The good, the bad and the ugly

More than 53,000 people attended the annual two-week event, where 126 films were screened from 37 countries including Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Korea, China, Albania and Romania.
By : Celia Barnes

   Tonight, after the popcorn buckets, chocolate wrappers and empty film spools have been cleared away, the 17th Warsaw International Film Festival will finish for another year.

   More than 53,000 people – including film buffs, Polish film celebrities and politicians – attended the annual two-week event, where 126 films were screened from 37 countries including Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Korea, China, Albania and Romania.

   And unlike Poland’s mainstream cinema industry, where patronage is struggling to grow, festival director Stefan Laudyn thinks next year’s version will be even bigger and better.

   “Last year, when Polish box office figures went down by 35% our numbers grew by 10%; and in these difficult times that’s very encouraging,” said Laudyn, who cut ticket prices this year due to the flagging economy.

   “Polish viewers are becoming more and more sophisticated,” he said. “A decade ago, it was enough to show some unreleased foreign films. Now people have access to the Internet; they have satellite or cable television, and they know what’s happening in the international film world and they want to see the films they have heard about. And we try to provide them … with what we think they will appreciate.”

   Appreciation isn’t very big at the moment in Poland’s mainstream cinema market. According to Andrzej Kucharczyk, director of cinema-market monitoring business Studio Apropos, cinema ticket sales for the first eight months of this year were up 28% compared to the same period last year, earning a total of zł. 2.1 million ($500,000).

   But Kucharczyk is careful to point out that the main reason for this growth were two movie hits earlier this year, “Desert and Wilderness” (W pustyni i w puszczy) and “Spring to Come” (Przedwioœnie).

   Apart from that, he said people are continuing to stay away from Poland’s 15 multiplexes and 900 screens. The main reasons are expensive tickets, a flat economy and formulaic Hollywood films.

   “I think by the end of the year, the market will hit about 25 million tickets sold so it will be a slightly better figure (than last year), but it’s still very much below the European average,” Kucharczyk said.

   Kucharczyk also questions the benefits film festivals such as Laudyn’s give to the cinema industry as a whole.

   “These (festival) films are the ones that I like the best, but they have a limited audience,” he said.

   Laudyn thinks differently. He said on average, around 20% of the festival’s films are purchased by distributors for the domestic market. A number of representatives from the world’s major film festivals are also invited to view a special selection of Polish titles, in the hope that this will help develop the local film industry.

   But despite the growing interest in the festival, it appears that the government film-funding body, the Cinematography Committee, has turned its back on the event. In the 10 years that Laudyn has held the directorship, the festival has received funding from the committee (zł. 350,000 in 2000), but this year budget cuts meant it received nothing. To foot the festival bill of zł. 1.5 million ($357,000), the festival relied on ticket sales and the generosity of its major sponsors – Nescafe, U.S. cable-TV channels HBO and MTV, Opel cars, British Airways, Sofitel Victoria hotels, computer company Twins, and the Warsaw municipality.

   “And this is Poland’s biggest film festival,” Laudyn said.