Switzerland

[CH] Higher international profile for Swiss cinema

IRIS 2015-8:1/9

Patrice Aubry

RTS Radio Télévision Suisse, Geneva

At the press conference it gave at the International Film Festival in Locarno on 6 August 2015, the Federal Office for Culture (OFC) unveiled new measures to be implemented in support of Swiss cinema. These measures are the embodiment of the ‘Culture Message 2016-2020’ adopted by the Federal Parliament on 19 June 2015, and they will enter into force on 1 January 2016. The Culture Message (‘Message on the financing of the Confederation’s cultural activities’) defines the strategic guidelines of the Confederation’s policy on culture and determines the corresponding financial resources. The Culture Message emphasises cultural participation, social cohesion, creation, and innovation. For the next financing period, the aims as far as the cinema industry is concerned are to reinforce the activities of Swiss film-makers and to support international cooperation projects.

At the press conference in Locarno, Federal Council member Alain Berset stressed the importance of international exchanges for the Swiss cinema. He also confirmed the Federal Council’s desire to see Switzerland’s eventual return to the MEDIA Programme. Switzerland’s participation in this European programme for encouraging the audiovisual sector was suspended on 1 January 2014: negotiations on extending participation were frozen when the Swiss population voted in favour of a popular initiative aimed at restricting immigration. To limit the negative consequences of the suspension, the Federal Council introduced compensatory measures amounting to five million Swiss francs per year (see IRIS 2014-8/12).

These compensatory measures are to be replaced in 2016 by a new Order on international cooperation. Apart from the present compensatory measures for project development, film distribution, European schemes for continuous training, and film festivals and markets, the new Order will introduce new instruments aimed at reinforcing the presence of Swiss films on the international scene and exchanges with other countries. In particular, the introduction of ‘slate funding’ will enable production companies to develop packages of projects with European potential. The new Order also aims to support the presence of Swiss films at foreign festivals.

In terms of encouraging the cinema sector, the new programme for the ‘promotion of investment in the film industry in Switzerland’ aims to encourage the production and post-production of Swiss films in Switzerland and strengthen Switzerland’s position as a film-producing country. The programme is backed by a budget of twenty-seven million Swiss francs for the years 2016 to 2020. The encouragement schemes will also be adapted to take into account the results of the evaluation of the present schemes covering the period from 2012 to 2015. In particular, the revision of the success-linked aid, which now takes account of a film’s participation in festivals in addition to box-office sales, is considered to be conclusive. The cinema branch will be consulted on the new features of the encouragement schemes in autumn 2015.