Producers put stop to movie production

Minister of Culture: Production lockout and pressure will not bring more money into industry

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Finnish film producers declared a production shutdown on Monday. By refusing to make new movies the producers hope to put pressure on the Minister of Culture and Sport Stefan Wallin (Swedish People’s Party) to inject more money into the branch.
      The shutdown went into force with immediate effect.
      The Minister’s reaction was that more funding is not going to be allocated based on pressure.
     
A chronic lack of funding has bothered the industry for years. This time the producers are targeting Minister Wallin, whom they say has eaten his words.
      According to the producers, the Minister of Culture and Sports promised in a June meeting with the directors of the Finnish Film Foundation an additional budget appropriation of EUR 12 million for film making in the next four years. Of this sum, 1.2 million would have been allocated in 2008, and 3.6 million in each of the following three years.
      In the present budget, EUR 13.5 million have been reserved for the making and distributing of films. An average budget for a domestic feature film is around EUR 1.4 million. A third of this is covered by an advance from the Film Foundation.
     
On Monday Wallin commented on the producers’ claims only through a written statement, in which he neither admitted nor denied the promises of additional support. Instead, he says he would "review in a positive spirit" the chances of raising funding for the film industry once the government budget proposal has been prepared.
      The production shutdown is an exceptional strike-like measure, in which 30 of the country’s most prominent film producers, from Aki Kaurismäki to Markus Selin, will abstain from making any new films.
     
Projects on which filming has already started will be completed as planned.
      Hence the shutdown or lockout would affect for instance the much-talked-about Mannerheim epic.
      More than anything, the action is a means of applying political pressure. If it continues for months it will ultimately affect different groups of professionals working in the film industry, such as small post-production companies.
     
The cinemas would feel the effects in 2009. In recent years, around a fifth of all the cinema visits have been to domestic releases. For several movie theatres, attendances at screenings of domestic films are their lifeline.
     
"If we were given money in the same proportion as, say, the National Opera, the film industry should get EUR 200 million”, producer Selin argues.
      "I don’t want to take money away from the Opera, however. We all have to fight for our own funding."


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Money raised again for Mannerheim film (23.2.2007)

Links:
  Statement of Finnish film producers
  Finnish Film Foundation

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