'From Margin to Mainstream'

The advent of digital in 2007 represents domestic and global opportunities for the growth of the New Zealand screen production industry.  In this new environment will Māori screen productions remain in the margin or will mainstream programming become marginalised?  Ynyr Williams (Producer, Salem Films) from Wales and Tomas Eskilsson (CEO, Film i Väst) of Sweden , shared their cultural experiences of moving from the margin to mainstream.

The conference’s first plenary session was opened by Chair Derek Fox, who touched on the history of Māori broadcasting in New Zealand .  From the dearth of Māori broadcasting, touching on the WWII days where the only Māori language spoken on radio was when they read out the list of Māor war dead, to the momentous establishment of the Māori Television Service (‘MTS’), which went to air on 28 March 2004.  MTS now supports 180 jobs, and maybe three times that number in production companies. Its achievements include “overwhelmingly” more local content than any other channels and this year’s historic and ground-breaking live broadcast on Anzac Day.

Ynyr Williams put forward his experiences of the emergence of Welsh culture.

Ynyr: Catherine Zeta Jones, Anthony Hopkins and Christian Bale are famous Welsh names in the mainstream of popular culture today.  Today Wales , with a population of four million, has 25% of the population speaking Welsh as their first language and another 15 to 20% speaking or understanding the language – that’s a big shift from the past – when the Welsh language was marginalised and speaking it was frowned upon.

Luckily for the language, during the sixties and seventies the fate of the Welsh language and fighting to save it became a political issue.   Then in 1982 the Welsh language channel went to air and was a huge political and public relations success. WLTVC had 200 full time staff and around 1000 on contract and provides over 80 hours a week of Welsh language programming.

The Welsh equivalent of the Film Commission is Film Agency Wales which shares out lottery money and supports around 20 projects a year.

An important strategy for developing the language has been investing in children’s television and children’s programming is given priority over all other commissions. 

It is very important to make films that travel, and the need to make sure culture is supported by a greater alliance with non-English speaking territories worldwide.  Wales is also looking to the Scandinavian example of having great sales agents and establishing markets in the USA , and New Zealand has also shown it’s possible to work hand in hand with the world.

Fox then introduced Tomas Eskilsson, CEO one of the biggest film and television production facilities in Scandinavia , Film i Västt, which has co-produced 130 feature films.

Tomas: Unlike New Zealand the film industry in Scandinavia has a very long tradition with cinema, with directors like Ingmar Bergman etc.  However, in the mid 1990’s it was very hard for emerging talents to break into the film industry.  From this tension the “Dogma Rules 1995” emerged.  The rules included hand-held filming, no lighting, no props or sets other than what was there. The importance of the Dogma Rules was they inspired filmmakers to work in ways that hadn’t been done before using smaller crews and lighter equipment.

In creating the Film i Väst fund, the aim was to make two feature films in the first year - they now make 20 feature films every year.   Based in Western Sweden, a long way from the capital of Stockholm , the aim was to create a Nordic centre for film by setting up a production centre – it was like opening a door that had been closed for long time. 

The company had around $13 million to invest each year in feature films.  New emerging talent needed a place to go where they could at least find some investment finance, particularly the crucial first finance.   We wanted unique stories, strong characters and sense of place. We were not at all interested in Hollywood style movies, we wanted to work with people who wanted to work with us.  The strength of those stories means films have a strong link to the environment where they are created and therefore they become exotic and appealing to foreign audiences.

The company set about creating alliances - including Memphis Film (a young, very successful production company) and Centro, owned by director Lars Von Trier.  From the outset Tomas wanted to work with producers, to strengthen them and be faithful partners in the process of filmmaking.  They wanted to continue to work with people and to have a substantial amount of investment with non-established film-makers.

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