The French funding system and World Cinema Support
How does France finance cultural exception?
Éric Garandeau – CEO
Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC)
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Monday 8 April 2013 – Bilgi University
Dear Friends,
To be or not to be in Istanbul is no question (whether it comes from Shakespeare or Lubitsch), as it is
impossible to resist an invitation from the Istanbul Film Festival.
Istanbul - the name sounds as a poem, an emblem, a book of infinite pages and a film of countless
possibilities, as countless as the Grand Bazaar shops. Paris has always looked in the direction of
Istanbul and vice-versa, since François Premier and Suleiman the Magnificent, and this mutual
curiosity should be all the more intense at the age of image. Nothing indeed is more aesthetic than
Paris and Istanbul, nothing is more desirable than Paris and Istanbul, and nothing is more different
than a shining romantic fossil and a swarming baroque bazaar... In more practical terms, it is
remarkable that France and Turkey are the European countries most attached to their cinema: in
terms of domestic market share for cinema, French films in France and Turkish films in Turkey reach
roughly 40% to 50%, compared to 10% to 30% in the rest of Europe. Now the challenge is to present
more French films in Turkey and more Turkish films in France, and also to celebrate many marriages
between our creators and professionals.
The Centre National du Cinéma which I represent is therefore very happy to participate in this Festival
and in the now famous “Meetings on the Bridge”, and I am very honored to present our policy and
express our values and beliefs, in this Bilgi University. Interesting it is to notice we stand here in a
huge former electric power-plant, as you may know that we recently created an international "City of
cinema" in the biggest electric power-plant in Paris, now designed to welcome international
productions and also to educate people, with two schools for cinema. We have switched from the
culture of energy to the energy of culture, and this is a nice symbol both along the Bosphore and the
Seine.
I would like to emphasize the value of culture and of cultural diversity as it is really the
keystone of our values and policies.
We live in troubled times today - which is nothing new. Life emerged in troubled waters, human History
is paved with wars and conflicts, it seems to be in human nature to increase nature disorder, so it is no
surprise that art masterpieces often come from troubled background and sometimes from troubled
minds. That may explain why a new generation of gifted directors and creators is emerging now,
everywhere in the world and especially around the Mediterranean Sea, stimulated by Arabic
revolutions.
I recall those basic truths because you know - and this may be a very European and particularly
French disease - we tend to think we are living an endless crisis that is only getting worse and worse
for decades not to say for centuries... Hopefully, Turkey does not seem to share this hypochondriac
state of mind, one can feel it intensely while walking in the streets of this vibrant city that never sleeps.
Thanks to a strong young and educated population,Turkey is now a flourishing country, with a
booming economy, and a society trying like any other country to conciliate its own traditions with
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modernity - and we all know that XXIst century digital revolution is more intrusive and disruptive of
social, political... let's say cultural traditions, than was last century industrial and urban transformation.
How can we conciliate a considerable material progress - which allowed more and more people to live
and not only to survive - with the necessity for them to be able to question the meaning of life, in a free
and democratic way. This is the role of culture, a free and diverse culture. This morning, the festival
presented an Italian documentary about Mussolini and fascism. In this "Smile of the leader", Marco
Bechis confront propaganda images with the words of a character (his father) recalling how a rough
populist leader could easily indulge his people (himself included) into believing that fascism was be the
only way to bring security and material prosperity. It only turned the youth "happy and immature", and
paved the way to a dusty and bloody fate.
Today we only have to open our eyes and surf on the web to see that material progress brings no
moral nor political progress. All around the world, peoples are threatened, chased, tortured and killed,
and it happens not far from here. Situation is politically much better in Europe but rigorous budgetary
policies also result in a lot of despair and social unrest that could at the end reach political
consequences.
What has that to do with cinema? It has, since cinema is both an instrument of liberation and
manipulation. Costa Gavras uses to say, and he was here with us yesterday to say it again,
"toute forme de cinéma est politique" - every cinema is political. The role of artists is to represent
the world and sometimes they help it change. So we need their free voice, we need their criticism, to
avoid complacency. We need independent minds and inspired authors to point at the wrongdoings, to
accuse, comment, suggest alternatives, we need their eye to show what is going on beyond the
surface.
In Turkey as in Egypt, Tunisia, Russia... we know that some artists - pianists, humorists,
performers... - have problems with Justice, only because they are doing their job. So it is our
duty to recall this self-evident truth that all artists must be absolutely free to express their feelings and
their visions. Because their voice can be heard more easily, because their vision generally embraces
or reveals a broader vision, because they have a social and a political message to bring to the world,
we must give them complete freedom of expression, and this does not only mean we can let them
survive or starve to live on their dreams. This means providing them some resources to develop their
talent, this means providing public places to present their works to the people.
It is really in that perspective that we created in France, last year, between CNC and the French
Institute, a World Cinema Fund, designed to give financial support to artists from the world,
and help them express freely their visions, be they poetic dreams or political pamphlets. And
let me say that this idea was born here, in Turkey, two years ago. I will come back to this later
on.
In the same spirit to arouse cooperation between France and the community of directors all
around the world, the CNC organized a co-production workshop in Tunis a few months after
tunisian revolution, in October 2011, along with the Tunisian Ministry of Culture and Unifrance. It
was a sign we wanted to help Tunisia secure artistic freedom and help rebuild its cinema industry. 27
Tunisian authors took part in this forum. They could pitch their projects to a delegation of French
producers. We did that to show our solidarity, and also to benefit from the fantastic talents and stories
to be put on screens. I won't indeed hide the fact that connecting with talented people is also very
good for our business! You know that, like Oscar winner Costa Gavras, Michael Haneke found in
France his producer, distributor, agent, cast, technicians and most the financing to make his movies.
So we were very lucky that "AMOUR" did win an Oscar this year, just after the 5 Oscars we had
received with "THE ARTIST" only a year ago. Likewise, Asgar Farhadi – another Oscar winner! – just
finished a movie in Paris, with a French producer, and a cosmopolitan cast including Berenice Bejo
and Tahar Rahim, and I am sure you will hear about it soon. We also provided support to Nuri Bilge
Ceylan in the past, and he just brought a new project to us now.
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To give a last example, maybe you don't know that two Oscar nominated documentaries in 2013 were
French coproductions, "FIVE BROKEN CAMERAS" and "GATEKEEPERS". Neither of them got the
Oscar because probably they lacked sweetness and sugar... or maybe we can dream that it is
because not only one of two could win an Oscar without the other one. "FIVE BROKEN CAMERAS" is
indeed a palestinian movie about a People losing his soil, and "GATEKEEPERS" is an israeli movie
about a People losing his soul... These are stories of cinema, these are stories of coproduction, but
you can figure it is much more than that, and France was proud to cofinance and coproduce both of
them.
There would be so many stories to tell and so many authors to mention. You can be sure that the ones
that really catch our attention in France are those that talk about local stories and cultures. You know
this definition of universal as "the local without the walls", and let me say that it is very stimulating to
walk on the streets of Istanbul but very sad to see all those new gated communities being created
outside Istanbul (they are so many throughout the world now…), with barbed wire probably designed
to protect rich people - but at the end those inhabitants will be trapped in their golden cages… French
architects like moviemakers prefer to create the conditions to “meet on the bridge” (especially the
Galatta bridge!) and make unexpected encounters in the countless streets of world cultures, rather
than be confronted to the walls of ignorance, fear and simplistic ideologies.
So if someone here or there, tries to tell you what to say or what to think according to political or
religious dogmas, or what to shoot (I mean, with a camera), what you just have to say is “NO!” And
we’ll help you to make YOUR movie, the way YOU - and only YOU - want it to be.
Censorship is everywhere today, even in old modern democracies where it can use economic
weapons. That is why we say to world authors: “come, and we’ll support you”. Provided your films
have the best qualities, the CNC will give support, the Cannes Film Festival will show your films and
ARTE will broadcast them. Critics will comment on them but they’ll tell you only one thing: they will tell
you if it is good, or if it is bad, on purely artistic grounds.
Cultural Diversity and Freedom of Expression are very close concepts. Freedom of Expression is
meant to protect our most basic rights to think and speak. Cultural Diversity is meant to protect our
cultural heritage and our freedom to create, and it takes care not only of the artists but of a global
"ecosystem" designed to encourage the development of arts and cultural industries.
Giving direct support to artists is a basic vital way to ensure they can live and work freely. But we must
also take care of their partners, producers, distributors, and we must also pay attention to the
PLACES they can show their works, theaters, TV, websites...
Turkish people is well aware of that, there was a demonstration yesterday around the Emek cinema in
Istiklal Avenue, and I have to mention that very symbolic case and cause. Closing one of the last
cinema art house in the main avenue of the country, to build one of the already so many shopping
malls, well, this unfortunately does not happen only in Istanbul. I am sure that some Brussels
eurocrats would have nothing to say as their only passion is to encourage the "freedom of commerce".
But can we imagine the Champs Élysées in Paris without cinemas? Let me tell you that every time a
cinema theater is threatened in France, the CNC and the Municipalities intervene and interact to try to
save them, and we generally do: we did not lose a single screen in the digitizing process, we kept our
5464 screens open. That is why the small "BALZAC" cinema in the Champs Elysées did not close
down. Because when it is happening, when a cinema theater is replaced by a shoe shop (there are
already many ones in Istiklal…), when theaters are closed down to let the commerce dictate its rule,
well, this is always a "défaite de la civilisation", a defeat of civilization: there is something missing and
we feel this absence. Because we can walk shoeless but we cannot live dreamless. To remind a
famous cinema line from Oliver Stone, "greed is not good!" So even if it is much preferable not to use
stones and violence, let me say that, like Costa Gavras, I admire the courage of those who protested
yesterday to preserve a priceless place dedicated to the intellectual commerce of art and culture.
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This also allows me to say a word of what is, beyond artists and theaters, the most important element
of cultural diversity, the PEOPLE itself. Educating people is really the very heart of any policy
promoting cultural diversity. And it is better to start at a very early age. In France we help children go
and understand cinema, music, books... From the age of six, we engage them into watching movies in
theaters, and we give teachers tools to comment and analyse them. I will come back on this later on.
Why should we develop such policies? Any country can easily leave those issues to market rules
and see what happens. Some countries consider public action is not necessary in the field of culture. It
does not seem to be vital to the lives of citizens; public money should be used for more urgent matters
like security or hospitals. But then, what do you think happens? Market rules bring the same results
wherever in the world: the most powerful film industry, the most dominant culture, invades everything,
every space, every theatre, and every minute of television broadcasting. Don’t try and find something
else to see. It’s nowhere to be seen. At the end it can be very costly, socially, economically, politically.
A country without cultural identity, is it really a country? A people without a culture, is it really a
people? If Europe was to be restarted, and maybe it will have to be one day, better make it with
Turkey, whose culture is so vast and vivid, than with existing EU countries I won't even want to
mention!
There’s a choice to be made. And it is a fundamental one to be raised in Brussels too. Do you want,
do we want, to survive as a culture? Do we want to survive and grow, and give opportunities to
creators, to authors who want to show something else than the dominant content? Do you want to eat
burgers and drink Coke rather than mezze and raki? I can tell you I would stop loving Istanbul if it were
the case. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t in love with your culture, with your originality, with Nuri Bilge
Ceylan’s films… Culture needs protection.
A group of countries had a brilliant idea to promote that concept and make it really universal, which
“Cultural Exception” did not really seem to be. They fought for the implementation of a new notion:
“Cultural Diversity”. Today, within the UNESCO, the Convention on the protection and promotion of
the diversity of cultural expressions has 126 members. Those countries joined the Convention to
assert their belief in the necessity to protect culture as a treasure.
I am sorry, I have to tell you, that Turkey is not a member of the Convention.
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Colombia just joined the Convention as the 126 member in March 2013. And it is very interesting to
see which countries joined the first, which countries understood immediately the necessity to join
forces to fight the crazy dogma of ultra-liberalism in the field of culture. You can believe me: there is
no alternative to supporting and protecting one’s culture if you want it to survive and prosper. The law
of offer and demand, the sacred principle of a narrow liberalist doctrine, cannot protect your culture. It
will only offer to the most powerful an easy path to invade your country and conquer it (culturally).
Unfortunately, you may know that all those principles of common sense and humanism, are being
challenged by the European Commission itself, which seems to be ready to sacrifice them in a Free
Trade agreement to be signed with the United States of America. The European Union signed the
UNESCO Convention, but it looks like they forgot they did it... Believe me, we started to remind them.
France and some other EU countries like Italy, are uniting themselves to fight against this prehistoric
position. We will know the result next June, and we will organize in the meantime a conference
dedicated to this question in Cannes during the Cinema Festival, the 20th of May. A large number of
European artists already signed a petition and are organizing some actions. Of course we invite
Turkish and artists from the whole world to join us in this protest.
Now let me turn to more technical realities - but it was important to remind first the political objectives,
because techniques always have to be used according to values that are not technical, and we must
always remind that public service must work to service the public... Administration otherwise tends to
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mistake the means with the objectives and it can turn Kafkaian, especially in the field of art where all
rules are made to be challenged and twisted...
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The Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée was created right after World War II, at a time
when the French film industry had been completely destroyed. Everything was to reconstruct. The
expressions of Cultural Exception or Cultural Diversity did not exist at the time, but they were
already at the core of our missions.
Today, 485 people are working in the CNC, with the support of 700 experts coming from the
whole industry, and not only the French one.
Our missions are numerous, dealing with the past, present and future. The CNC takes care of
the French film heritage by protecting, restoring, and showing works of the past. The CNC supports
the whole film industry: authors, producers, distributors, sales agents, and theaters, DVD and on
demand video. We are supporting the production of content for television, for the Internet, for
telephones. We support the production of video games. We help technical industries to innovate for
the production and postproduction of content. We support festivals, educational programs for kids, film
schools.
How? France made a choice concerning its audio-visual sector: in order to finance creation, to ensure
the prosperity of the people and the companies that make our culture alive, those who benefit from the
showing of content have to contribute financially to its continuity. It is still the main rule of our system
and it has been constantly upgraded and modernized since the Second World War.
In1946, we decided to create a levy on cinema admissions, including the admissions for foreign films.
Today, with 200 million admissions a year, that levy brings us approximately 130 million euros. Then,
as television developed and seemed also to develop thanks to the broadcasting of movies, we
decided to create a tax on broadcasters’ turnover. Now, television being also broadcasted through
other distribution means (cable, satellite, Internet, phones) we decided a few years ago to extend the
taxation to all those distributors, including the internet service providers. Video editors and video on
demand is also taxed. All those taxes have allowed the CNC to grow and play fully its role to the
benefit of content providers in the whole audio-visual industry.
In recent years however, those principles have been repeatedly attacked both internally by
broadcasters that want to avoid taxation, and externally by the European Union, which considers the
taxation of the Internet as potentially detrimental to its development: the Commissar in charge of
networks considers that fiber is more important than services that circulates inside, which is crazy not
only in cultural terms but also on economic grounds: there is more value in contents and services than
in a cable wire... Truth is that this French system (which has been transposed in other countries, even
in China and Brazil), is the only way to ensure the survival of an independent and creative audio-visual
sector in relatively small countries (when compared to the US). So we hope our tax will get out soon
from the Brussels jails.
Next question is, how do we canalize this flow? Regarding programs of support, we want to offer our
new talents opportunities to make short films, so we give grants to short films. We want them to take
the time necessary to the writing of their first feature, so we have a scenario scheme support and a
development scheme support. And we want the CNC to help them produce their film and allow them
to prove their talent, so we have automatic and selective subsidies schemes for both producers and
distributors. And it goes now beyond France. We want to be able to help authors in China, in
Argentina, and in Turkey, because we are convinced their talent is a source of enrichment for our own
culture.
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Two years ago, I was here in Istanbul with Julien Ezanno also from CNC. We met Turkish directors
and producers, during the "Meetings on the Bridge", thanks to Gülin. They told us they wanted to work
with France but did not understand why young Turkish directors had access to none of our support
schemes. We had internal discussions. I talked to French producers interested in foreign talent. And I
convinced the Minister of Culture to create the World Cinema Support, a six million euro fund to
support talent wherever it comes from. There is talent everywhere so we abolished the list of
eligible countries: the eligible territory is the human world. Nuri Bilge Ceylan has just applied for the
benefit of World Cinema Support. Tomorrow, maybe it will be Emin Alper’s time, or Asli Ozge’s, or
Semih Kaplanoglu’s…
Our goal is to develop international co-productions between foreign and French producers: on a
population of 279 long features films produced in France last year, 129 were coproductions, made with
37 countries. The World Cinema Support will play a role to identify quality feature projects in all genres
– fiction, animation and documentary – that would be interested in a real partnership with France. The
grants awarded through the selection process are meant to finance the French co-producer’s share.
50% of the amount awarded at least must be spent in France. And the amounts can go up to 250,000
euros even though such an amount has not yet been given to any project.
France is a very unique place for foreign directors: it is a country where the audience of movie
theaters is genuinely interested in new images. The CNC has been developing several support
schemes in order to encourage such a curiosity, through the education of children at school, where
they can learn to understand and love cinema, through the financial support given to art house
cinemas; through the engagement of diversity taken by the commercial multiplexes, which the CNC
homologates; through the support given to film festivals... All this made it possible for a beautiful
Iranian movie to reach one million admissions in France! All this made it possible for a very French
Movie to make 40 million admissions in the world!
This is why I must present you also in more specific terms our policy regarding cinema theaters. We
combine different instrument not only to preserve but to develop a networks of screens which is now
one of the best in the world not only in quantity (5464 screens for a population of 60 million) but also in
quality : we release more than 6000 movies per year, including 600 new movies and many Heritage
movies. I will present you also some slides about our new Heritage policy which is to be combined
with our Education policy.
(...)
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Turkey is at a crossroads in many ways - in fact we all are at a crossroad, and the European Union is
at a crossroad... – Turkey is a fast growing country, located between Europe, Asia, and the Arab
World. Turkey is a country of passage, a country of deep ancient culture, and a country of many young
talents. When I watch Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Once upon a time in Anatolia”, or Semih Kaplanoglu’s “Bal”,
I know France and Turkey are meant to work and create together. Unlike the ending of “Climate”, we
must stick together, and we must fight together, for a better world.
‫ل ك جزي ال ش كرا‬
I thank you
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