When the Co-production Research Network (CoRN) organised the European Co-production Symposium in Copenhagen in 2016, we were thrilled to discover that it coincided with the 25th anniversary of Lars von Trierâs film Europa (1991), and accordingly decided to use an image from the film on the conference poster. That image is now also the cover of this book.
There are several reasons why this image resonates so well with studying the policies and practices behind European film and television co-production. First and foremost, Europa symbolically opened a new chapter in the history of European co-production. The film was produced as a multilateral co-production with financing from Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Spain. It was directed by a Dane, but shot in Poland with an international cast speaking in German as well as English. Financially, it was supported by the European co-production fund, Eurimages, during the fundâs first calls and went on to premiere at the 1991 Cannes International Film Festival.
At the time, Europa was a textbook example of the ideal European co-production and marked a new faith in fostering more transnational collaboration in European filmmaking. The filmâs subject matter was a shared aspect of European historyâa topic that film policy makers of the 1980s and early 1990s believed would appeal to transnational European audiencesâand it managed to mix countries, nationalities and languages in a way that felt organic and appropriate as opposed to a contrived âEuro-puddingâ.
Europa won three awards in Cannes and was a source of inspiration to many European filmmakers in terms of thinking about production as a transnational, rather than a solely national endeavour. A lot has happened since that time. This book examines these developments, focusing on the current state of European co-production policy and practice, while drawing on numerous examples and pivotal moments in recent film and television co-production history. Much can be learned from studying examples that are considered as best practice at a certain point in time by the industry as well as scholarsâsuch as Europaâand by giving industry practitioners a voice in the academic research on co-production from a policy as well as a production perspective.
The Significance of European Co-production
International collaboration is intrinsic to filmmaking. Filmmakers hungry for exotic locations and new stories have always travelled the world to make their films and often in the process, almost by default, have entered into âco-productionsâ. Shooting far from home requires the establishment of local partnerships (to identify crew, cast and locations, etc.) and, more often than not, also entails some sharing of risk. Thus, as early as the 1920s, financial co-ventures occurred between countries in Europe and also between European and non-European nations,1 creating a circulation of talent, crew and cast across borders.2
Notwithstanding, it wasnât until mid-last century that these arrangements began to be formalised by governments, and this first occurred in Europe. Motivated by a desire to see European films compete with the high-budget Hollywood imports that were dominating global screens, European governments sought to increase the amounts of money available for their producers. The most obvious strategy was to facilitate the pooling of public finances between European nations, but this posed a number of challenges. National funds had been established, with binding legal instruments, strictly to benefit national films and national industries. As such, foreign films were not eligible to access such funds. Official co-production was a way around this. In a nifty sleight of hand, intergovernmental co-production treaties were signed, providing for certified official co-productions to receive ânational treatmentâ, thereby enabling European filmmakers to accrue public resources from several nations, to penetrate foreign markets through being assimilated as local content for the purposes of content quotas, and at the same time encouraging producers to act as ambassadors for each otherâs films, securing sales and distribution guarantees on behalf of their European partners in their territory.
Europe thus pioneered official co-production, with the first bilateral co-production treaty signed between Italy and France in 1949. Film scholar Anne JĂ€ckel has described this as the beginning of the history of policy-driven co-production in Europe. She points out, however, that the official co-production mechanism was initially exploited by just a handful of high-profile producers who already had a significant track-record of international collaboration (JĂ€ckel 2003a).
Since that time, treaties have proliferated. France currently has 57 intergovernmental agreements in place, Italy 39, and many non-European countries have also followed suit, establishing active official co-production programmes (Canada has over 50 and Australia 12, with several more in the pipeline). Co-production has accordingly become accessible to a much wider range of producersâfrom first-time independents to mid-size production companies, as well as large companies and studios. In the European context, two major policy triggers have further stimulated an increase and diversification in co-production.
The first is the unparalleled amount of public money being distributed through specific schemes to a wide range of productions. The European Audiovisual Observatory has identified more than 270 public film funds across Europe (Talavera et al. 2016, 27â31), comprised of supranational funds (8%), which are either pan-European or aimed at non-European countries, national/federal funds (25%), which are founded by the national governments, and subnational funds (67%), which operate at the regional or local level. On average, these funds administer âŹ2.53 billion annually and, because access to these funds is often tied to the participation of a local producer, they create a significant incentive to co-produce.
The second policy trigger has been a number of pro-active initiatives of the Council of Europe, specifically the establishment of the dedicated co-production fund, Eurimages, in 1988,3 and the introduction of the European Convention on Cinematographic Co-production in 1994. Eurimages was the first pan-European public fund for European co-productions. It created an immediate incentive for European producers to work together because, in order to secure financial support, a project needed to be packaged as an official co-production between European countries and also to pass a point-based test assessing its European value (Eurimages 2016).
When it became apparent that producers from some of Europeâs smaller filmmaking countries were missing out on funding, because the bilateral treaties between their government and other European nations imposed requirements that could not realistically be met, the Council of Europe launched the European Convention on Cinematographic Co-production (the Convention). This democratised access to official co-production, providing for all signatories to the Convention to co-produce with each other under more favourable conditions than those stipulated in some of the aforementioned bilateral co-production treaties. This then stimulated co-productions between large and small filmmaking countries, an objective that was also actively encouraged by Eurimages. These policy initiatives happened to coincide with historic shifts in Europeâs geo-political landscape, associated with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the EU integration of post-Socialist countries from Eastern and Central Europe. The emergence of ânew countriesâ further increased and diversified co-production between Eastern and Western Europe. Film scholar Luisa Rivi has gone so far as to label co-productions made during this period âpost-Cold War co-productionsâ (Rivi 2007, 53).
Over and above these policy triggers for official co-production, and as part of a broader push to attract investment to Europe, there has been a proliferation of tax incentives for location shooting, post-production and digital effects (VFX). The number of tax incentive schemes in Europe jumped from 12 to 26 between 2008 and 2014 (Talavera et al. 2016, 70â71). A frequent pre-requisite for accessing such incentives is the participation of a local production company, which means that hitherto âoff-shore productionsâ have become de-facto co-productions, albeit non-official co-productions/private joint ventures.
Co-production has thus become inscribed in the European cinematographic landscapeâboth in policy instruments and production practicesâto an unprecedented degree and, as a result, Europe has become a global hub for international co-production. Data provided by the European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO) in Chap. 2 of this volume, confirms the increasing significance of co-production in Europe. Over the past several decades, the proportion of films being made as co-productions has steadily increased, stabilising at record high levels in recent years. In spite of the numerous complex production challenges and considerable financial and administrative burdens, European producers evidently believe that the advantages of co-producing outweigh the disadvantages, and more and more producers are choosing to co-produce. This is no doubt a reflection of increasing financial need. As Anders KjĂŠrhauge from the Danish production company Zentropa points out in this volume, production budgets are continuing to rise while revenue streams are decreasing, so there is a growing need for producers to find financing outside of their national territory.4 It may also have something to do with the fact that, as indicated by the EAO data, European co-productions are commercially out-performing comparative ânationalâ films, an unequivocal incentive for filmmakers to engage in this practice.
The EAO figures capture both official and non-official co-productions and underline the significance of both types of co-production in the European film and television production landscape. We are currently seeing a multitude of different kinds of co-production set-ups, both between partners that have long histories of working together, as well as between countries with little tradition of transnational collaboration, as exemplified in the case studies within this volume of the Oscar-winning Polish-Danish feature film Ida (2013) and the Danish-French television drama series Herrens veje/Ride Upon the Storm (2017â). In this context, European co-production constitutes a particularly fertile object of study. It is somewhat surprising then, that the most recent scholarly publication dedicated specifically to Europ...