of the
LUX Prize competition, big names such as Fatih Akin and the Dardenne brothers
received the award, lending legitimacy to the event itself through both their critical
acclaim and their social pathos. Following this, the LUX Prize competition took a
new direction by celebrating a range of less established filmmakers such as Philippe
Lioret and Feo Aladag. In the discourse surrounding the competition, there has been a
consistent emphasis on the social pathos of individual filmmakers, not only on a
cinematic level but also as role models and in terms of engagement in nongovernmental organizations. Meanwhile, the competition evokes the difficult question
what European identities are. By participating in events, ceremonies and press
Emil Stjernholm 81
releases, different cultural agents––such as filmmakers, actors, and producers––tackle
this question hands-on. For instance, the LUX Prize allows filmmakers to reflect on
the project of the European Union, which results in a tension between imaginations of
an essentialist European identity and the multiple identities these agents attribute to
their own works of art.
By examining how the geopolitical interests of the LUX Prize influence the
discourse surrounding the LUX Prize competition, I argue that its role as meetingplace for European politics and the European film industry has become a central
attraction for the award. In my analysis, I show that the aim of the LUX Prize is not
merely to award a film and create buzz, but also to engender a discourse in which
Europeanness is discussed. In this sense, the LUX Prize competition constitutes a
locus for different interest groups to congregate and negotiate the problems that the
concept of European cinema entails. One obvious sign of this is the overhead cost for
the award, which greatly exceeds the prize sum at approximately 70% of the overall
budget. By putting emphasis on organizing events, creating meetings between
filmmakers and politicians, and screening the films in the European Parliament, the
prize becomes a pretext for interest groups to meet and interact. In this sense, the
LUX Prize competition––centering on the films awarded and their thematic and
stylistic representations of Europe––becomes a ground for policymakers and film
professionals to develop a new discourse on European cinema.
Emil Stjernholm 82
Chapter 5
Conclusion: Imagining Visions of Europe
5.1 A New Platform for the Negotiation of Europeanness
The European Parliament LUX Prize has become a site where the negotiation of
European cinema and European identities is particularly salient. In this context,
different agents, from filmmakers to politicians, engage in a definitional debate
concerning the meaning of these concepts. To gain an improved understanding of the
complexities involved in this kind of debate, I argue that one needs to focus on the
contrasting visions of Europe that emerge in these kinds of pan-European film
cultural spaces. In the following, I will discuss how this thesis answers my initial
research question: how does this site of pan-European film culture negotiate
European cultural identities? I have examined the historical basis for the emergence
of film institutions and practices that adopt a European perspective. Throughout this
analysis, I have argued that the struggle for a pan-European outlook is both persistent
and exceptionally complicated.
Although the LUX Prize as an award has been successful in establishing links
between a number of players with key roles in European cinema today, such as
politicians, policymakers, film festival directors, and prominent filmmakers, the prize
suffers from having to perform the conflicting roles of promoting European
parliamentary politics while successfully producing cultural prestige. Consequently,
the LUX Prize competition invariably harbors discordant conceptualizations of
European cinema. This furthermore raises the question of how the LUX Prize works
to consolidate its wide variety of aims and opposing visions of Europe.
Suffice to say, there is no simple answer to this question. To explore this issue,
I want to revisit the most prominent tensions involved in the LUX Prize’s production,
selection, and celebration, and consider how these points of argument affect the
negotiation of European identities.
In the case of the LUX Prize, agents engage in deliberation of Europeanness in
each phase of the competition––from initial plan to final execution. Perhaps the most
obvious negotiation of European identities took place in the most preliminary stages,
when this pan-European space was first created. In this process, a number of agents
carefully sketched out a form for the award. Interestingly, because of the multiple
Emil Stjernholm 83
ambivalences permeating the definition of “Europeanness”, the award encompasses
multiple aims catering to a variety of different perspectives: on the one hand, the LUX
Prize’s symbolism strongly accentuates a Europe in which the European Union and its
political achievements are essential; this, as well as the emphasis on the link between
the European Parliament’s political activities and its support of European culture, led
the prize to become anchored in a long-standing debate concerning the necessity of a
cultural dimension to the EU. When the LUX Prize mobilized different forms of
value, such as economic support, social connections with policymakers, and
ultimately the prospect of gaining cultural capital, cultural producers and the film
industry were prompted to take part in the prize competition. Accordingly, the prize
has developed a dependency on the continued support of different interest groups––
from the Members of the European Parliament to the awarded filmmakers––in order
for the prize to survive in the future.
In the second phase of the award, the selection of a European film to celebrate,
the concept of European identities is even more crucial. As I have shown, a great
many individuals participate in the difficult task of defining Europeanness. In this
process, there are three key players: first, the administrators who shape the eligibility
criteria for the award; second, the selection committee members, gathered from
different strands of the European film industry, who limit the number of possible
winners by choosing the films for the competition; and lastly, the Members of
European Parliament who act as judges in this cultural competition. Notably, each and
every phase of this decision-making process concerns the evaluation of films. But the
evaluation does not only center on the films’ different European qualities, such as the
“values” and “issues” they bring to the fore. The different agents also take heed of
distinct evaluation criteria: for the administrators, the production country is central to
determining the films’ Europeanness; for the jurors, European qualities are weighed
against other factors, such as the life cycle of the film, the director’s background, or
the potential audience; for MEPs, meanwhile, participation and voting statistics
illustrate that the European perspective of the award is influenced by a “patriotic
bias”.
The jury members face particular challenges in their evaluation, not least that
of marrying the different criteria set up by administrators. Thomas Elsaesser, who
coined the term “double occupancy”, scrutinizes this problematic in a particularly
helpful manner, showcasing the multiple identities––ethnic, religious, professional,
Emil Stjernholm 84
regional, national, and transnational––that citizens in Europe maintain simultaneously
(2005: p. 109). With the LUX Prize selection, it becomes evident that this panEuropean space, rather than bringing forward a united vision of Europe, reveals the
multiplicity of our identities. In the first phase of the award, the administrators
establish a basis for how the LUX Prize negotiates European identities. Whereas this
phase of the competition links the support of European cinema with the need of a
shared European culture, the second phase brings forward the difficulties in defining
said culture. Evidently, the notion of European identities is instrumental to this
cultural competition, even while the inherent ambivalences associated with it cause
the actual celebration of cinematic works to become problem-ridden.
In the final stage of the award, the LUX Prize competition itself, this
discussion of European identities and what they entail goes public. In comparison to
the selection process, an even wider range of agents now becomes involved. Looking
closer at the timeline for this competition, it is evident that politicians, commentators,
and filmmakers envision the films that enter the competition from contrasting vantage
points. Their most complex decisions concern how to measure the competing films’
supposed “Europeanness”, and for what purpose the European Parliament is
celebrating these films. Whereas many filmmakers, scriptwriters, producers and
actors have utilized this platform to highlight the problematic aspects of the European
Union, politicians and legislators have made use of these films as a starting point for
political debates over, for example, immigration or honor violence. Meanwhile, given
that the LUX Prize allots significant sums toward facilitating the meeting of these
different agents, it seems that this kind of definitional debate is one of the main
objectives of the award. Not only does the prize become a pretext for a convergence
of interest between politicians and the European film industry, but the fashion in
which agents participate in this discussion signals that the LUX Prize succeeds in
fostering a definitional debate on the topic of European identities.
5.2 Avenues for Further Research
Although researchers have attempted to approach the concept of European cinema
from countless angles, it seems that these analyses tend to exclude the physical spaces
in which European identities are negotiated. However, as I argue in this thesis, the
practical characterizations of European cinema make it relevant to study these spaces
in greater depth. In other words, this thesis proposes a grounded approach to
Emil Stjernholm 85
European cinema through which film texts, and the discourse influencing these texts,
are scrutinized.
While pan-European film institutions such as the LUX Prize clearly decide
what European cinema is through the discussion of films and their Europeanness, this
process is often hidden from the public and as such has gained little emphasis within
the field of film studies. Drawing on Ginsburg, Lughod and Larkin’s notion of
“ethnography of media”, I track how different agents––or what these authors define as
“social players” (2002: p. 2)––participate in the negotiation of European cultural
identities. By adopting this approach, this thesis moves beyond abstract
conceptualizations of European cinema. Whereas much scholarly interest in European
cinema during the past decades centers on individual artists and their works, my
approach encompasses more than merely film practice, including the roles of
neglected social players such as administrators, politicians, distributors, film prize
jurors, policymakers, producers, filmmakers, and scriptwriters. For this purpose, this
thesis employs a methodological synthesis of discourse analysis and ethnographical
analysis. This approach is beneficial in the case of the LUX Prize, since a wide range
of written text––in the form of interviews, promotional material, jury reports, and
press coverage––form a discourse in which films’ Europeanness is debated. By
further conducting ethnographical field work––observing interactions, examining
debates, and interviewing policymakers––this approach shows in a novel manner the
complexities involved in the daily, hands-on negotiations of European cinema that
transpire in pan-European film institutions.
As we have seen, institutions such as the LUX Prize regularly engage with the
difficult task of defining Europeanness. In focusing on this process, this thesis has
gained a valuable insight into how professional, national and transnational identities
play crucial parts in the negotiation of European identities. To study how this
ambivalence manifests, not only within the prize circuit but within the increasing
series of film practices operating on a pan-European basis as well, could provide an
improved understanding of how what Elsaesser highlights as “the state of double
occupancy” shapes European cinema today (2005: p. 109). Even though Elsaesser’s
concept has proven popular within film studies the past decade, there have been few
serious attempts to look beyond how individual filmmakers and their textual output
negotiate these multiple identities. Consequently, I believe that by shifting focus to
the context within which European films are awarded, distributed, and promoted, this
Emil Stjernholm 86
thesis approaches an altogether neglected aspect of European cinema, in turn
shedding new light on the fashion in which double occupancy plays out in practice.
Even though in recent years a rich body of literature has illustrated how
filmmakers and filmic texts alike imagine European identities, new structures such as
film prizes, distribution funds, production support mechanisms, film festivals, and
cinema theater networks all constitute tangible locations where a pan-European
outlook is gaining influence. Turning to these under-researched sites of pan-European
film culture, then, provides further opportunities for an improved understanding of the
debate behind the concept of European cinema. Such a study raises the key question:
are the tensions brought to the fore in this thesis unique to LUX, or do they recur in
other pan-European film institutions? One must note that the LUX Prize is just one
player within a growing field of pan-European film practices; it is only by studying
the grounded interactions, decisions, and controversies taking place within this wide
range of film institutions that this question can be answered.
To conclude, by defining how competing definitions of Europeanness take
form in this pan-European film institution, I hope to have contributed to a greater
understanding of the concept of European cinema today. Furthermore, I believe that I
have adopted an appropriate methodological approach, which constitutes a possible
starting point for a more refined understanding of the definitional practices of
numerous other European film institutions.
Emil Stjernholm 87
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Emil Stjernholm 95
Appendices
Appendix 1 – List of Abbreviations
European Parliament LUX Prize – LUX Prize
European Parliament – EP
European Union – EU
Members of European Parliament – MEP
Appendix 2 – Selection Committee Questionnaire
I invited all former and current selection committee members (42) to participate in the
questionnaire. Four emails bounced back. The questionnaire gathered 13 responses.
European Parliament’s LUX Prize Selection Committee Questionnaire
The questionnaire takes approximately 20 minutes to fill in.
Participation in this questionnaire is anonymous.
1) Film prizes, both within the film festival circuit and beyond, operate on a
competitive market for cultural awards. With regard to your view of the LUX Prize’s
role as an award:
- What aspects of the LUX Prize distinguish it from other European film prizes?
- What in your view is the primary function of the LUX Prize?
2) Films are considered vital tools in the representation of our contemporary world.
With regard to your view on the role of narratives, stories, and themes in Europe
today:
- Do you think there are specifically European stories in cinema of today?
- If yes, what kinds of themes are generally involved?
3) Film prizes invariably revolve around processes of inclusion and exclusion––going
from contestants, to nominees, and finally to winners. With regard to the way in which
the LUX Prize selection process functions:
- Ten films are shortlisted each year. Could you specify how this selection works in
practice?
- How many films do you see before selecting the ten shortlisted films?
- Could you give information on which kind of films – genre, budget, and production
structure - predominate in the nomination process?
- Do the selection committee members have different roles in the selection process
depending on their area of expertise?
Emil Stjernholm 96
4) The decisions of the selection committee are important for the films participating in
the competition. With regard to the way in which the LUX Prize selection committee’s
decision-making process functions:
- Are there any recurring debates in the decision-making process?
- How do you weigh different qualities of the films – such as the theme of the films
against the aesthetics of the films – in your decision-making?
- How does the background of the films’ directors – established or non-established affect the selection process?
- What role does the commercial potential of the winning film play in the selection
process?
- How do you weigh the films’ national appeal vis-à-vis their European appeal?
Appendix 3 – MEP Questionnaire
In order to assess the willingness of the Members of Parliament to answer my queries,
I distributed this questionnaire among 200 randomly selected legislators. The
questionnaire gathered 9 responses. Given that less than five percent of the MEPs
answered no further questionnaires were distributed.
Members of Parliament LUX Prize Questionnaire
1) On Voting:
- Have you voted in the LUX Prize competition during your time as a Member of
European Parliament?
- Have you attended the “LUX Theatre” during your time as a Member of European
Parliament?
2) On Culture:
- Do you think that the European Union in general, and the European Parliament in
particular, should support European cultural initiatives?
3) On Decision-Making:
- What factors do you take into account when you act as a judge for this prize
competition?
Appendix 4 – Participation in the LUX Prize Competition
Table 1. Participation statistics for the LUX Prize 2007-2010.
Electorates
Participants
Increase of participation
Percentage of Electorates
2007
736
54
7.5%
2008
736
131
143%
18%
Table 2. Detailed participation statistics for the LUX Prize 2010.
2009
736
164
25%
22%
2010
736
221
35%
30%
Emil Stjernholm 97
2011
Electorates
Participants
Percentage
EPP
264
99
38%
S&D
185
54
29%
ALDE
85
15
18%
Green
s/EFA
56
29
52%
ECR
56
8
14%
GUE/
NGL
34
11
32%
EFD
28
4
14%
NI
28
0
0%
Ranking
2
4
6
1
8
3
7
9
736
221
30%
Appendix 5 – Films in the LUX Prize Competition 2007-2011
Films on the EP LUX Prize Shortlist 2007. Original title, director, production country.
Winner
Auf der anderen Seite
Competition
4 Luni, 3 Saptamini Si 2 Zile
Competition
Belle toujours
Shortlist
Exile Family Movie
Shortlist
Kurz Davor Ist Es Passiert
Shortlist
Kalinovski Square
Shortlist
Iszka Utazasa
Shortlist
Import/Export
Shortlist
Fräulein
Shortlist
California Dreamin
Source: www.luxprize.eu.
Fatih Akin
Cristian Mungiu
Manoel de Oliveira
Arash T. Riahi
Anja Salomonowitz
Yury Khashchevatskiy
Csaba Bollók
Ulrich Seidl
Andrea Stacka
Cristian Nemescu
Germany, Turkey, Italy
Romania, Belgium
France, Portugal
Austria
Austria
Estonia
Hungary
Austria, France, Germany
Switzerland
Romania
Films on the EP LUX Prize Shortlist 2008. Original title, director, production country.
Winner
Le Silence de Lorna
Competition
Competition
Delta
Občan Havel
Shortlist
Shortlist
Shortlist
Shortlist
Shortlist
Shortlist
Shortlist
Il resto de la notte
Revanche
Sügisball
Sztuczki
To Verdener
Wolke 9
Svetat E Golyam I Spasenie
Debne Otvsyakade
Jean-Pierre and Luc
Dardenne
Kornél Mundruczó
Miroslav Janek &
Pavel Koutecký
Francesco Munzi
Götz Spielmann
Veiko Õunpuu
Andrzej Jakimowski
Niels Arden Oplev
Andreas Dresen
Stephan Komandarev
Belgium, France, Italy
Hungary, Germany
Czech Republic
Italy
Austria
Estonia
Poland
Denmark
Germany
Bulgaria, Germany,
Hungary, Slovenia
Films on the EP LUX Prize Shortlist 2009. Original title, director, production country.
Winner
Competition
Competition
Welcome
Eastern Plays
Sturm
Philippe Lioret
Kamen Kalev
Hans-Christian Schmid
Shortlist
Shortlist
Shortlist
Shortlist
35 Rhums
Ander
Katalin Varga
Lost Persons Area
Claire Denis
Roberto Castón
Peter Strickland
Caroline Strubbe
Shortlist
Shortlist
Nord
Pandora's Box
Rune Denstad Langlo
Yesim Ustaoglu
Shortlist
Ein Augenblick Freiheit
Arash T. Riahi
France
Bulgaria, Sweden
Germany, Denmark, The
Netherlands
France, Germany
Spain
Romania, UK, Hungary
Belgium, Hungary, The
Netherlands, Germany,
France
Norway
Turkey, France, Germany,
Belgium
Austria, France
Emil Stjernholm 98
Films on the EP LUX Prize Shortlist 2010. Original title, director, production country.
Winner
Competition
Competition
Die Fremde
Akadimia Platonos
Illégal
Shortlist
Shortlist
Bibliothèque Pascal
Indigène d'Eurasie
Shortlist
Shortlist
Shortlist
Shortlist
Shortlist
Io Sono L'Amore
La Bocca Del Lupo
Lourdes
Medalia de Onoare
R
Feo Aladag
Filippos Tsitos
Olivier MassetDepasse
Szabolcs Hajdu
Sharunas Bartas
Luca Guadagnino
Pietro Marcello
Jessica Hausner
Calin Peter Netzer
Michael Noer & Tobias
Lindholm
Germany
Greece, Germany
Belgium, France,
Luxemburg
Austria
France, Lithuania, Russian
Federation
Italy
Italy
Austria, France, Germany
Romania, Germany
Denmark
Films on the EP LUX Prize Shortlist 2011. Original title, director, production country.
Winner
Competition
Competition
Shortlist
Les neiges du Kilimandjaro
Attenberg
Play
Essential Killing
Robert Guédiguian
Athina Rachel Tsangari
Ruben Östlund
Jerzy Skolimowski
Shortlist
Shortlist
Shortlist
Habemus Papam
Le Havre
Morgen
Nanni Moretti
Aki Kaurismäki
Marian Crisan
Shortlist
Shortlist
Shortlist
Pina
Mistérios de Lisboa
A Torinói ló
Wim Wenders
Raoul Ruiz
Béla Tarr
France
Greece
Sweden, France, Denmark
Poland, Norway, Ireland,
Hungary
Italy, France
Finland, France, Germany
France, Romania,
Hungary
Germany, France
Portugal, France
Hungary, France,
Switzerland, Germany