Marco Cucco

The borders of the domestic market and their importance for the economy of the film industry: The Swiss case study

This study analyses the economic relevance of the domestic market for national film industries, adopting first a historical and theoretical approach, and then by using Switzerland as a case study for quantitative research on film consumption.The analysis of the Swiss film market has a triple purpose: (1) to confirm the importance of the domestic market for the economy of national film industries; (2) to discover how the Swiss market can be considered (a single national market? three distinct markets? or an extension of the German, French and Italian cinema markets?); and (3) to discover if it still makes sense to consider the domestic market as a trade area limited by national borders or whether is it more realistic to think of it in terms of local and/or transnational cultural regions.

Public Film Policy and the Rise of Economic Principles: The Case of Switzerland

Film production in Switzerland is particularly challenging in view of the country’s geographical, cultural and political specificities. The country is small in size, consists of three linguistic regions with their own cultural specificities, each of which is deeply influenced by the film supply from large, neighbouring countries. On top, it was recently excluded from the European Union’s MEDIA programme, designed to support the European film and audio-visual industries. This stopped Swiss filmmakers to access important European funds. This chapter first contextualizes these problems as structural barriers that Swiss producers, distributors and policymakers are confronted with. Then, it provides data concerning the Swiss film market, and it describes the national film policies adopted by the Federal Government to support film production. Finally, it analyses a new fund created in July 2016 to finance national films and international co-productions shot in the country. The chapter suggests that, through this policy innovation, Switzerland is cautiously shifting from a public funding policy scheme exclusively based on cultural premises towards one that values film production as a means for economic growth. This unprecedented policy shift brings Switzerland closer to other European countries, which have been following similar trends for many years.

The Hollywood Family Film. A history, from Shirley Temple to Harry Potter

decade, I find this a problematic decision. I do not want to critique the book for not being the book I would have liked to have had, but at points it doesn’t seem to be the book the author offered to give us. In particular, it may be that the author assumes greater knowledge of British social history than non-British readers may have. I wished the book had been longer, so that Barber could have given us more details about specific social and political contexts in her case studies. Finally, the publisher has let the author down by not hiring a professional copyeditor who would have caught the errors in grammar and spelling.

The Hollywood Economist. The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies, by Edward Jay Epstein

In 2000, Edward Jay Epstein, one of the most famous journalists and observers of the Hollywood system, published The Big Picture: The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood. Ten years after that influencing work, he returns with a new book—The Hollywood Economist. The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies—a further step into the discovery of how the powerful American film industry works and how it is facing the technical, social, and economic changes that, day by day, are reconfiguring the entertainment field. Epstein’s analysis starts from two basic considerations. First, in 1929, about four-fifths of the U.S. population went to movies every week. Today, in a world with television, video, the Internet, and other home and mobile devices, fewer than 6% of the population goes to see a movie in an average week. The theater, the big screen, and movie-going as a social event no longer have the appeal of some decades ago. As a consequence, Hollywood has had to adapt its business model according to the new trends and the new desires of its audiences. However, to what extent has the American film industry changed?; and what do we exactly know about it? Second, the box-office data published by trade papers like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter are no more usefully indicating the real economic performance of a movie and of the health of the studio that produced it. Epstein reminds us what more and more scholars remark: Nowadays, theaters provide only 15% to 20% of studios’ total revenues. Today, the economic life of a movie is longer than in the past, and even more diversified.