29/01/2003

The DVD was developed to optimise the sound and picture quality of home video products and DVD versions of action films like Matrix, Spider-Man and The 5th Element sell particularly well. That is not good news for the overwhelming majority of European auteur-driven titles, and the exceptions are few and far between : 8 Women [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. In order to make a faster return on their investments, video publishers tend to release just 15 French films a year and as a consequence, the Gallic film heritage in the DVD format is under-represented. However, that is justified to a degree by the still elevated cost of producing DVDs (around Euros10,000 for a master copy compared with Euros250 in VHS), plus all the extras and the delicate issue of film restoration. StudioCanal thus spent Euros300 000 to restore Jean Renoir’s La grande illusion .
At present, five French video publishers are specialised in the classic French film field: Gaumont, StudioCanal, Opening Distribution, Arte Vidéo and MK2 Editions, although their efforts are not considered sufficiently good by most film fans. For example, if one wanted to get hold of a DVD of Marcel Carné’s Enfants du Paradis, one would have to travel to the US or Japan. Companies such as MK2 keep coming up with new sales strategies like the DVD release of a French classic four weeks after its theatrical release: Charlie Chaplin’s The Little Dictator in October 2002.
Aside from the high cost of buying the video rights to a film, another major problem associated with the DVD format is piracy. During the last meeting of PEVE (perspectives de édition vidéo européenne) in Avignon on 27 and 28 November 2002, the association that was set up to fight video piracy revealed the existence of at least eight illegal DVD factories in Russia.
The exponential growth of the DVD market opened up a whole new set of possibilities for the circulation of European films in Europe. Laura Casto of Metro Tartan Distribution said that a small number of European features ever get a theatrical distribution outside of London, so most European features are only ever seen in the provinces on DVD. That is their only chance of reaching a whole new potential audience. David Kessler, the managing director of the National Film Center, at PEVE for the very first time, agreed with Casto: “The time has long gone when cinema considered video as a danger. Video should not be thought of as a market but rather as an instrument that favours cultual diversity.”