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DOI:
10.1386/ncin.12.1-2.133_1
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Citation for published version (APA):
Kourelou, O., Liz, M., & Vidal, B. (2014). Crisis and Creativity: The New Cinemas of Portugal, Greece and Spain.
New Cinemas Journal of Contemporary Film, 12(1-2), 133-151. https://doi.org/10.1386/ncin.12.1-2.133_1
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Download date: 10. Aug. 2022
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Crisis and creativity: The new cinemas of Portugal, Greece and Spain
Olga Kourelou, Mariana Liz and Belén Vidal
Abstract
This article examines the new cinemas, film cultures and discourses emerging from
three of the film-producing nations most adversely affected by the Eurozone crisis.
Through case studies arising from Portugal, Greece and Spain, the article explores the
enhanced visibility of independent film-making at a time in which the role and the
very survival of the state-subsidized film industries in recession Europe has been
crucially thrown into question. This comparative analysis suggests, conversely, the
cyclical nature of the discourse of crisis and explores the creative responses mobilized
by European cinema.
Keywords
crisis
European cinema
Portugal
Greece
Spain
small nations
This article attempts to map the new cinemas and attendant discourses emerging from
three of the European film nations most adversely affected by the 2008 global
financial crisis: Portugal, Greece and Spain.
1
Greece received the first bailout in the
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spring of 2010, followed by Portugal in April 2011 and then by the rescue of Spanish
banks with Eurozone funds at the end of 2012. In all three countries, the effects of the
crisis have begun to ripple out to their respective cultural industries. However, these
effects transcend the purely economic. Our goal in the pages that follow is to
investigate creative manifestations emerging from these film nations that have been
brought into sharp relief – or even enabled – by the crisis. Since we focus on recent
developments and on (regulatory, economic, cultural) processes that are still ongoing,
we do not aspire to offer a comprehensive or definitive analysis of the relationship
between the financial crisis and the film sector in the three countries under
investigation. Rather, this article is prompted by questions that resonate within and
across national borders; questions that, we argue, reveal a broader European
dimension to the debates and sit, like the crisis itself, at the intersection of the national
and the transnational.
Our intervention in these debates particularly underscores the highly
paradoxical nature of the discourse of crisis when examined in relation to what we
could call Western Europe’s ‘other’ cinemas. By this we mean cinemas marked as
other not only by their nations’ shared predicament – their current association with an
economically troubled South in the insidious picture of a two-tier crisis-ridden Europe
– but also by the particularity that comes from both scale and cultural recognition.
Discussing the status of cinemas from small nations, Mette Hjort points out that
[w]hat the concept of small nation acknowledges is that the game of culture, be
it film culture or some other form of cultural articulation, is more accessible to
some groups than others, more hospitable to some aspirations than others, and,
in the long run a process involving winners and losers. (2005: 31)
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In this respect, we propose the notion of ‘small’ and of ‘other’ cinemas as
coterminous on the basis of the dynamics of recognition that constrain the work of the
film-makers under study, of their perceived disadvantageous position in the ‘game’ of
film culture. All three countries are relatively young democracies (Portugal and
Greece became constitutional democracies in 1974; Spain, in 1978) and experienced a
belated entry into European institutions – Greece joined the European Union (then the
European Economic Community) in 1981; Portugal and Spain followed in 1986.
Parallel to these political timelines is the three countries’ marginal position in the
international canon of European art cinemas, which in the global market still largely
stands for the idea of European cinema tout court.
The three-part structure of this article proposes a comparative outlook on the
discourse of the crisis and its apparent contradictions. Thus we explore new forms of
art-house film-making at a time in which the role and the very survival of the state-
subsidized cultural sector in recession-hit Europe has been crucially thrown into
question. Our analysis points at the cyclical nature of such discourse and explores the
creative responses mobilized by these new cinemas.
Portugal: From decline to internationalization
Austerity in Portugal has not only had quantifiable consequences, it has also
generated an overwhelming volume of public discourse, particularly about the arts
and cinema. As a heavily subsidized sector, film has traditionally come under attack
in eras of economic contraction. Since 2011, Portuguese cinema has therefore been
scrutinized by a wide range of commentators. Writing in the daily Público in October
2012, for instance, Alexandra Lucas Coelho claims: ‘2012 is the year zero of
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Portuguese cinema’ (Coelho 2012). Coelho is here referring to 2012 as the year that
follows Portugal’s bailout by the troika (formed by the European Commission, the
European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund). After the
implementation of a so-called rescue package, severe cuts across a number of sectors
ensued; culture, including film, were no exception. The new government, elected in
June 2011, just two months after the bailout was agreed, dismantled the ministry of
culture and suspended all public funding for the audio-visual sector. Previous
governments in Portugal had dismissed the ministry of culture. However, the blanket
suspension of funding was an unprecedented measure in a sector that had received
large sums of state support since 1971. This was the ‘year zero’ since, for the very
first time, no funding was made available. 2012 thus became a new watershed in the
history of Portuguese film.
Coelho’s article is also revealing because, while alluding to the impact of the
contemporary crisis, it simultaneously refers to such history. The idea of the ‘year
zero’ is a familiar trope in scholarly publications, although in historical accounts of
Portugal’s cinema it is 1955 (and not 2012) that is generally described as the ‘year
zero’, as no films were produced in the country that year (cf. Costa 1991: 109). By
establishing a connection with the 1950s, the article highlights the fact that, even
though this is a contemporary and transnational crisis, there is, at least in Portugal, a
(national) history to this – a crucial issue for the understanding of the crisis, discussed
in more detail below.
Film output is also one of the best indicators to examine the consequences of the
contemporary crisis in cinema. Circa ten fiction feature-films are produced in Portugal
every year. The graph in Figure 1 represents the evolution of film production in the
country between 2004 and 2013. In absolute terms, the graph shows a slight increase