What role does European film and television drama play in constructing our sense of European identity? The Mediating Cultural Encounters through European Screens (MeCETES) project seeks to find out, as researcher Dr Huw Jones explains.
About the Author: Dr Huw D Jones is a Postdoctoral Research Associate on the MeCETES project. He has an MA in Cultural Geography from Royal Holloway University of London and a PhD on Art, Politics and National Identity in Wales 1940-1993 from Swansea University (supported by an AHRC Doctoral Studentship Award). He has published in the Journal of Contemporary British History (2013), Visual Culture in Britain (2014), Cultural Trends (2010), the Journal of Scottish Historical Studies (2011), and Planet: The Welsh Internationalist (2009). He also recently edited the book The Media in Europe’s Small Nations (CSP, 2014).
In recent years British television audiences have been enjoying a wave of subtitled European dramas. Scandinavian crime series such as The Killing and The Bridge have become regular fixtures on BBC Four’s Saturday night schedule, frequently pulling in over 1 million viewers. Channel 4 broadcast its first foreign-language drama series in over 20 years when it premiered the French supernatural thriller The Returned to an audience of 1.9 million in June 2013. Even Sky is getting in on the action with The Tunnel, an Anglo-French remake of The Bridge, and the Danish family drama, The Legacy.
Meanwhile, European cinema continues to attract a loyal following in the UK, particularly amongst arthouse enthusiasts. In recent years, titles such as Volver (2006), The Lives of Others (2007), Coco Before Chanel (2009) and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2010) have each taken over £2 million at the UK box office. And of course these films are not only being consumed in cinemas. Television, DVD and most recently the advance of Video-on-Demand (VoD) services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and iTunes have made it easier than ever to access the best in European film and television.
European cinema continues to attract a loyal following in the UK, particularly amongst arthouse enthusiasts.
These trends can be seen as one aspect of globalisation. The financial pressures created by open markets have impelled film and television producers to sell to global audiences. Digital technology has made it easier for media content to cross borders, while the proliferation of channels and platforms has obliged programmers to fill schedules with more imported material.
The European Union (EU) has been keen to harness these technological and market forces in order to foster European ‘unity in diversity’. Between 2007 and 2013, its MEDIA programme invested €755 million in the development and pan-European circulation of European audiovisual content. The Council of Europe’s Eurimages scheme and the European Convention of Cinematographic Co-Production have likewise sought to encourage more European collaboration between filmmakers.
Launching the MeCETES project in Dubrovnik, Croatia, in 2013. (Left to right: Professor Andrew Higson, Professor Caroline Pauwels and Professor Ib Bondebjerg)
About the MeCETES project
But while policymakers have been keen to promote intercultural dialogue through the development of a ‘European’ media sector, knowledge is limited about which European films and television drama series actually travel well and what role these fictions play in constructing a sense of European citizenship and identity. ‘Mediating Cultural Encounters through European Screens’ (MeCETES) aims to answer these questions. This three-year project, sponsored by a €1 million grant from Humanities in the European Research Area under its ‘cultural encounters’ programme, draws together an international team of researchers based in three universities:
- University of York (UK) – Led by Professor Andrew Higson (the Project Leader), who is known for his contribution to debates about national and transnational cinema, the York team focuses on contemporary European film, and includes myself (Huw Jones) and project administrator Denise Mitchell, as well as an affiliated PhD student, Roderik Smits.
- University of Copenhagen (Denmark) – Led by Professor Ib Bondebjerg, who has published extensively on Danish, Scandinavian and European screen media, the Copenhagen team focuses on contemporary European television drama, and includes Eva Novrup Redvall, Henrik Søndergaard and Rasmus Helles.
- Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) – Led by Professor Caroline Pauwels, an expert on European cultural and media policymaking, the Brussels team focuses on European audio-visual policy, and includes Ilse Schooneknaep and Tim Raats.
The project also involves 11 associate partners representing the views of industry professionals, funding bodies and policymakers from across Europe, as well as an advisory board made up of academics from several different universities, disciplines and countries. Our approach combines a Europe-wide overview of the production, distribution, reception and policy circumstances which enable European films and television dramas to be made and circulate, together with specific national case-studies, for the period 2005-2015. This involves utilising a variety of methods and sources, from quantitative data in industry reports, public databases and audience surveys, to interviews with industry players, audience focus groups and the qualitative analysis of media texts.
Circulating European film and television drama
Half way into the project our initial findings reveal that – despite the EU’s best efforts – the circulation of European film remains low. Of the 1 billion or so cinema tickets sold in the EU each year, only about 10% are for non-national European films – i.e. European films which travel to another European country. About two-thirds of EU cinema admissions are American movies, while a quarter are for national films. Between 2005 and 2012, just 1.5% of the films produced in Europe sold 1 million tickets or more in the rest of the EU outside their country of origin – and many of these were British films backed by US studios, such as the James Bond or Harry Potter franchises.
Policy interventions appear to have made little difference. Our analysis of the impact of MEDIA funding on the UK box office performance of non-national European films, for example, shows that for every €3 of MEDIA distribution support a film receives, the distributor can expect to gain only one extra ticket sale. In other words, if we consider that the average MEDIA award received by UK distributors is about €40,000, this would likely result in an extra 14,000 admissions – which converts to only €20,000 in extra revenue after the exhibitor and the taxman have taken their cut. Far more influential on the performance of European films are factors like the size and strength of the distributor; the familiarity of the cast and director; whether the film has received good reviews; and whether it has a story which is newsworthy or already familiar to audiences.
About two-thirds of EU cinema admissions are American movies, while a quarter are for national films.
The cross-border circulation of European television drama is perhaps more positive. In Denmark, for example, non-national European television series claim a 42% audience share, compared with 14% for US series and 33% for national series. Shows from neighbouring Sweden, Norway and Finland perform particularly well (highlighting the importance of cultural and geographical proximity), as do English-language programmes from the UK and Ireland. However, acquiring an accurate picture of consumption patterns across Europe is more of a challenge for television than cinema. Whereas resources such as the European Audiovisual Observatory’s LUMIERE database and the British Film Institute’s (BFI) Statistical Yearbooks provide free and accurate data on cinema admissions, researchers have to pay a high premium to companies like the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB) or Eurodata TV Worldwide for the equivalent figures on television audiences. (Fortunately we have managed to acquire some free television data through our associate partners, underlining the importance of these industry links.) Equally problematic has been the lack of viewing figures for Video-on-Demand (VoD) platforms for both film and television dramas.
One way round this has been to utilise audience surveys, such as the BFI’s Opening Our Eyes: How Film Contributes to the Culture of the UK (2011) or the European Commission’s A Profile of Current and Future Audiovisual Audiences (2014). These sources reveal – or perhaps confirm – that non-national European films attract a particular audience. They tend to be youngish, well-educated, urban-dwelling professionals. They are not necessarily high earners, but do generally possess a high level of cultural capital. That said, certain non-national European films do occasionally reach outside this core audience. In the UK, for example, horrors such as The Orphanage (2007), Let the Right One In (2008) and Troll Hunter (2010) have attracted a more working-class audience than most subtitled films, highlighting the importance of genre in terms of influencing how well films travel.
What is less clear at this stage, though, is the role that European film and television dramas play in constructing a sense of European identity. Certainly the fact that European film appeals to a fairly niche audience limits its capacity to boost feelings of Europeanness, though this may be offset by the higher consumption of European television drama. However, we will only know for sure what European film and television dramas actually mean to audiences once our own questionnaire surveys and focus groups, which are due to take place over the next few months, are completed.
Engaging industry and academia
Whatever the findings it is hoped our insights not only contribute to academic debates in film and media studies, but also engage industry professionals and policymakers. As well as conventional academic outputs – the MeCETES team plans to produce at least three co-authored books and two edited collections, as well as several journal articles and conference papers – a series of three policy position papers, identifying some of the key trends in European audiovisual policy since 2005, are also in preparation. These will cover issues such as the European Commission’s controversial proposal to establish a Digital Single Market, which aims to banish geo-blocking in order to allow European consumers to access VoD content in other member states, yet will make it harder for European film producers to finance their films by selling exclusive territorial rights.
In September 2014 we held our first industry conference in Ostend, Belgium, with panellists including Ingolf Gabold (producer, Eyeworks Denmark), Kathrine Windfeld (director, The Team), Hugo Heppel (Screen Yorkshire) and Rebecca O’Brien (producer, Sixteen Films), who spoke on subjects ranging from writing for transnational audiences, to film financing and international co-production. Our next industry event is due to take place later this year in Copenhagen.
Key to widening the impact of our research on European film and television has been the development of an active website (www.mecetes.co.uk). Here we host a blog featuring contributions by members of the MeCETES team and guest contributors. Recent guest blogs include articles on:
- The Latvian cinematic ‘new wave’ (Klāra Brūveris, University of New South Wales);
- The crisis in Greek television (Georgia Aitaki, University of Gothenburg);
- European support for Latin American cinema (Deborah Shaw, University of Portsmouth)
- MEDIA’s impact on European cinema (Mariana Liz, University of Leeds);
- How Netflix is changing the way films are financed (Michael Franklin, University of St Andrews);
- The marketing of Bulgarian popular cinema (Maya Nedyalkova, University of Southampton);
- The racial politics of Nordic Noir (Ben Pitcher, University of Westminster);
- The rise of Scandinavian cinema in Australia (Cath Moore, Deakin University); and
- The Bridge (Pei-sze Chow, University College London; Ingrid Stigsdotter, Linnaeus University) and The Returned (Sarah Arnold, Falmouth University).
Since its launch in January 2014 the site has received over 15,000 unique visitors from across Europe and beyond. Through our social media channels (Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest) and bi-monthly newsletter we have also built a network of active followers who receive regular project updates as well as offer their own views and feedback. As the MeCETES project continues to develop, we hope to engage many more in discussing the cultural, political and economic significance of contemporary European film and television drama.
Huw Jones