Hollywood émigrés

- Cultural Diversity Awareness - 

In Memoriam of all the foreign artists who brought their talent to Hollywood to give a major contribution to its success then and now.

During WW2 and in the post-WW2 era this was called the "brain drain" : facilitate the emigration of the most talented people from Europe to install them in America and kill two birds with one stone. One, it makes European countries less competitive, since they lose the best of their intelligentsia. Two, it makes the USA more competitive by adding this intellectual capital to the development of their economy. Just like the economy of the USA, the success and later worldwide hegemony of Hollywood benefited greatly of this positive emigration towards their shores. The great names in Hollywood, for a large part, be it producer, director, actor, cinematographer... come from Europe (Germany, France, UK, Eastern Europe...), and later from Asia (Hong Kong, Japan...), Canada or Mexico... Whether to move permanently there (like Hitchcock or Lubitsch), or to give a try at a single film (like Wong Kar-wai or Jean-Pierre Jeunet) they always credit that much more to the record books of Hollywood instead of their homeland. And this practice, although partially favored by the attraction of big budgets, the star system and fame, was not an all-out manipulative campaign. The objective appeal of the Hollywood market is undeniable, at least as far as Entertainment is concerned. Artists do go there willingly, for the "American dream", in the hope of improving their access to celebrity and wealth. Hollywood doesn't discriminate, and treats foreigners as well as the homegrown talents, as long as they make money... thereafter they are dumped and forgotten as fast as they got in. This is the rule of the game. Only then do they realise they might have sold their soul too quickly.

Unfortunately this cultural "exchange" is a one-way highway. Hollywood doesn't give back the help they received from foreign industries... As soon as these emigrés work for Hollywood, they are considered "American" and they make "American" films, forgetting all about their heritage and their identity. Oblivious of what they owe to foreign countries, and the development of new artists for the next generation, ungrateful Hollywood shows no mercy on the global market, crushing domestic cinema in these very friendly countries by imposing the exclusive domination of their blockbusters on foreign screens, by fighting off the quotas that help the survival of a local industry. Hollywood only cares about making more money, they don't care about cultural diversity in the world, the kind nursing of struggling national industries outside of the USA, or even the welcoming of foreign films on American screens! 

This is sad, and disrespectful, especially when Hollywood makes way more than any other film industry in the world and is the last industry that suffers from "unfair competition"!

You would think that an ex-nihilo nation entirely built on immigration, on the melting-pot of foreign culture, on cosmopolitan and multi-cultural traditions would show, as a people, more interest, curiosity, appetite for foreign cinema, foreign stars, foreign artists... it's the contrary. Americans, the multicultural Americans watch less foreign films than any other countries in the world! If they don't do it out of respect for world culture, I wish they would at least show a better representation of their own multi-culturalism in Hollywood films (which are all made for WASPs).

I think this should change and quickly! At least to reach the level of cultural diversity usual in the industrialised countries of the Western World.

When will America grow out of a business intensive industry and make some room (a decent minor share) for foreign culture?

Melting Pot (2002/Ad Council/USA) 1'

Some examples of the foreign contribution to the Hollywood "tradition de qualité" (only focusing on filmmakers):

EUROPE

• AUSTRIA : Edgar G. Ulmer, Karl Freund, Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, Erich von Stroheim, Josef von Strenberg, Max Steiner, Max Reinhardt...
• BELGIUM : Jacques Feyder, Chantal Akerman, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Alain Berliner...
• former CZECHOZLOVAKIA : Milos Forman, Gustav Machaty, Ivan Passer...
• DENMARK : Benjamin Christensen, Nicolas Winding Refn, Susanne Bier, Lone Scherfig, Niel Arden Oplev ...
• FRANCE : André Deed, Alice Guy, Emile Chautard, Maurice Tourneur, George Archainbaud, Max Linder, Léonce Perret, Robert Florey, Jean Renoir, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Agnès Varda, Alain Resnais, Alexandre Aja, Barbet Schroeder, Bertrand Tavernier, Christopher Gans, Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Demy, Jacques Deray, Max Ophüls, Maurice Tourneur, Jacques Tourneur, Julie Delpy, Julien Duvivier, Louis Malle, Matthieu Kassovitz, Michel Gondry, René Clair, René Clément, George Sluizer, Luc Besson, Xavier Gens, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Olivier Megaton, Yann Samuell, Louis Gasnier, Albert Capellani, Georges Fitzmauritce...
• GEORGIA : Ruben Mamoulian...
• GERMANY : Douglas Sirk, Ernst Lubitsch, F.W. Murnau, Fassbinder, G.W. Pabst, John Brahm, Max Ophüls, Paul Leni, Robert Siodmak, William Dieterle, William Wyler, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Wolfgang Petersen, Roland Emmerich, Christian Alvart, Curtis Bernhardt, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Conrad Viedt, Pola Negri, Arthur Robinson, Guad André Dupont...
• GREECE : Costa-Gavras, M. Cacoyannis...
• HUNGARY : Michael Curtiz, Laslo Benedek, Alexander Korda, Andrew Marton, John Auer, André de Toth, Charles Vidor, Pál Fejös...
• ICELAND : Baltasar Kormakur...
• IRELAND : Rex Ingram, Herbert Brenon, Sidney Olcott, Neil Jordan, Kirsten Sheridan...
• ITALY : Frank Capra, Bernardo Bertolucci, Francesco Rosi, Michelangelo Antonioni, Sergio Leone, Vittorio de Sica, Lina Wertmüller...
• LITHUANIA : Jonas Mekas...
• NETHERLANDS : Paul Verhoeven, Theo van de Sande...
• POLAND : Roman Polanski, Agnieszka Holland, Max Nosseck, Rudolph Maté...
• RUSSIA : Anatole Litvak, Sergei Eisenstein, Lewis Milestone, Andrei Konchalovsky, Timur Bekmambetov...
• SPAIN : Luis Buñuel, Nacho Vigalondo...
• SWEDEN : Jan Troell, Mauritz Stiller, Viktor Sjöström, Lasse Hallström...
• UK : James Whale, Stan Laurel, Charles Chaplin, Charles Laughton, Edmund Goulding, Ken Annakin, John Schlesinger, Tony Richardson, Alexander Mackendrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Christopher Nolan, John Boorman, Percy Aldon, Stephen Frears, Danny Boyle, Matthew Vaughn, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Roland Joffé, Alan Parker, Kenneth Branagh, Michael Apted...

ASIA

• HONG KONG : Bruce Lee, Chen Kaige, John Woo, Ringo Lam, Jacky Chan, Tsui Hark, Wayne Wang, Wong Kar-wai...
• INDIA : Mira Nair, Shekhar Kapur, M. Night Shyamalan...
• JAPAN : Nagisa Oshima, Akira Kurosawa, Takashi Shimizu, Hideo Nakata, Takeshi Kitano, Ryuhei Kitamura...
• KOREA : Jennifer Yuh, Dennis Lee, Park Chan-wook, Kim Ji-woon, Ahn Byeong-ki, Bong Joon-ho...
• TAIWAN : Ang Lee...
• THE PHILIPPINES : Lav Diaz...

AMERICA

• ARGENTINA : Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast, Hugo Fregonese... 
• BRAZIL : Walter Salles, Fernando Meirelles...
• CANADA :  Mack Sennett, Sidney J. Furie, Norman Jewison, Jason Reitman, Paul Haggis, James Cameron,  David Cronenberg, Ivan Reitman, Jean-Marc Vallée...
• CHILE : Reuben Gonzalez, Alejandro Amenábar...
• COLOMBIA : Rodrigo Garcia...
• MEXICO : Emilio Fernández, Luis Mandoki, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu...

OCEANIA

• AUSTRALIA : Bill Bennett, John Farrow, Stephen Elliott, Fred Schepisi, Jocelyn Moorhouse, Bruce Beresford, Gillian Armstrong, George Miller, Richard Franklin, Jane Campione, Baz Luhrmann, Simon Wincer, Paul J. Hogan, Peter Weir, Philip Noyce, John Hillcoat...
• NEW ZEALAND : Roger Donaldson, Peter Jackson, Andrew Dominik, Jane Campion...

MIDDLE EAST

• ARMENIA : Sylvette Artinian, Aram Avakian, Tina Bastajian, Nigol Bezjian, Roxanne Bezjian, Theodore Bogosian, Varktes Cholakian, J. Michael Hagopian, Ara Madzounian, Rouben Mamoulian, Bill Omanesian, Richard Sarafian, William Saroyan, Setrag Vartian...

note: more examples welcome

* * *

Let's put this in regard to the amount of foreign films watched by the American audience :

To Steal talents abroad to improve the quality of Hollywood output : HELL YES!
To screen, and buy tickets in theatres on American soil to support foreign films : FORGET IT!!!

Nothing but greed and cultural blindness could explain this graph...



Related:

• Cultural Diversity Awareness (series)
• Foreign-friendly audience / Slow release / Weak's cutoff / To America everything foreign is SLOW 
• MPAA not interested in democratized culture / American Isolationism 1-2 
• Admissions per film nationality (USA-EU 2009)
• "Exiles in Hollywood: Major European Film Directors in America", Gene D. Phillips, 1998
• "Passport to Hollywood: Hollywood films, European directors", James Morrison, 1998
• "Hollywood Destinies: European Directors in America, 1922–1931", Graham Petrie, 2002
• "The Hollywood Exiles", John Baxter, 1976
• "European exiles in '40s Hollywood" (Noir City Sentinel; Nov 2006) [PDF] 
• Le cinéma Hollywoodien (Patrick Brion; 14 juillet 2004; Université de tous les savoirs; Canal-U) video 94'43"

World Cruise 2010 (Eikawa Yuki)

-Cultural Diversity Awareness-

director : 永川 優樹 EIKAWA Yuki (born in Nagasaki in 1978) released a Blu-ray/DVD (official website)

"Cruising 17 cities in ten countries, everyday people's lives from dawn to midnight are captured with one DSLR with handheld stabilizer. No narration or background music clutter this film - instead, natural sounds recorded in each locale present a true-to-life environment. Amazing perspective opens before your eyes, and the bustle of the cities fills the air. Now you can travel the world right from your armchair."

1. NEW YORK / USA 04:31
2. TOKYO / JAPAN 05:35
3. LONDON / UK 04:00
4. CHEFCHAOUEN / MOROCCO 05:08
5. AMALFI / ITALY 03:03
6. KYOTO / JAPAN 05:15
7. VARANASI / INDIA 03:50
8. CUZCO / PERU 04:26
9. VENICE / ITALY 04:03
10. OLD DELHI / INDIA 01:59
11. ISTANBUL / TURKEY 04:18
12. XITANG / CHINA 03:18
13. ROME / ITALY 03:18
14. SHANGHAI / CHINA 03:09
15. FES / MOROCCO 03:06
16. BANGKOK / THAI 03:07
17. UCHISAR / TURKEY 03:06
18. WORLD - CRUISE 28:07

Cruise 2010 by 永川 優樹 EIKAWA Yuki (egawauemon; 36 videos)

Amalfi - Italy (28 April 2010) 15'27"

• Xitang - China (22 Sept 2010) 13'04"
• Cappadocia - Turkey (20 Sept 2010) 7'35"
• Yakushima - Japan (14 Aug 2010) 6'
• Tokyo - Japan (13 May 2010) 19'28"
• Varanasi -India (21 March 2010) 10'25"
• Bangkok - Thailand (28 Fev 2010) 10'01"
• Fukuoka - Japan (11 Jan 2010) 10'
• Osaka - Japan (25 Nov 2009) 10'
• Kyoto - Japan (17 Oct 2009) 10'

Walking in Tokyo by 永川 優樹 EIKAWA Yuki (egawauemon; 22 videos)

• Asakusa, Tokyo - Japan (27 Aug 2009) 23'
• Shibuya, Tokyo - Japan (21 Apr 2009) 7'11"
• Shinjuku, Golden Town , tokyo - Japan (11 Apr 2009) 6'22"
• Ueno, Tokyo - Japan (30 Nov 2008) 9'45"
• Ginza, Tokyo - Japan (20 Sept 2008)

Originally posted at Unspoken Cinema

More on the YouTube channel here

Related :

• Cultural Diversity Awareness (series) 
• World-Cruise 2010  / con-Quest web magazine 
• thoughts for Japan 

France exports (uniFrance) - World Cinema Stats (24)

-Cultural Diversity Awareness-

• Projection Privée (France Culture) 8 Octobre 2011 - MP3 radio webcast 59'
  Michel Ciment (Positif) reçoit Régine Hatchondo (directrice générale d' uniFrance)

France is the 2nd largest exporter of national cinema in the world (with 2 or 3% of the global market share = 60 Million admissions = 0.42 Billion $) behind the USA (21.2 Billion $). Notice the huge discrepancy between the leader and the first runner-up.

The American cinema industry was built early on with a powerful commercial format, formulaic film genres and the star system, and the commercial trade was patterned after big international corporations such as Boeing.

The French model of domestic distribution is quasi-unique, where multiplex screen artfilms alongside mainstream entertainment, the arthouse circuit is well developed in most major cities, supported by subsidies and by a loyal audience. To the point where commercial multiplexes (in Paris notably) that sell the largest number of artfilm admissions in Europe, complain about the unfair competition that state subsidies introduce on the market of such artfilms (since aid only goes to small independent exhibitors and not to multiplex brandname  franchises... (the art & essai label that guarantees subsidies is a complicated business in France!)

Whereas the USA only has a weak arthouse circuit to rely on for artfilm distribution (and now shifted almost entirely to DVD distribution instead of hoping for a theatrical circulation). 

Meanwhile in most countries, the option of an arthouse circuit doesn't even exist today as an alternative circuit, and never even existed in the first place, which explains the domination of Hollywood imports on their screens. Multiplexes often built with American investments (like the campaign in China to bypass the restrictive import quotas, they co-finance multiplexes and studios to appropriate from the inside a share of the "domestic" share).

Certain foreign films make their best box office in France, higher than the admissions they sell on their domestic market! Some even get only released in France, while they are banned or censored in their own country. 

Basically, French cinema and by extension European cinema is essentially screened and viewed in arthouses, while the multiplexes (except in Paris) mainly show Hollywood blockbusters, like everywhere else in the world. That's why the development of multiplexes in suburban areas has considerably damaged the survival of the downtown arthouses. 

In Germany, 20 cities lost their last arthouse in recent years. In Italy over 300 arthouses have been shut down in 3 years. 

On 25 million admissions sold on the USA market by French cinema, 20 million come from English-spoken film productions made-in-France (by EuropaCorp), such as Taken or The Ghost Writer, fabricated according to the Hollywood formula. Which is telling about the American audience, the French films they prefer are the ones shot in English, with American actors, which plot structure resembles the Hollywood format... Open-mindedness towards World culture and cinema diversity fail! 

The usual market share French cinema (in French language, with French actors) could expect on the USA exhibition circuit is between 6 and 8 million admissions.

In the Cannes line-up, 50% of the films selected are either French, or co-produced by French investments. Among the foreign films selected by the Oscars, the films representing Finland (Le Havre), Lebanon (Where do we go now?); Morocco (Omar m'a tuer) are French co-productions that wouldn't exist without the aid of France, like for Lou Ye (China) or Brillante Mendoza (The Philippines). At TIFF this year, 35 French productions, 55 French co-productions out of 300. This is the richness and cultural diversity of the French system, "terre d'accueil" for foreign artists. 

Last year, the score for French productions in the USA lowered considerably because of the absence of the Hollywood-lookalike such as Taken, but the French spoken films gained 20%, and the number of titles was larger too. 

For instance certain French films fare much better abroad, like Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinski which killed in Japan, or Ne te retourne pas thanks to the popularity of Sophie Marceau in China (300000 spectators!), Persepolis made 1870000 spectators abroad (1.2 million in France), Le Fils de l'épicier  (debut without stars) thanks to Germany, Spain and Australia. Entre les murs (Palme d'Or) made 2.4 million admissions, of which 600000 in the USA (1.6 million at home). L'heure d'été made 690000 admissions (420000 at home). Amélie = 23 million admissions. Coco avant Chanel = 5 million.

2 factors influence greatly the success of French films abroad, for their distribution and their popularity with the (cinéphile) audience : the selection and awards in Cannes and the Oscars. 

Rendez-vous with French Cinema : junket for French films exports. 120 journalists, from 30 European countries (+ Canada), are invited all expenses paid for 4 days to interview stars (916 interviews made last year for TV, press, internet and radio), plus about 250-320 European distributors (+ Kazakhstan, Vietnam), to discover 40 some undistributed French films in exclusivity. Same with American journalists, and Australian journalists on other dates.

International markets to sell French cinema supported by uniFrance : Marché du Film (Cannes; France), TIFF (Toronto; Canada), European Film Market (Berlin; Germany), American Film Market (LA; USA), Hong Kong FILMART (China)

As well as the major festivals, and the international festivals in each country. 

One difficulty French cinema promotion faces is that unlike the Hollywood system (where stars are contractually obligated to promote the film worldwide, in junkets, at festivals, at premiere screenings) facilitated by a simultaneous release in all countries in a very short period of time, French films international distribution might take 2 years, and stars can't be available for junkets and promotions for such a long period of time because of schedule conflicts and ongoing shootings. 

uniFrance organises French-only mini-festivals in New York city, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro (+22 Brazilian cities), China, Russia, India, Australia... (like "Rendez-vous with French Cinema") which do a lot for the promotion of French cinema abroad, and might explain how France is number 2 in cinema exports in the world. (Although these titles are usually the mainstream blockbusters of the French market, and only give a mainstream stereotype of what might be French cinema...) 

The USA market is the largest in the world, unfortunately a number of specialty divisions have shut down, the auteur-cinema is not a priority on the American market. The number of titles and the number of admissions is stable for French films in the USA... however the turnover is much quicker, and the opening weekend screens are always fewer. Which is a global phenomenon throughout the world within the commercial distribution. 

American niche audience (French-friendly), mainly students or the older generation, prefer Assayas, Desplechin, Audiard, Claire Denis, Akerman, Audrey Tautou, Catherine Deneuve...

Europa Cinema (MEDIA) is a European fund granting subsidies to exhibitors in the world that screen at least 25% of European films. 

VOD might be the only alternative to niche distribution for remote locale where screenings are not profitable. Like IFC on Demand. uniFrance created an online festival for this purpose. 

Netflix = 23 million subscribers (USA+Canada),  there only propose 2 French film titles in their collection !

The Russian audience prefers French comedies. Japanese audience has a cinephile tendency like the USA, they prefer Luxury theme (Coco Chanel), Woman, Environment, Desplechin, Dumont... 2 arthouses in Tokyo screen almost exclusively French films. In China, only 4 French films per year are released (due to the import quotas imposed by the government).

French film exports in foreign theatrical projections

	2010	2009	2008	2007
Total exported titles	419	419	403	375
Gross BO (€)	338537170	350747471	416240687	354047926
Spectators	59872217	67227078	83219327	71724251
Prints	8007	8312	8757	7604
Importing countries	64	62	67	50

TV broadcasting of French film abroad

	2010	2009	2008	2007
Total titles	335	1887	1752	1750
Total cumulative runs	2262	7519	6406	6032
Number of networks/stations	33	124	93	95

Comparative table USA-France, respectively 1st and 2nd cinema exporters on the world market :

	USA 2010	France 2010	Korea 2009
Total titles in theatres	560	419	260
Number of countries importing	150+	64	41
Gross BO (M$) abroad	21100	423.5	14.1
Total titles broadcast on foreign TV		335

Related:

• Cultural Diversity Awareness
• L’exportation des films français en 2010 (CNC) [PDF]
• uniFrance / Motion Picture Association of America International (MPA) 
• South Korea Exports / Foreign-friendly audiences / EU Admissions 

Artificial barriers against free circulation of world cinema

- Cultural Diversity Awareness - 

Languages barriers (transnational)

Film Criticism circulation delimitations (domestic)

Cinema aesthetics inflences delimitations (worldwide)

Cinema exhibition market restrictions (domestic)

TV sets restrictions

AVI-MPEG Torrent restrictions (worldwide)

DVD region restrictions

MP3 restrictions (worldwide)

Blu-ray region restrictions

Internet penetration (source) 2011

Related :

• Cultural Diversity Awareness (series)

Global Lives

-Cultural Diversity Awareness-

Global Lives Project (website [EDIT: server back on]) Wikipedia 

Berkeley, USA. 2004-2010

Our mission is to collaboratively build a video library of human life experience that reshapes how we as both producers and viewers conceive of cultures, nations and people outside of our own communities.

Framed by the arc of the day and conveyed through the intimacy of video, we have slowly and faithfully captured 24 continuous hours in the lives of 10 people from around the world [China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Malawi, Serbia, Brazil, USA]. They are screened here in their own right, but also in relation to one another.

There is no narrative other than that which is found in the composition of everyday life, no overt interpretations other than that which you may bring to it.

By extending the long take to a certain extreme and infusing it with the spirit of cinema verité, we invite audiences to confer close attention onto other worlds, and simultaneously reflect upon their own. The force and depth of human difference and similarity are revealed in this process. Gaps which mark cultural divides feel, at once, both wider and narrower. This sense - that we, as humans, are both knowable and unknowable, fundamentally different as well as the same - opens a space for dialogue.

24h unedited video footage (plan sequences) available online on their website; here are the trailers:

James Bullock - San Francisco, USA (November 17, 2004) offline [10' excerpt] [YT trailer]

Israel Feliciano - São Paulo, Brazil (May 21, 2006)  [YT trailer]

Edith Kapuka - Ngwale Village, Malawi (May 2007)  [YT trailer]

• Rumi Nagashima - Tokyo, Japan (July 2007)  [trailer offline]

Kai Liu - Anren, China (September 2008) [YT trailer]

Dadah - Sarimukti Village, Indonesia (October 2008) [YT trailer]

• Muttu Kumar - Hampi, India (March 7, 2009)  [trailer offline]

Dusan Lazic - Vojka, Serbia (April, 2009) [YT trailer]

Jamila Jad - Beirut, Lebanon (May 15, 2009) [YT trailer]

• Zhanna Dosmailova - Vannovka, Kazakhstan (October, 2009)   [trailer offline]

How to videotape someone for 24h? (tips from the Brazil segment)



Related:

• Cultural Diversity Awareness (series)
• Longest Slices of Life

Presumptuous Best Film in the World

- Cultural Diversity Awareness - 

How much do you know about "American cinema" (both sub-continents North and South)? How much do you know about "European cinema"? How much do you know about "Asian cinema"? How much do you know about "African cinema"? How much do you know about "cinema from the Middle East"? How much do you know about "cinema from Oceania"?

From the statistics I could gather on 80 countries of the biggest cinema producers in the world, there was about 6700 (and over, because the other 116 countries were not surveyed) films produced in 2008 (or closest year when data not available). This is roughly equivalent to 10000 hours of viewing (if we consider an average run time of 90 minutes), which is almost 420 days of back-to-back screenings non-stop, more days than there are in a year! (However, this number might be slightly inflated by the redundancy of certain co-productions, see graph at the bottom)
This is a lot more than any one given individual critic or movie goer watches during a year. Let alone the fact that it takes sometimes several years for a film to get distributed commercially, thus appearing publicly long after their year of production, wherein they should be counted. But as a general rule, we could say there are about 5000-6500 films made each year, at least, and this number is in constant growth over the years. This is considerable!

How many of these films are distributed on the commercial market? Well, sensibly less than the total world production. There is no country on Earth where we could see the totality of world cinema in commercial cinemas, or in any other forms of projections (festival, museum, film markets, professional screenings, DVDs, black market...). The graph above shows the number of film titles distributed on the commercial circuit of movie theatres, the sum of all weekly batches of releases, which include the limited releases restricted to a few cities sometimes. India leads the pack, mostly because of its domestic production (also topping the world ranking), although split between quasi-self-exclusive sub-markets dedicated to each its own language (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Marathi...). India should be considered as a fragmented market and not a global circuit of theatres (but number of releases for each sub-market was not available). Belgium (775) and Japan (762) show the largest number of films (15 new releases each week on average), the former only having to screen 64 domestic titles, the latter reserving 418 slots for its domestic production. France (588) and the USA (558) follow, with the same discrepancy in domestic share, 240 for the former, 520 for the latter, leaving a very different room for foreign film distribution. With the films-for-TV and direct-to-video, and shelving, even a given country doesn't release ALL its domestic production. And as far as foreign films distribution, Hollywood titles are the ones filling up most of the foreign share, because they are the most popular and most profitable for the domestic exhibitors. So overall, Hollywood cinema is probably the best represented in all markets of the world (owning close to 80% of the world market every year). These are the films (at least for its most famous titles) that everyone has seen, average movie goer or hardcore cinéphile alike. The American cinema doesn't suffer from underexposure, because it is forcefully supported by the American government and its commercial/military pressures. 

It is physically impossible for a single person to see them all, yet, the milieu of movie reviewers, professional or amateur, lacks not of pundits who know which are the "best films of the year" and will tell everyone about it. If you're an avid movie-goer, you might see some 400 films a year, even though they can't all be recent productions, some are revival or repeat viewing. That would be barely 6% of the total world production! Not everybody has time to watch that many anyway, most reviewers most likely watch up to a 100 new production per year (1.5% of the total world production), which overwhelming majority comes from either Hollywood or the domestic production of their own country. The awareness of world cinema remains essentially lacunary and random. Yet they don't feel no shame to come up with a "best of the year" list, every year, based on a random sampling of 1.5% !!! Nobody would take this kind of "expert study" seriously outside of the self-congratulatory world of movie reviewing. Do you realise that you're not even knowing the totality of the film production made in your own country every year?

So what exactly do you know about world cinema? Well you get to watch films that are available, and/or sufficiently visible to bother tracking down / checking out. That's when you realise that your exposure to world cinema is shaped up by exterior forces that limit your choice from a pre-selected catalog. And who makes these choices for you? Domestic distributors if you're a regular movie goer, festivals if you're a professional critic, film markets and international agents if you're a distributor, festival curators if you're a jury member. People make choices for you about what movies are the best to watch within this global package of 6700 films. Then, you get the feeling of a free choice when you elect your top10 amongst this pre-filtered sampling. This isn't a free choice at all, and certainly not representative of the complete diversity available in the world. So when you candidly bash the line up of festivals, when you say Cannes had a good/bad year, you have no clue whether they selected the wrong films or if there are neglected gems hidden elsewhere... because you never got to watch them yourself. You are totally dependent on people who make films available to you, your profession or your domestic market!!! You are not electing the "best film of the year", somebody else does it for you. And you don't even recognize/criticize the expertise of people who reduce (as a collective) the overwhelming quantity of 6700 films to a manageable hundreds from which to pick from.

Even in major festivals, such as Cannes, Berlin or Venice... a team of curators watch, during the few months of the submission period, over a thousand new films made in the world, which is a pretty good sample for a single event, and a small team of viewers. Unfortunately, most of these films are watched by all 3 festival committees  thus overlapping their prospective line up and generating schedule conflicts and battle for exclusivity. This said, these 3 international institutions are putting up a solid effort, at the level of their own capabilities, to try and cover most of what is important and vital to see and to screen, every year. However, the profession of film criticism in the world, as a whole, across all borders, which members largely outnumber the small festival committees could easily put out a bigger effort to cover MORE ground, as a group, sharing information, exchanging findings, exposing discoveries... while in fact, they watch LESS new films than what major festivals line up for them. They don't go out of their way to go track down themselves a young promising artist nobody heard about, to show the world that there are unsung heroes that are not showcased by majors festival... NO, yet they will bash festival for a "weak line up" that year. Festival reviewer is really a shameless profession!

That is why it is important for critics to be critical of the system that brings films to you, and leaves 94% of world production out. Even in France, we miss a lot of foreign films. But when you live in a country that shows as little foreign cinema as in the USA... and that you spend all your time bashing festivals and challenging auteurs... you're really out of your depth. Without festivals you wouldn't know that other countries made films outside Hollywood! And as I just said, even these festivals never show you the totality of world diversity, but they do a better job than your local distribution market, or the coverage of the American press!

Did you know that other countries in the world, outside Hollywood, made films too? Have you seen ALL films from these countries before electing this elusive “Best film” of the year, or coining phrases like "the Romanian wave is over", or stereotyping the style of a certain national cinema after seeing a dozen films in 5 years from that country? Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

Following numbers for 2008 or 2009. Total number of films surveyed in the world for one year : at least 6691.

• India 1300 films
• Nigeria 872
• USA 558
• China 500 (Hong Kong 53)
• Japan 448
• France 230
• Russia 220
• Spain 201
• South Korea 158
• Italy 154
• Germany 125
• UK 111
• Brazil, Argentina 90 each
• Indonesia 87
• The Philippines 86
• Belgium 82
• Canada 81 (Québec 46)
• Mexico 70
• Switzerland 58
• Thailand 54
• Turkey 50
• Denmark, Egypt 45 each
• Iran, Poland, Madagascar 40 each
• Ireland 39
• Australia, Czech Rep., Sweden 38 each
• Taiwan 36
• Netherlands 35
• Singapore, Venezuela 32 each
• Austria, Malaysia 28 each
• Norway 27
• Hungary 24
• Greece 23
• Chile 22
• Portugal 21
• Romania 19
• Finland 18
• Serbia 17
• Israel, Morocco, Slovenia 15 each
• Colombia, South Africa 14 each
• Pakistan, Luxembourg 13 each
• Iceland, New Zealand 12 each
• Kenya 11
• Bulgaria, Estonia, Vietnam 10 each
• Croatia, Dominican Rep 9 each
• Lebanon, Armenia 8 each
• Cameroon, Ukraine 7 each
• Burkina Faso, Uruguay 5 each
• Cyprus 4
• Azerbaijan, Moldova, Slovakia 3 each
• Belarus, Latvia 2 each 
• Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Macao, Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia, Oman 1 each

HOW MANY OF THEM HAVE YOU SEEN ???? HOW MANY HAVE BEEN DISTRIBUTED IN YOUR COUNTRY? And this is the production of only one year, there is about the same amount coming up again EVERY YEAR !!!

The last number for 2008 might be slightly overinflated because the tabulation used disparate sets of datas, and could repeat redundant co-produced films, counted by separate countries... But the other numbers were surveyed by the UNESCO, so we're close to 5000, at the minimum.

If you live within the USA, chances are you didn't see any of these distributed in a theatre near you, because American distributors only squeeze in a few foreign films on a handful of screens at the time, resulting in only 5 to 8% of the admissions market. (See: Foreign friendly audiences). Are distributors not bothering to give a decent distribution because the taste of the American audience doesn't welcome an aesthetic "too different" from the Hollywood format? Or is it because of the shortage of foreign films available that they make a poor box office return? I wonder how you could predict the potential turnout of a film, when it only opens on ONE SINGLE theatre in New York city! Not to mention that an audience exposed less and less each year to alternative offerings, will become desensitized and estranged after their taste has been numbed and conditioned to respond to only one kind of "entertainment", to the point where a Dan Kois would be allowed to publish in the NYT that challenging artfilms are just flat out repulsive, an offense to his narrow idiosyncratic taste in self-indulgent, jingoist desire for entertainment. Unfortunately, Americans cannot tell the difference between Art and Entertainment, and this is exactly what shapes up the American film culture essentially based on the commercial/entertainment imperative. 

Does it mean that world cinema sucks? Does it mean that there are no films outside of Hollywood that deserve to rival with the American-made entertainment on the international scene? That's what you would believe if you only read the national-centric American press. They never miss an opportunity to belittle foreign films for being "different" or "inferior", in wide sweeping stereotypes, attacking festival and "festival films", painting all foreign films as non-commercial and "boring", and gushing endlessly on the vanity of the Oscars... 

American critics don't get to watch foreign films in theatre, because they are hardly distributed there. They watch them on press screeners or imported DVDs, if they are curious enough to bother checking them out. The only glimpse at world cinema is brought home on a silver platter by international festivals, yet, ungratefully or mindlessly, they trash festivals every year! Basically, without film festivals there would be ZERO world cinema on the American land. And that's exactly what Hollywood wants, a captive audience ignorant of the possibility of an alternative choice in order to make sure they will consume whatever Hollywood puts out (in the absence of comparison, Hollywood's filmic achievements will look better), and make it easier to sell a bad remake of foreign cinema hits (since the original from a foreign country was never distributed there). This level of cultural isolationism could only be compared to the Soviet Union or the old China... Even China, today, has a market and an audience more open to foreign culture than the USA is. Is it normal that the "leader of the free world" would be so jingoist without the totalitarian regime that usually enforces such censorship against the will of the people? Nah, the American people freely chooses to flock around amusement fare, and insults real quality culture when they see it. From a business perspective, this is an ideal situation, studio executives and share holders applaud. 

What I find mind-boggling and appalling is that even "open-minded" cinéphiles and film critics in the USA don't see anything wrong about this for the state of world culture, not enough to rebel against it and speak out loud FOR alternative film culture within this entertainment-business dominated culture... The support for non-Hollywood cinema in the USA is so marginal within American culture that you sometimes wonder if it even exists. At least it is invisible on the statistical charts, and much lower, in any case, than in any other western democracies, in Europe or elsewhere. So Americans don't care about ranking last in this category? Won't they do anything about it, ever? Shouldn't critics living in such environment feel responsible about it and dedicate the few mediatic power they have to induce a change of opinion on the matter, little by little, year after, until a decent level of cultural openness has been reached? Instead of doing the redundant job of trade papers and entertainment magazines... Well it seems like this "Cultural Diversity Awareness" national month isn't raising much awareness at all within the American press or blogosphere.

Related :

• Cinema History You Think You Know
• Cultural Diversity Awareness (series)
• World cinema production stats (2008) 
• To America everything foreign is SLOW 
• International Film Festivals 2008 / Festival sizes / The fate of Cannes 2007 films 

Caché (Rouyer)

- Cultural Diversity Awareness -

Cours de cinéma : "Caché" analysé par Philippe Rouyer
5 Dec 2007 (forumdesimages) 51'39"

Related :

• Cultural Diversity Awareness (series)

Iranian Dissidence in Real Life Peril

-Cultural Diversity Awareness-

This is not fictitious violence for sensationalist effects and the entertainment of the mass... this is a real life oppression of a people in Iran, the censorship and repression of artists, intellectuals of the counter-culture!

"Suite à une nouvelle offensive de la police secrète du régime iranien contre les milieux du cinéma, sept artistes de renommée ont été arrêtés durant le dernier week-end. Il s’agit de Mojtaba MIRTAHMASB (réalisateur), Nasser SAFFARIAN (réalisateur), Hadi AFARIDEH (réalisateur), Mohsen SHAHNAZDAR (journaliste et documentariste), Shahnam BAZDAR (réalisateur), Mehrdad ZAHEDIAN (réalisateur) et Katayoune SHAHABI (productrice de cinéma). Mojtaba MIRTAHMASB est coréalisateur, avec Jafar PANAHI, de Ceci n’est pas un film, qui sort en salles en France le 28 septembre 2011.
Ces artistes ont été arrêtés chez eux ou dans leurs bureaux. [..]
Selon les dernières nouvelles, les cinéastes qui viennent d’être arrêtés ont été transférés à la section 209 de la prison Evin à Téhéran. Parmi les récentes victimes de la répression en Iran, figurent de nombreuses femmes artistes arrêtées ces dernières semaines. [..]
Le gouvernement iranien a également arrêté le caméraman, Touraj ASLANI, alors qu’il se trouvait dans un avion en partance pour la Turquie.
La Maison du Cinéma en Iran avait lancé un appel pour la défense et la libération des cinéastes emprisonnés. Les médias gouvernementaux ont annoncé que la Maison du Cinéma en Iran n’aurait désormais plus de reconnaissance officielle, accusée d’être un parti politique en contact avec l’étranger."
Serge Toubiana; blog de la Cinémathèque Française; 19 Sept 2011/29 Sept 2011

Contact du Comité de soutien : cinemairan@ymail.com / Pétition Le Festival de Cannes, La Cinémathèque française, La SRF, La SACD, France Culture (français) / Petition (English) / Cine Foundation International

I don't believe much in these petitions... When dissidents are accused by the regime of being spies for the Western World, I doubt that the support from the Western World (governmental or not) could help in any way to lift the pressure on the prisoners, to the contrary it could only give justifications to the (false) accusations of treason. Do you think that during McCarthyism in the USA, a petition from the USSR would have saved the asses of the directors blacklisted??? 

In any case, raising awareness at least insures that their names stay in the news and that any decisions the Iranian regime might take will not go unnoticed. That's why it was important to invite Jafar Panahi at the Berlinale, Cannes and Venice, at least symbolically. So spreading the word and most importantly, watching their films and pushing for their official distribution in your country will be instrumental in saving the stature of Iranian cinema and that it can not be wiped out secretly, just like the intellectuals have been repressed in the gulags of the Soviet Union or in the re-education camps of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China!

* * *

Top left to bottom right : Cairo, Egypt; Tunis, Tunisia; El Beïda, Libye; Sana'a, Yémen; Damas, Syrie; Karrana, Bahreïn (Wikipedia)

Recent popular uprisings in the Arab World :

• 14 Feb 2005 (Cedar Revolution) Lebanon - ongoing
• 13 June 2009 (Green Revolution) Iran - ongoing
• 17 Dec 2010 (Jasmin Revolution) Tunisia - 14 Jan 2011 success
• 28 Dec 2010 (protests) Algeria - ongoing
• 14 Jan 2011 (government change) Jordan - 1 Feb 2011 success
• 17 Jan 2011 (government change) Oman - 13 March 2011 success
• 18 Jan 2011 (government change) Yemen - ongoing
• 21 Jan 2011 (protests) Saoudi Arabia - bought out 
• 25 Jan 2011 (government change) Egypt - 11 Feb 2011 ongoing
• 26 Jan 2011 (protests) Syria - ongoing
• 30 Jan 2011 (government change) Morocco
• 13 Feb 2011 (Civil War) Lybia - 23 Aug 2011 success
• 18 Feb 2011 (government change) Koweit - 31 March 2011 success

For a change, these are not gouvernment overthrow induced by the CIA who didn't mind supporting dictators and military regimes to keep these regions under their American-market-friendly influence and control. These people didn't rebel against Islam (as a few "anti-Terror" governments would have wanted), they rebelled against the corrupt people who governed them at the chant of "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great). The "Christian versus Muslim" rhetoric didn't work, this is in fact a "Democracy versus Dictatorship" paradigm.

We are witnessing a series of tide-turning revolutions that are obvious echoes to the pre-television battles of our own revolutions for independence in the Western world and the recording of these images and films is ignored by the bored public who rather watch fictional wars with robots and flying superheroes... Would the films of The American Independence war and La Révolution Française would have been thus ignored if cinema had existed back then????

* * *

Documentaries of a cultural revolution :

• SOS à Téhéran (2002/Sou Abadi/France) Commercial release : France
• Travelogue (2006/Mahnaz Mohammadi/Iran) Commercial release : none
• Ein Augenblick Freiheit / For a moment, Freedom (2008/Arash T. Riahi/Austria/France/Turkey) Commercial release : Austria, France, Germany, Belgium, Norway
• Iran: Voices of the Unheard (2009/Davoud Geramifard/Canada/Iran) Commercial release : none
• Tehran Without Permission (2009/Sepideh Farsi/Iran/France) Commercial release : France
• Green Days (2009/Hana Makhmalbaf/Iran) Commercial release : none
• Bassidji (2009/Mehran Tamadon/Iran/France/Switzerland) Commercial release : France
• We Are Half of Iran's Population (2009/Rakhshan Bani-Etemad/Iran) Commercial release : Iran
• The Green Wave (2010/Ali Samadi Ahadi/Germany) Commercial release : Germany, Netherlands, Finland, UK
• Syrie, le crépuscule des Assads (2010/Christophe Ayad/Vincent de Cointet/France) Commercial release : France
• Syrie, dans l'enfer de la révolution (2011/Sofia Amara/France) Commercial release : France
• Tamantashar Yom / 18 jours (2011/Sherif Arafa/Yousry Nasrallah/Mariam Abou Ouf/Marwan Hamed/Mohamed Aly/Egypt) Commercial release : France
• Fragments d'une révolution (2011/France/Iran) Commercial release : none
• La Khaoufa Baada Al'Yaoum / Plus jamais peur (2011/Murad Ben Cheikh/Tunisia) Commercial release : Tunisia, France
• Tahrir (2011/Stefano Savona/France/Italy) Commercial release : none
• In Film Nist / This is not a film (2011/Mojtaba Mirtahmasb/Jafar Panahi/Iran) Commercial release : France, Sweden, Australia  ***Director banned from filmmaking for 20 years***

Filmography of outstanding fiction during a revolution (with their commercial distribution outside the festival circuit) :

• Dayereh / The Circle (2000/Jafar Panahi/Iran/Italy/Switzerland) Commercial release : Italy, Greece, France, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, USA, Argentina, Denmark, Spain, Malaysia, Germany, UK, Peru, Sweden, Colombia, Australia, South Korea, Hungary, Japan, Turkey, Portugal  ***Director banned from filmmaking for 20 years***
• Ten (2002/Abbas Kiarostami/France/Iran/USA) Commercial release : France, Belgium, UK, Italy, Portugal, Netherlands, USA, Turkey, Germany, Brazil, Japan, Israel, Sweden, Austria, Finland, Mexico, Argentina
• Talaye sorkh / Crimson Gold (2003/Jafar Panahi/Iran)  Commercial release : UK, Greece, Hungary, France, Belgium, Canada, Italy, Denmark, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden   ***Director banned from filmmaking for 20 years***
• Yek Shab / One Night (2005/Niki Karimi/Iran) Commercial release : France
• Offside (2006/Jafar Panahi/Iran)  Commercial release : Austria, Greece, South Korea, UK, Germany, Sweden, Hong Kong, Australia, Hungary, France, Belgium, Spain, Denmark, Netherlands, USA, Japan, Argentina   ***Director banned from filmmaking for 20 years***
• Le regard (2006/Sepideh Farsi/France) Commercial release : France
• Persepolis (2007/Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi/France/USA) commercial release : France, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Russia, Turkey, Spain, Greece, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Czech Rep., Austria, Hungary, Hong Kong, Japan, USA, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Italy, Brazil, Netherlands, Thailand, Lebanon, Romania, Argentina, Ireland, UK, Colombia, Mexico, India, Australia, Israel
• Asbe du-pa / Two-legged horse (2008/Samira Makhmalbaf/Iran) Commercial release : France, Spain, Belgium 
• Taraneh Tanhaïye Tehran  / Lonely Tunes of Tehran (2008/Saman Salour/Iran) Commercial release : France
• My Tehran For Sale (2009/Granaz Moussavi/Iran/Australia) Commercial release : none ***actress sentenced to 90 lashes and a year in prison***
• Tehroun (2009/Nader T. Homayoun/France/Iran) Commercial release : France
• Kanojo ga kieta hamabe / About Elly (2009/Asghar Farhadi/Iran) Commercial release : Iran, France, Greece, Brazil, Poland, Spain, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Germany
• Keshtzarhaye Sepid / The White Meadows (2009/Mohammad Rasoulof/Iran) Commercial release : none  ***Director banned from filmmaking for 20 years***
• Zanan-e bedun-e mardan / Women Without Men (2009/Shirin Neshat/Shoja Azari/Germany/Austria/France/Italy/Ukraine/Morocco) Commercial release : Sweden, Italy, USA, Greece, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Spain, France
• Kasi az gorbehaye irani khabar nadareh / No one knows about Persinan cats (2009/Bahman Ghobadi/Iran) Commercial release : France, Belgium, UK, Italy, Spain, USA, Israel, Japan, Greece, Portugal, Germany
• The Hunter (2010/Raffi Pitts/Iran/Germany) Commercial release :  Germany, Poland, Lebanon, Ireland, UK, Austria, France, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, Malaysia
• The House Under The Water (2010/Sepideh Farsi/France/Iran/Germany/Netherlands) Commercial release : none
• Jodaeiye Nader az Simin / A Separation (2011/Asghar Farhadi/Iran) Commercial release : Iran, Belgium, France, Thailand, Turkey, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Hungary, Sweden, Greece, Spain, Italy, Poland, Denmark, Norway, USA
• Fleurs du mal (2011/David Dusa/Belgium) Commercial release : none 
• Bé omid é didar / Au revoir (2011/Mohammad Rasoulof/Iran) Commercial release : France ***Director sentenced to 1 year in prison***

Related:

• Cultural Diversity Awareness (series)
• A Separation (Farhadi)
• Panahi: Le cinéma au tribunal 

Cultural Diversity Awareness

October 2011 is Cultural Diversity Awareness month in the USA!
"Embrace diversity, embrace the World!" says the slogan... that's the theory.

If you believe that art should be a boundless means of communication throughout the world, despite the "invisible hand of the free market", despite the national-centric protectionism of national culture, despite the artificial and timely hierarchy of entertainment norms, despite the close-minded taste of the mainstream mass... please consider contributing to this month-long proactive campaign of WORLD CINEMA awareness, because art cinema from around the world deserves a better visibility, in every country, than what it currently gets in commercial theatres. Post your own artwork, articles, analyses, photos, statistics... and share the links to identify the cultural discrimination imposed by the industry and lazy cultural arbiters and to overcome its barriers through plebiscite and consumption changes. Talk about movies celebrating cultural diversity, opening borders, welcoming foreign culture, altruism, philoxeny or denouncing censorship, isolationism, exclusion, marginalisation of foreign films.

USA-Mexico border wall, 2008

• De l'autre côté (2002/Chantal Akerman/France/Belgium/Australia/Finland)
• Los Bastardos (2008/Amat Escalante/Mexico/France/USA) USA distribution = 1 screen / 1 week / 500 spectators
• Norteado (2009/Rigoberto Pérezcano/Mexico/Spain)



Banksy on the Palestine-Israel wall, 2005

• Mur (2005/Simone Bitton/France/Israel) USA distribution = 2 screens / 3 weeks / 3000 spectators

North Korea-South Korea Joint Security Area DMZ, 1953

• Joint Security Area (2000/Park Chan-wook/Korea)

Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002/Phillip Noyce/Australia)

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Cultural Diversity Awareness series (Octobre 2011) :

1. World Cinema Online Resource / Cultural Diversity tag on Screenville
2. Iranian dissidence in Real Life Peril 
3. Caché (Rouyer)
4. Presumptuous Best Film in the World 
5. Global Lives
6. Artificial barriers against free circulation of World cinema 
7. France exports (uniFrance) 
8. World Cruise 2010 (Eikawa Yuki) 
9. Hollywood émigrés 
10. Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (UNESCO) 
11. Reductive Foreign Stereotypes 
12. Cambodge : culture exterminée 
13. Films from the south 
14. Diversity / fragmentation ? (Mondzain) 
15. Cinema quotas 
16. Life in a Day (Mcdonald) 
17. India languages - World Cinema Stats (24) 
18. Images de la diversité
19. Festival pundits (spoiled brats) 
20. Guerilla Cinema (Père)
21. RUSSIA - World Cinema Stats (25)
22. Mexican culture in America 
23. Cultural Stereotypes in Taipei (Bouquin) 
24. Fit in to be distributed in the USA (Krohn) 
25. October 2011 releases USA
26. to be continued...

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Related:

• Foreign film friendly audiences
• American isolationism (Rosenbaum) 1-2
• American Fatalism 1-2
• Slow release / Week's cutoff
• To America everything foreign is SLOW
• Forgotten Obsolete English Word #3 : Curiosity