https://analysis.filmivast.se/public-film-funding-at-a-crossroads

Papadimitriou, Lydia

LJMU Research Online (Liverpool John Moores University)

www.filmivast.se/comanalysis.filmivast.seAnalysis.PUBLIC FILM FUNDING  AT A CROSSROADSAppendix: Greece and  Cyprus Authored by Lydia Papadimitriou.2  •  Film i Väst Analysis© Film i VästGraphic design Anders Avehall and Gus Kaage/Film i VästABOUT PUBLIC FILM FUNDING AT A CROSSROADSPublic Film Funding at A Crossroads was launched in Brussels in March 2022. It can be downloaded at www.analysis.filmivast.se. Here you also find the ten territorial reports, executive summaries, with strong links to the main topics in Public Film Funding at A Crossroads. There you also find Michael Gubbin’s report Streaming Giants and Public Film Funding. In May, during the Cannes Film Festival, Wendy Mitchell’s study Creative Overload, will be published at the same web site.Appendixes:• Eastern Europe (Assistant Professor Petar Mitric)• Flanders/Netherlands (Producer Ilse Schooneknaep)• French speaking Europe (Senior consultant Philippe Reynaert in collaboration with Xanadu) - also in French• German speaking Europe (Senior consultant Manfred Schmidt)• Greece/Cyprus (Associate Professor Lydia Papadimitrious)• Ireland (Dr Mark Rainey et al in collaboration with the WRAP Fund)• Italy (Senior consultant Rickard Olsson)• Spain/Portugal (Belén Álvarez et al in collaboration with Gabeiras& Asociados)• The Nordics (Tomas Eskilsson, Katarina Krave, Bengt Toll)• UK (MD Leon Forde et al in collaboration with OSPI)Public Film Funding at a Crossroads  •  3 IntroductionThis report presents the current state-of-affairs and short-to-medium term projections regarding public film funding in the Greek-speaking territories of Greece and the Republic of Cyprus.  It is based on 12 se-mi-structured interviews (8 from Greece, 4 from Cyprus) with repre-sentatives of the film funds, public broadcasters, producers, distri-butors, and a sales agent. Both Greece and Cyprus are small countries and small markets in the European, let alone the global, context – with Cyprus more appropriately described as a ‘micro’ country and market. They both faced severe financial crisis through most of the 2010s, but they also saw increased global recognition of their art cinema in this decade. While both Greek and, more recently, Cypriot art films have been visible in the international film festival circuit, mainstream con-tent has very rarely travelled outside the two countries. To-date, no global streamer has invested in original Greek-language content – whether film or series. As a result, the global streamers’ acti-vity has not fully impacted the local audiovisual ecosystem. However, the increased global production, the exposure of Greek-speaking audiences to more and higher production value content, and, crucially, the introduction of very generous automatic funding schemes (in 2018 in Greece, and 2019 in Cyprus), have brought an unprecedented boost in production activity in both countries.The automatic funding schemes (cash rebate, tax relief/tax credit) have benefitted global companies and national private or pay-tv chan-nels the most. Disney+, Netflix, Apple TV, Paramount, and Amazon studios, among others, have been shooting in Greece throughout the pandemic taking advantage both of incentives and the appealing Mediterranean locations. Two visible consequences of such activity are, firstly, the expanded opportunities for service production, especi-GREECE AND CYPRUSLydia Papadimitriou, Liverpool John Moores University.Lydia Papadimitriou is Reader (Associate Professor) in Film Studies at Liverpool John Moores University.  Her research focuses on different aspects of Greek and Balkan cinema, with particular emphasis on screen and media industries. She has published on issues related to film financing, co-productions, (digital) distri-bution, and film festivals, among others. https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/about-us/staff-profiles/facul-ty-of-arts-professional-and-soci-al-studies/liverpool-screen-school/lydia-papadimitriou  4  •  Film i Väst Analysisally for the largest independent production companies in Greece, and secondly, the rise in salary for the crew members working for these productions. While the immediate effect of both the above is welcome, especially after the financially challenging 2010s, it is already beco-ming obvious to smaller companies that local productions are facing bigger budgets (that they will likely not be able to cover) as well as an increased difficulty in securing skilled workers. In other words, pro-blems of inflation and capacity are becoming to emerge.The cash rebate scheme has also benefitted the production of series by private and pay-tv channels in Greece.  Budgets for television series have traditionally been very modest and funded in-house by the chan-nels, so the low threshold for minimum spend per episode has made it possible for these channels to tap on these funds. It is widely agreed that both the production values and the overall quality of recent (and anticipated) Greek-produced series has significantly increased – a re-sult both of the financial incentives and of the increased expectations from the part of the audience for a higher quality product due to their familiarisation with better television.  This improvement is also vi-sible in some of the public television’s productions, which are funded exclusively by the broadcaster. In Greece, selective film funding is administered by the national film agency – the Greek Film Center (est. 1970). In Cyprus, the funds are allocated directly via the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport and Youth, as there is no dedicated agency. In both cases, selective funding is reserved for feature-length and short films (not television or web se-ries, nor games). The role and scope of the Greek Film Centre (which operates under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and Sports) is dependent on national legislation. Any fundamental changes to its remit would require a new law that would offer a revised definition of ‘film’.  There are already some calls in favour of the need for a radical rehaul of the 2010 Law for the ‘Support and Development of Cine-matographic Art’, but it is not anticipated that any such changes will happen soon. In Greece, automatic funding - open to all audiovisual works in-cluding computer games - is administered by a different institution, EKOME (National Centre of Audiovisual Media and Communication), founded in 2015 and operating since 2017 under the auspices of the Ministry of Digital Governance. While automatic funding can reach up to 19 million Euros annually for all audiovisual works, the budget for selective public film funding in Greece is currently in the region of 3.5 million Euros (including operational costs for the agency). This signi-ficant discrepancy shows the privileging of automatic over selective funding, and, overall, an economic (rather than cultural) approach in Public Film Funding at a Crossroads  •  5 national audiovisual development. In Cyprus, automatic funding can reach 25 million Euros, while the current – and highest so far – annual budget for selective funding is 1.5 million Euros, suggesting a similari-ty in approach. Despite regular calls from the filmmaking community (especially in Greece), for more funds to be allocated for selective funding, there is no anticipation of any significant change. The current Greek Film Center administration hopes to achieve a stabilisation of its annual budget at a higher level (to include as regular the occasional top-ups it is rewarded) but, again, nothing is guaranteed. Aiming to make its operational processes more transparent, as well as offer additional support to new directors and low budget films, in May 2021 the Greek Film Center updated and streamlined its funding guidelines. As before, it supports all film genres – fiction, documen-tary, animation – and offers programmes for writing, development, production, and distribution, while both mainstream and art films are eligible to apply. The new guidelines aim to facilitate support of the se-lected films through all stages – something that was difficult to achieve previously, partly because of lack of clarity in the regulations, and partly because the limited funds were spread among many projects. The latter has been an (unresolved) matter of debate for a long time with the current administration of the Greek Film Center arguing in favour of supporting fewer projects with more funds – an approach, however, that has not been evidenced in practice yet. Legislation, generally, is very slow to change – even when it co-mes to a simple ratification of European treaties such as the revised Convention on Cinematographic co-production. Even though the revisions introduced would be highly beneficial for producers engaged in minority co-productions (reducing their participation from 10% to 5%), by the end of 2021 the Greek Parliament had still not ratified it. Sometimes laws are in place, but they are not fully enforced - such as the long-standing (but unresolved) matter of private television chan-nels in Greece not paying their allocated levy (0.75% of their revenue) towards film production; only the public broadcaster supports cine-ma films with a 1.5% of its income (about 2.8 million annually) and is anticipated to continue doing so in the foreseeable future.  Sometimes delays occur at the process of implementation, such as the law concer-ning a levy on global streamers. This has been made law in the summer of 2021 but has still not been put into practice. According to it, global streamers operating in Greece are obliged to reinvest 1.5% of their revenue to local production. This is positively anticipated among most interviewees, but it is not clear yet how it will materialise and who will benefit most.The impact on independent producers of the increase of internatio-6  •  Film i Väst Analysisnal production in Greece depends on the size and profile of the compa-ny, and the extent to which they service global productions. For those that do, part of the economic benefit can be channelled in developing new local products - including television series, with the hope that these could break into the global market. For smaller companies spe-cialising in art house cinema and working predominantly with public funds and European co-productions, there is no change in their mode of operation so far, but some are alerted to the increased challenges in getting all the funding needed, partly because of rising costs. For some medium-sized producers also active in co-productions, the future lies in aiming for higher-budget projects, including English speaking ones with international stars; aside from the financial benefits, these can raise the profile of their company globally, and allow for enough margins to support smaller projects, including by newcomers, which can in turn also act as showreels for attracting foreign investments and collaborations.While producers face both challenges and opportunities, traditional distributors are having a harder time. The larger distribution compa-nies, which usually represent one or two studios for the local theat-rically market (usually Greece and Cyprus jointly), have faced signi-ficant problems with finding audiences for their independent films partly because of the pandemic, and partly because of the competition with streamers. To survive most havehave already diversified into either production, or rights manage-ment (including music rights) too. The smaller distributors of art hou-se films are strongly dependent on European programmes of support, without which they are not sustainable. The closure of cinemas during the pandemic left most distributors with films they could not release, and while audiences returned to open air cinemas in healthy numbers in the summer 2021, it was mostly exhibitors who benefited, as films were changed very quickly.Some distributors created their own TVODs, but this is unlikely to be a long-term sustainable business model. A success story both for Greek art films and for cinephile audiences has been the creation of the first ever SVOD service in Greece, Cinobo. Founded during the pandemic by the daughter of one of the country’s distributors that had stopped operating, the platform showcased both the (renamed) com-pany’s existing collection of international films as well as an ever-in-creasing catalogue of Greek art films. Since the opening of theatres, Cinobo has also been offering a hybrid form of distribution for a select few new films, releasing them both theatrically and online. During the pandemic, the Greek public broadcaster launched its own free platform, ERT Flix which has been met with a lot of audience Public Film Funding at a Crossroads  •  7 support as it offers most of the broadcaster’s programme on demand and with no restrictions – in some cases, globally too. The private television channels are currently developing their own platforms (together with plenty of new content) in a – rather belated – move towards an ‘on-demand’ digital economy. To sum up, as the global streamers have not invested in Greek-lang-uage content (yet), the recent changes in the audiovisual ecosystem have been mainly the result of the introduction of generous automa-tic funding in the two countries. Combined with the potential to use the attractive locations studios and streamers have taken on board the new opportunities for shooting offered by these two Eastern Mediterranean countries. Current investment in filming studios in Greece hopes to further consolidate such inward investment. While the financial benefits for those servicing or working for international productions are palpable, the effects on local production are far more indirect, and as yet unclear. There are visible improvements in the qu-ality of national television series, which, it is hoped by many, will lead to Greek-language series breaking through a global market in the not-too-distant future. Art house cinema remains very highly dependent on selective national and European funding – as well as on finding new audiences, potentially mainly online – and, by extension, on the policies and practices of public funders and regulators.List of Interviewees:Greece:Markos Holevas, Greek Film Center (President of the Board of Directors)Eleni Handrinou, Greek Film Center (Deputy president of the Board of Directors)Vassiliki Diagouma and Eirini Andriopoulou, EKOME (National Center of Audiovisual Media and Communication)Menos Deliotzakis, ERT (Greek Broadcasting Corporation)Konstantinos Kontovrakis, Heretic (production company and sales agent)Giorgos Tsourgiannis, Horsefly (production company)Vassilis Sourapas, Filmtrade (distributor)Sofia Angelidi, One from the Heart (distributor)Cyprus:Diomides Nikitas, Cultural services of Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and SportTonia Mishiali, Zipcode (producer)Danae Stylianou (DOT.in.the.market)Elena Alonefti (director, producer)

Public Film Funding at a Crossroads - Appendix: Greece and Cyprus

https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/16736/1/Public-Film-Funding-at-a-Crossroads-Greece-and-Cyprus.pdf

Public Film Funding at a Crossroads - Appendix: Greece and Cyprus

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