Glocal Cinema. Big Stories, Small Countries

1. Introduction / European Context

The Treaty of Lisbon gives greater importance to culture: one of the EU’s key aims, as specified in the Treaty, is to ‘respect its rich cultural and linguistic diversity, and […] ensure that Europe’s cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced’ (Article 3 TEU).

Europe has a great cultural diversity, sometimes taken as a fragmentation in senses of market, which may give a negative approach to all cultural differences that we have.

We, as part of that diversity, believe that diversity is a value and an opportunity. We would like to reinforce the value of another cultural map of Europe, with the existence of filmographies in languages other than the louder European languages, and the need of public support to those filmographies.

According to the European Commission (http://ec.europa.eu/languages/policy/linguistic-diversity/index_en.htm), the EU now has 500 million citizens, 28 Member States, 3 alphabets and 24 official languages, some of them with a worldwide coverage. Some 60 other languages are also part of the EU's heritage and are spoken in specific regions or by specific groups by up to 40 million citizens. (Europa.eu).

The Market share for European films reached record high of 33.6% the last year (highest recorded since 1996) according to the European Audiovisual Observatory (Council of Europe), and the own productions take more and more importance in the domestic markets, but if we take a look at the most seen films in Europe in 2014, 18 of the top 20 are in English, French, German or Spanish, and we want to show that Europe has even a richer filmmaking.

2. Challenges faced by filmographies in smaller and medium languages

In global times, in which our domestic markets may not be big enough, creators still want to tell their stories to the world in their own languages. The members participating in the initiative will work together to create new opportunities for those authors.

3. Origin of the project

Following the need for an Exchange of experiences and expectations and for the development of partnerships and co-operations, the Department for Education, Language Policy and Culture of the Basque Government has fostered a the project Other European Filmographies: cinema in non-hegemonic languages, giving the different players in this filmmaking industry a platform to meet and jointly develop ideas and strategies to meet the challenges.

In response to diverse existing concepts of “small and middle languages”, the initiators of the Other European Filmographies: cinema in non-hegemonic languages project agreed on a definition that includes all the languages spoken in Europe except the ‘five big’ ones (English, French, German, Spanish and Italian)

4. Lines of work

There is a consensus among the 24 professionals from 15 regions and countries that the support of live action for these filmographies is necessary because:

• We believe that this diversity is one of the great values we have in Europe and it is important to show it as an opportunity and a sign of our society.
• There is a need to raise awareness about these filmographies in our countries and regions.
• Given the need of every community to tell its own stories in its own languages, also when the commercial market may not be big enough to finance them, we defend the public and political commitment of our administrations to guarantee diversity in film.
• Given the necessity to reach further audiences and markets, we will support networking and collaboration between the participating regions/countries to create new distribution and exhibition opportunities.
• Recognize the economic impact/cinema in others filmographies and structure that support.

5. Declaration

Based on the principal conclusions, the participants of the 1st Meeting of the "Glocal Cinema: Big Stories, Small Countries" initiative, agree on an agenda of 4 points, aiming at a strengthening of the film industry for small and middle language cinemas.

1.  CREATE AN INFORMAL WORKING GROUP

To propose and coordinate the different initiatives we will be working on and to share best practices

2.  SUPPORT ENCOUNTERS AND COOPERATIONS BETWEEN OUR FILMMAKERS

Organizing bi- or multilateral focuses at festivals or other events to create networking opportunities for creators, producers, programmers and young talents

3. TO RAISE AWARENESS ON THE LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY OF EUROPEAN CINEMA

Organizing activities to reach and create new audiences

4. TO INCREASE VISIBILITY OF OUR CINEMAS

Creating a visual identity for our cinema in order to make it recognizable and other audiovisual and visual information contents.

Donostia - San Sebastián, Sept. 21st 2015