The basic strategies for co-productions have changed
little in more recent decades; what has changed are the
increasingly complicated subsidy and funding structures
initiated and drawn upon and the scale of international
players now engaged in the business. A decline in treaty
co-productions in the 1970s was due not to deliberate
strategy but to the intrusion of television onto the scene.
In the 1980s television became an important financier of
co-productions, both nationally and internationally.
Since then, several broadcasters have consistently been
involved in co-financing short and feature films, especially Channel 4, the BBC, and FilmFour in Britain; RAI
in Italy; Antenne 2 and Canal Plus in France; ADR and
ZDF in Germany; and the combined PBS stations in the
United States. Co-production with cable television companies is on the increase in the United States, where
HBO is an especially important partner. Among
European broadcasters, the Franco-German cultural
channel ARTE has co-produced since 1990 more than
two hundred films, many of which have involved the
participation of several countries. (Dancer in the Dark
[Lars von Trier, 2000] currently holds the record of
eleven nations.)
The co-financing model has proven an increasingly
attractive option, as it bypasses the various laws or bilateral legal frameworks that historically have often rendered
treaty co-productions of more than two countries difficult to navigate. Treaties ensure that the resulting product qualifies as ‘‘domestic,’’ a category crucial for assuring
that co-produced material is eligible for government
financing or investor tax credits in terms of national
policies. Canada, one of the most proficient co-producers, has more than fifty-five co-production treaties
worldwide. The United States, by comparison, has no
treaties whatsoever, but works collaboratively with several
countries (especially Canada) to make films and television programs through equity partnerships and other
forms of private-sector financing. Part of the problem
with treaties is that they tend to be one-to-one.
Eurimages, established in 1989 by the Council of
Europe, tackled the problem head-on by offering funding
to its member states for multilateral co-productions,
thus eliminating the cumbersome negotiation of several
bilateral agreements. The European Convention on
Cinematographic Co-production was ratified in 1992 to
simplify existing co-production treaties, but producers
did not rush to sign it because Eurimages already
allowed for multilateral co-production funding without
needing to meet the terms for ‘‘European elements’’
outlined by the Convention. Still, the Convention
serves the needs of smaller European countries lacking
bilateral agreements with larger nations, including territories of the former Eastern Bloc. Whether through
co-financing or co-production, most European films
made today involve the participation of more than one
nation.
The same holds true for the African film industries,
whose output is much smaller than that of Europe but
nevertheless demonstrates consistent co-production and
co-financing of feature films since the 1970s within not
only Africa itself but also nations and funding agencies
worldwide, especially France, Germany, and Switzerland
from the 1980s on. The extensive cinemas of Asia are
equally engaged in this practice of filmmaking. Hong
Kong and the Philippines were early starters. Hong
Kong has co-produced with Taiwan since the 1960s,
and it sparked a kung fu craze in the early 1970s through
co-production deals with American producers. The
Philippines promoted Filipino locations for foreign producers (usually American) to make inexpensive action
and exploitation films in the 1970s, as well as more
spectacular Vietnam War films such as Apocalypse Now
(1979) and Platoon (1986). In India, the National Film
Development Corporation was organized in 1980 to
develop ‘‘quality cinema,’’ becoming involved in the
international co-production of features such as Gandhi
(1982) and Salaam Bombay! (1988). And co-productions
with mainland China, many of them brokered by the
China Film Co-production Corporation, became particularly attractive for Hong Kong and Taiwan producers in
the 1990s (and American ones in the 2000s) because of
the country’s natural resources, acting talents, and inexpensive manpower—the Oscar-winning The Last Emperor
(Bernardo Bertolucci, 1987) being an early example. A
scan of the award-winning films of major international
film festivals since 1990 reveals not only an extremely
high proportion of co-productions—between 60 percent
and 70 percent—but also a remarkable geographic range
of national partnerships. Even though the Academy
Awards continues to categorize its nominees for Best
Foreign Language Film as deriving from one nation,
most of the winners since 1990 have in fact been coproductions—Wo hu cang long (Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon, 2000) most obviously (although attributed to Taiwan only by the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences, the film in fact represents co-financing and production interests of this country as well as
those of Hong Kong, Mainland China, and the United
States).
Despite their ubiquity, co-productions continue to
be a cause of concern for many in the film industry,
particularly in Europe. The category of the ‘‘Euro-film,’’
whose mixing of performers from various countries and
cultural traditions often yields a so-called ‘‘Europudding’’—that is, an international co-production that
lacks any distinctive national or aesthetic qualities—has
sparked considerable debate in recent decades and encapsulates contemporary fears of American cultural and economic imperialism and of the erosion of national cultures
in the wake of globalization. ‘‘Every film must declare its
nationality and its own cultural identity,’’ pronounced
French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier (b. 1941) in 1982
(quoted in Elsaesser, p. 321), and the crisis that marked
the 1993 Uruguay round of the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT), during which film and
audiovisual material were eventually excepted from its
terms, demonstrates that the tensions that initiated coproductions in the first place have not gone away but,
rather, have become magnified. Partnership with international capital through co-financing may lead to blockbusters that reach millions of people worldwide, but they
may also come at a heavy price. Although The Fifth
Element (Le Cinquie `me e ´le ´ment, Luc Besson, 1997), for
example, was produced by a French firm (Gaumont), its
language, stars, and co-financing are those of Hollywood,
and its status as a French film thereby negligible. A
fact and a necessity in contemporary filmmaking, coproduction remains a practice wherein the benefits and
the losses require equal consideration.