Lucidno FILM U VRIJEME PANDEMIJE KORONAVIRUSA / FILM AT THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC
ADRIAN BLASER, director, Switzerland
A lot of time spent on filling out forms and new regulations. Bureaucracy increased. New legislations and new situations needed an important follow-up also politically, working in producers associations etc. That’s, of course, part of our business, but in this period, this part was over proportionally heavy. Also we had to find financial short-term solutions for our company and employees. So the artistic part of our work was of course smaller (let’s say 25% less).
We had to abandon several documentary shootings 2020 and postpone a fiction shooting, which brings us in a very difficult situation.
In times of confinement, everybody stayed at home and watched TV or Netflix etc. Politically, it is a paradox: People want to watch our products (even online), but cultural budgets are in danger to be cut down everywhere.
I’m not so pessimistic about festivals, they will continue to grow again, I guess, maybe with curated selections offered online (which is interesting). Festivals could find new ways and forms (why not show the Locarno-Selection somewhere else, in Vladivostok for example, and make it available even online for people there (geo-localised, why not?) Also cinemas, in central Europe, they will open again and the need of good films and storytelling will not decrease. New innovative forms will occur (already do:), for example: I can watch a new film online which was supposed to come out in local cinemas. On internet, I pay a reasonable price for watching the film online, but I can select the cinema I would have chosen. So the money goes partly to that cinema (support your local cinema, even if you are in quarantine). I think prices for watching films on line are too low, and customers would be willing to pay much more (there are already initiatives that prove it)
BTW: If VoD have more success in the future, that does not automatically mean that cinemas will suffer because of that. We all found put that travelling to every single festival or event or reunion is absolutely nonsense. A lot of our business can be made online, with skype or zoom. We travel too much! It’s nice to exchange and meet people for real, but it can be less, for sure. The climate will say thank you if we travel 50% less.
PETRA HOLZER, documentary filmmaker, director of BIFED – Bozcaada International Festival of Ecological Documentary
Currently we are working on a documentary called "The Right Food". The aim of the documentary is to make connections between small and clean farming and the consumers in the big cities. This pandemic time seems to be "unfortunately" an opportunity for the farmers and cooperatives to promote small slow local production. However, in our work as documentary film makers we are stuck in lock down. We had to find new ways to go on in our work: First, we conduct meetings on digital platforms and record them. The second way is to ask the farmers and cooperative members to record themselves in their daily routines. We edit both of the material as promotional videos and distribute it through alternative media. We are also sharing this information directly with municipalities and district governors, who can, then, involve local farmers in the food supply chain in their emergency measures. Hopefully, this will be a lasting connection between the consumers and the producers - healthy and pesticide free food and farms.
2) This question has two sides - for the big film market and the small & alternative film market there are probably different concerns. As we are more in the alternative side of the film business we will stick to what we know. First, for the documentary film makers: the limited possibilities will probably lead to some creative results and probably a lot more work will be done in the editing and post production. A lot of documentaries will have to have a different path and a lot of changes in the stories will arise. Some of the projects will have to be canceled or postponed for an infinite time. In Turkey, the big cinema complexes are run by international or big national chains - they will probably face similar problems as in the other countries. As they are connected to the big industry they will solve their problems quite easily. However, the already shaken sector of alternative cinemas or the cinemas outside the chains have closed down - two of the last big traditional cinemas (who were the last ones in the center of town and important for the film festivals) "Atlas" and "Rexx" in Istanbul have closed their doors. There are only very few left. In Kadıköy a new and precious venue should open their doors in autumn "Sinematek" - they also have postponed their opening. Lots of the film events have been moved to the autumn and will be concurrents for the already many film events in the fall season... For the Film Festivals - especially the documentary film festivals - there are also many questions arising: After the big show of solidarity of offering films for free, having moved festivals online - which were very moving and on the moment reactions - the future is more difficult for both filmmakers and the festivals.
As now people are served at home and the threat is far from over, there will be the question whether there will be live audiences in festivals or will the demand of online service and the probably following services make it possible to have film festivals? Also, if these lockdowns occur more frequently in the future what kind of festival scene will there be? Will there be only once again some monopoly digital platforms that will provide the venues for festival programmers? How will the small ones be able to survive? Will there be diversity or will it be big mainstream events? Will there be festivals with their authentic character? Will the meeting and communication spaces be lost?
We are asking ourselves these questions and have no answer yet. As BIFED is planned to take place in October, it seems at the moment to be far away and to be possibly a festival in a physical venue with a physical present audience maybe without or with very few international guests. So, many questions are open for the societies in general and no projection in sight. Therefore, we will have to be ready to have an online-event, dealing with the changed expectations of documentary makers and also the audience.
Some of the effects are already in the answers above. What we are hoping for is a world full of solidarity and dialogue. And we are offering our share to build this new world - inviting you all to be with us.
CHARLES RUBINSTEIN, distributor, once-upon a time-exhibitor, Great Britain
Contemporary Films was founded in 1951 and is the longest surviving independent film distributor in the UK (see attached scan of a just discovered leaflet from the early days of the company). As well as retaining some rights and many old prints from the back catalogue, the company acquires a small number of new films every year, aiming mainly at the theatrical market but also VOD and television. Recent acquisitions include: Samantha Fuller’s A FULLER LIFE, Chantal Akerman’s NO HOME MOVIE, Aaron Brookner’s UNCLE HOWARD, Ruth Beckermann’s THE DREAMED ONES, Peter Stephan Jungk’s TRACKING EDITH, Tilman Urbach’s JOSEF URBACH – LOST ART and Dónal Foreman’s THE IMAGE YOU MISSED.
We were fortunate, compared to most of the other distributors, in that we did not have any new releases scheduled for the current months and so we did not have to either postpone scheduled release dates or hastily convert releases from theatrical (or theatrical + VOD) to solely VOD. Given the type of films we release, which are quite specialised with smallish target audiences, theatrical is much more significant to us than VOD. So, switching a release to solely VOD would in fact hardly be a viable option for us without the agreement of the film's sales agent or producer to reduce their minimum guarantee (which would be rather unlikely!). Another strand of our work (which is the company owner Eric Linaitzky’s department rather than mine), and a rather more significant one from the financial viewpoint, is the sale of archive footage to documentary filmmakers and happily this has continued to tick over steadily during the lockdown period.
Going forward, the current uncertainty over when cinemas will be able to re-open slightly complicates the acquisition process of new films for distribution in so far as we need to be sure that cinemas will re-open before too long in order to give any film we acquire the chance of a theatrical life.
There will no doubt be more serious consequences for some people and/or organisations than for others. Many film productions interrupted by the virus will be able to find the support to pick up where they left off but others perhaps will not. The festivals that have had to cancel current editions will have encountered substantial financial difficulties as a result, but will no doubt have the resilience, determination and ingenuity to fight on. Many cinemas (commercial as well as independent) will find themselves in difficulty, but hopefully most will survive with the help of government support and their own fundraising efforts.
As we all know, the move towards being at home during the worldwide lockdown has massively increased the time people spend online as well facilitating the exponential spread of Zoom as a medium for all kinds of communications. One can only guess at what the consequences will be when life gets back to normal. Hopefully, people will emerge with an appetite to go out, and when it is safe to do so, will start visiting cinemas again to watch films properly. It is to be expected that younger people will return to venues such as cinemas quickly and enthusiastically. However, older people are likely to be more wary and may hesitate to visit cultural venues until a vaccine for coronavirus is available. This will present problems for serious and thoughtful cinema for whom an older audience is a key constituency. At the best of times, we face challenges in getting cinemas to show the films we are interested in. With cinemas having to implement strict social distancing procedures which will massively reduce the number of seats they can sell to the public, financial pressures will escalate and it will be harder for them to devote screen time to films with only limited box office appeal.
The global film industry in all its multiplicity will no doubt survive and continue to evolve in new and unforeseen directions. The organisations, agencies and businesses substantially involved in streaming and VOD will no doubt seek to build on their freshly enhanced levels of strength. Film festivals which have been forced by circumstances to invent/create online versions of their offer will no doubt be well placed to build on this further, when they resume traditional real life physical manifestations, without diminishing the quality of the living 'film festival experience’ they create. This may help to democratise and widen participation for a wider public in the life and work of film festivals.
Beyond that, one can imagine that the lockdown experience will have given many of us a new found realisation of the pleasures and benefits of normal life – of being able to engage in a multitude of activities in the real world. Unless this feeling quickly evaporates in the face of the new difficulties we will also face (!), perhaps it will help us to value things and people more and help us all to move forward more productively than before.
Maja Bogojević
