Box office blues
By : Delores Cruz
If a diet of bland Hollywood films gives you indigestion, you're not the only one.
Final box office figures for this year are expected to show that up to 30% of Polish cinemagoers are choosing to stay at home rather than go out for a night at the movies despite 100 new movie screens opening this year.
The only savior on the horizon, pundits say, is an explosion of activity in the local film industry, which is now busy producing three historical Polish blockbusters.
"In general, cinema ticket sales are getting worse and worse," said Andrzej Kucharczyk, director of Studio Apropos, a cinema market monitoring business. "For the first half of this year, it was down more than 30% from last year. Everyone expected the opposite because many new cinema multiplexes have been opened. But they haven't helped one bit.
"I think in their business plans, they expected about a million admissions a year, but it's impossible because the market has totally collapsed."
Same old movies
The cause, Kucharczyk said, is a combination of expensive tickets, a flat economy, and plain old boring films. The only recent successes he could name apart from the Hollywood megahit "Gladiator" are last year's "With Fire and Sword" and "Pan Tadeusz."
These two films were "a kind of national event" with huge media coverage and publicity, he said. They accounted for more than 12 million of last year's 26.6 million cinema admissions. And with the average ticket costing about $4, they reaped about $48 million at the box office alone.
Most importantly, both were Polish productions and based on historical novels by popular turn-of-the-century Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz, who won the 1905 Nobel Prize for literature thanks to his epic novels. The successful transition of these books to film has sparked a new crop of copycat productions eager to cash in on a reemerging love affair between Poles and their culture.
Three big-budget Polish films are in production and due for release next year: "The Spring to Come" and two films based, unsurprisingly, on Sienkiewicz novels "Quo Vadis" and "In Desert and Wilderness." Unusually, not one, but two film versions of yet another Sienkiewicz novel, "Teutonic Knights," are jousting for production money. No wonder then that Sienkiewicz is sometimes referred to as Poland's "most successful screenwriter."
Lew Rywin, president of one of the country's biggest film production companies, Heritage Films, and chairman of the board of pay-TV channel Canal+ Polska, said he is excited about the level of activity in the film industry. Heritage Films has co-produced many international films, including Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List," and domestically, "Pan Tadeusz." Canal+ is now involved with the co-production of "The Spring to Come."
"I think the audience has had enough of Hollywood films and they want to see a Polish star, a Polish name, a Polish book being filmed," he said. "And that's what makes me speak optimistically about it (the Polish film industry).
"Certainly we have only reached that point thanks to Hollywood pictures because they kept us alive through the bad period, but now it's time to get moving.
"The Polish audience, being as particular as we are, being a bit nationalistic, being a bit patriotic, will enjoy coming back to see a Polish film that is sometimes not even understood by people outside Poland because of the complex history of this place; because of the cultural and political environment."
Oscar-winning Wajda
Internationally, Poland's cinematic history was honored at this year's Academy Awards when Polish director Andrzej Wajda received an Oscar for lifetime achievement. Two of Wajda's most well-known films include "Ashes and Diamonds" and "Man of Marble."
While the government's Cinematographic Committee is still an important supporter of the film industry, providing funding for 21 of the 23 cinema features produced in 1999, it now estimates that TV channels co-finance about 90% of annual film productions in Poland a trend experienced globally. Here, the big guns are TVP, with an annual investment budget of about $10 million; Canal+, with an average yearly budget of about zl. 6.75 million ($1.5 million); and HBO with $10 million allotted for 1999-2004.
According to the Association of Independent TV and Film Producers, the number of smaller, private production companies is also growing. In 1989 there were just 10. Today, 317 firms work in TV and film production.
All of them, said Slawomir Rogowski, the director of the film and play department at TVP, should attribute a portion of their success to Jerzy Hoffman, the director of "With Fire and Sword." TVP, which contributed zl. 6 million ($1.3 million) in exchange for television rights, is currently co-producing 20 new feature films.
"There would be no modern European film market in Poland without Jerzy Hoffman and 'With Fire and Sword.' I would say that 'With Fire and Sword' was the most important movie in the last 20 years in Poland," Rogowski said.
"In this movie we saw what was possible. There were new techniques of cinema screening, new techniques of shooting, but the base was old Polish literature that was very popular.
"Nobody knew what to expect from 'With Fire and Sword,' it was something we had to discover."
Today, all hopes are pinned on "Quo Vadis." With a budget of $14 million, the film is Poland's most expensive production to date. The story follows the birth of Christianity in the final, debauched days of ancient Rome under Emperor Nero. Directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz and produced by Chronos Film, it stars Pawel Delag, Magdalena Mielcarz and Boguslaw Linda. Co-producers include HBO, which invested $1 million, TVP, which offered zl. 8 million ($1.7 million), as well as Kredyt Bank and Agencja Produkcji Filmowej.
Dorota Rakowska-Kosmicka, head of film and television production at HBO, said the company expects "Quo Vadis" to sell 7 million-11 million tickets at the box office. Then there will be more revenue from pre-negotiated HBO screening rights.
"Quo Vadis has all the elements viewers love: Romance, fights, splendid actors and the most beautiful and enchanting actresses," she said.
Syrena Entertainment Group has the Polish distribution rights. While no decision has been made on international distribution rights, Syrena's vice president, Slawomir Salamon, said there was a lot of interest at the Cannes and Venice film festivals.
"One of Japan's largest distributors said they would be very interested. His next question was 'Is it violent?' of course it's violent. I think it will be more violent than 'Gladiator,'" he said.
The decision to make "Quo Vadis" a wholly Polish production was made by Kawalerowicz, Salamon said. "When Kawalerowicz said he was going to direct the film, he said it must be in the Polish language for Polish audiences," he said. "It's 100% Polish. We talked a lot about getting international stars, but Kawalerowicz said 'sorry.' It may be his last film, and he wants it to be Polish."
Shooting was to wrap up in the coming weeks, but a theatrical fire in the production's seven-meter-tall Roman Forum set just south of Warsaw got out of hand and burned the $1 million construction down.
"Luckily we had already shot the final scenes because we knew there could be a problem with that fire," Salamon said.
Encouraging modern drama
Since Sienkiewicz published "Quo Vadis," "In Desert and Wilderness," and "Teutonic Knights," there have been various film and television adaptations made in Poland. This is the main concern of Tadeusz zmigrodzki, president of the Polish Cinemas Association, and an adviser to the government's Cinematographic Committee. He believes the industry could benefit more from nurturing better quality contemporary film not just remakes of historical Polish dramas.
"If there are new ideas, we would have a higher number of cinemagoers and we wouldn't have the current problems," zmigrodzki said.
He also said there should be more emphasis on getting Polish productions overseas so the industry can remain profitable.
"After selling a movie to the domestic movie theatres, it can be sold to foreign movie theaters, then video and video abroad, then TV. On top of that, it can be sold to various geographical zones France, the United States. If a proper distribution channel was created, film would bring returns after all these changes."
Andrzej Bednarek, deputy to the head at the National Film, Television and Theatre University in Lodz, agreed.
"In Poland, the total cost of film production generates losses. Recently, only two or three films made a profit," he said. Those films were "With Fire and Sword," "Pan Tadeusz," and a contemporary black comedy, "Kiler."
The only solutions, he said, are great international distribution rights and better international promotion of Poland's top films and filmmakers.
At Heritage Films, Rywin has successfully addressed these problems by diversifying his business. He has become the biggest operator in co-producing foreign films shot in Poland. His most famous coup was "Schindler's List" in 1993, which (except for the last scene) was shot entirely on location in Poland. Other clients include Roman Polanski, Oliver Stone and Taylor Hackford.
"I cannot as a producer sustain my company and deal with producing only Polish films because not every film is 'Pan Tadeusz,'" he said. "Most of them are not and (in Poland) the market is not big enough to cover your expenses without international distribution or at least television pre-sales."
In March, Rywin played host to Australian actor and "Gladiator" star Russell Crowe who acted in a shoot outside Poznan on a military practice field that doubled as Chechnya for a new Castle Rock Entertainment film called "Proof of Life."
Thanks to Rywin, Stone is also heading to Chechnya only his version will be filmed in Zakopane's Tatra Mountains.
"He wants winter; he wants miserable snow," Rywin said. "He hasn't found a female lead at the moment. That's the problem, but he's been here twice already."
And finally, Rywin is co-producing another Spielberg effort a documentary based on the Shoah Foundation's interviews with holocaust survivors; and a new Polanski production, "The Pianist."
The attraction for these foreign productions, Rywin said apart from good locations is financial. "Because, of course, they don't pay Hollywood money here. They wouldn't come here to pay Hollywood (prices). They wouldn't bring Russell Crowe here to suffer, and pay him Hollywood money. They know the prices and they know they will win. They know they can get very good service and very good quality people who know the international film industry," he said.
But the question perplexing Roman Jarosz, marketing director at cinema chain Silver Screen, is will the public come and see these Hollywood films when they debut in Poland? If they do, they have 136 screens across Poland to choose from.
"Last year, on average, every Pole went to the cinema 0.6 times. That's ridiculous, isn't it," Jarosz said. "At this moment there are very few good movies. To be honest, only the big Polish productions are doing well such as 'Pan Tadeusz' and 'With Fire and Sword.' Another Polish release, 'Big Animal,' didn't sell much. It's a narrow audience. It's ambitious and sophisticated but unfortunately it didn't sell well."
While Jarosz is not happy with ticket sales, he said the company will survive. Silver Screen, which has eight screens in Warsaw and another eight in Gdynia, is going ahead with its expansion plans next year, including 10 new screens in Lodz.
"I think another problem unique to Poland is that we lost the tradition of going to the movies that we had in the 1980s, when the average frequency of visits was much greater than now," he said. "Under the old (political) system, entertainment was limited. Whatever was launched in the U.S. came to Poland a year later. It wasn't good, but people went to the movies.
"Tastes and situations have changed. What we need are more blockbusters. We need more huge, good Polish productions so the people who stopped going to the cinema will start coming back."
