Notes on Some Difficulties of a European Cinema Makeover

Ever since the GATT negotiations of 1993, the level of consciousness within Europe about the economic precariousness of its audiovisual industries has increased. At the same time a prevalent theory about how regions and cities can achieve economic growth and a facelift has spread. Accordingly, to create an audiovisual cluster is often proposed as a particularly promising way to go for places who find themselves marred by unemployment and post-industrial decline.
In Sweden, these developments, together with the fact that the country joined the European Union in 1995, have led to the establishing of three regional film centres. As of now, a large majority of all features are shot here. At the same time the phrase “Swedish film should be a sector of dynamic growth”, has been written into the national film agreement between the government and the remains of what used to be an industry. These are words without equivalence in all of the former agreements ever since film was recognized as a sector in need of support 45 years ago.
Using the southern Swedish town of Ystad – one of three current centres for feature production – as a case study, this paper will discuss some areas in which the proposed makeover, to suddenly become “dynamic”, is to some extent made problematic by inherited notions embedded in that complex of ideas Steve Neale lined out in his influential article “Art Cinema as Institution” almost thirty years ago.