Titanic, etc.

[Bodo Sch=%ISO-8859-1?Q?=f6nfelder?=]

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>Mark Schilling wrote on relative strength of British and French cinema
>(against Hollywood movies).  I'm curious if French cinema remains strong
>without governmental protection?  Will anyone explain?
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>Marie Suzuki
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Dear Marie,

without government production French cinema would loose some of it's 
strength and some of it's audience, but would be comparatively strong. 
During my visits from Germany to France I found and find a remarkable 
vitality in the distribution circuits and on the exhibition side. Even 
smaller towns with about 30 000 citizens have a rather high standard in 
film programming. Of course the US mega films like Titanic draw the 
biggest market share, but others do quite well. Of course, stars like Luc 
besson and Gerard Depardieu help a lot to the French film production. But 
there are other factors. In general film is considered as a necessary 
part of daily culture and entertainment, an attitude, which can be seen 
as part of a national ideology, like the the try to avoid or suppress 
Enflish phrases in daily language. Even small newspapers, often local 
ones in smaller towns, publish lengthy reviews and articles on film. 
Commercial film centers and multiplexes screen a lot of art films. You 
can find detailed programme brochures quite often. I was astonished how 
many Asian films are screened without obvious reasons. In case of 
Kurosawas death there were big retrospectives all over the country, 
screening even the rather unknown early films. In Germany in most places 
they only screened one to three films like Rashomon, Kagemusha or The 
Seven Samurai. Friends of mine, living near the border to France have 
most of their film experiences in France. ( They deal professionally with 
film.) 

Bodo Schoenfelder