Lights, camera, action!

Date: 29/04/04

What do the blockbusters Cold Mountain, Mission: Impossible, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Schindler's List, and Joan of Arc have in common? They were all filmed in central and eastern Europe.

The former soviet bloc countries preparing to join the EU next month, or in 2007, have become a moviemakers' Mecca.

There are many attractions for big international studios, argues Andrew Stear, a UK property developer who has set up a successful film production company, Stray Dog Films, in the Romanian capital Bucharest.

The firm's name is a wry comment on Bucharest's infamously large population of masterless mutts.

"The main reason is cost, of course," Stear tells European Voice. "In Romania you have extremely good studio facilities as well as a highly trained workforce of technicians, like camera operators or lighting experts, and everything costs a fraction of the price that it would in the United States," he continues.

But it is not just the prospect of a relatively small strain on the moviemakers' wallets that attracts them, Stear insists. "You also have some wonderful unspoilt locations here," he says. "Romania has mountains, a beautiful coastline, cities and rural villages that have hardly changed for 100 years. If you want to shoot a period film without constantly worrying about electricity pylons and television aerials spoiling the shot, this is the place to come," he adds.

Location played a significant role in Miramax pictures' decision to bringing "A" list Hollywood stars Nicole Kidman, Jude Law and Renée Zellweger to Romania to shoot Cold Mountain for example.

Nor is Romania the only central and eastern European country that has caught the eye of the big film companies.

Most experts argue that the Czech Republic - and more particularly Prague - is now one of Europe's most important film factories.

Prague's Barrandov studios, for example, which were built in the early 1930s, boast an extremely impressive list of international productions filmed on their premises.

Barrandov is an enormous complex that was originally financed by the entrepreneurial Havel brothers, direct ancestors of the Czech Republic's celebrated playwright former president Václav Havel.

It boasts 11 sound stages with a total stage space of 7,000 square metres and like its Romanian counterparts can offer highly skilled cinema technicians at extremely competitive prices.

As far back as 1984, before the "Velvet Revolution" chased the communists from power in what was then Czechoslovakia, Milos Forman chose Barrandov to film his successful Mozart biopic Amadeus.

Since the end of communist rule in Czechoslovakia in 1989, the number of international productions made at Barrandov has rocketed. Van Helsing, a vampire movie currently doing the rounds of European cinemas was filmed there in 2003, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, starring Sean Connery, was shot at Barrandov in 2002. Spy thriller The Bourne Identity was another Hollywood blockbuster made in Prague, this time in 2001, and in 1995 Mission: Impossible, a remake of the 1960s TV series starring Tom Cruise was also shot at Barrandov. And the films above are just a small selection of the US movies made in the Czech capital.

Barrandov studios are also a favourite among European and Russian filmmakers. In 1997 Nikita Michalkov shot his epic Barber of Siberia starring the late Richard Harris at Barrandov. In 2001 Germany's Ben Verbong filmed Hanna - wo bist du? at the complex. The list goes on.

In addition to the Czech Republic, many other of the new member states are also vying for a piece of the international movie action.

Hungary, for example, will later this year open a major new film complex on the outskirts of Budapest, which will boast central Europe's largest sound stage. The €16 million Stern Film Studio was privately funded and industry news service ScreenDaily.com recently said its founder and managing director Robert Szabados believes the complex is perfectly fitted to host international super-productions.

Stern Film Studio has also been given an indirect helping hand by the Hungarian government, which recently announced that it will give a 20% tax rebate to film companies that use Hungarian facilities.

Elsewhere, Poland has hosted a number of respected film productions, including Steven Spielberg's Oscar- winning Schindler's List. Slovakia and Bulgaria have also enjoyed their share of big budget Hollywood and European film shoots.

But the EU's new member countries are more than just an attractive location for American and western European filmmakers.

Many of them also have extremely popular domestic film industries.

Of course the situation has changed beyond all recognition since the communist era, when all that was on offer in most central and eastern European cinemas was home-grown or Russian fare.

But, since 1989, domestic productions have managed to hold their own very well indeed in the face of fierce international competition, especially from the Hollywood studios.

In the Czech Republic, locally-made films have accounted for an average 20% of cinema entries every year since 1996. Domestic productions did particularly well in 2001, when nearly one-in-three cinemagoers paid to see a home-grown film.

It is a similar story in Poland. In 2001, domestic productions accounted for an impressive 41.6% of Polish cinema entries. Although this was an exceptional year, the normal box office share for nationally produced films remains 20%.

Perhaps one of the most surprising success stories in central and eastern European cinema in recent years has been tiny Estonia's film industry.

In 2002, a locally produced film, Names in Marble had the country's most popular opening weekend in eight years.

In just two days, the Estonian-Finnish co-production clocked up 15,611 admissions, earning an impressive €67,000 - no mean feat in a country with a total population of 1.5 million people.

To put the film's success in perspective, it grossed more per head of population in its opening weekend than Hollywood blockbusters Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Lord of the Rings and Titanic.

According to experts at the Strasbourg-based European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO), which is part of the Council of Europe, the Czech, Polish and Estonian examples all show how important domestically produced films are in the new member states.

"Many of these countries have very respected, distinguished but also very popular film industries, which often produce genuine national blockbusters," EAO analyst Susan Newman told European Voice.

When it comes to supporting the film industry in the new member states, there are a number of different subsidy and loan schemes available.

Most national governments fund filmmaking to some extent, either directly or through support for filmmakers from publicly owned television stations.

The majority of the new member states also benefit from the Council of Europe's "Eurimages" fund, which every year helps to fund a certain number of European productions.

As far as EU assistance goes, aside from Romania, all of the central and eastern European states set to join the Union take part in the MEDIA programme, which tries to promote European films and train professionals working in the cinema industry.

According to experts at the EAO, many central and eastern European filmmakers are hoping that when their countries are fully integrated into the EU's single market they will find it easier to get their movies shown in other European countries.

"Access to the EU market is still quite difficult for central and eastern European films, but once these countries become member states, things could improve," said one EAO analyst.

"Movie goers in the European Union are generally more open to subtitled film than their US counterparts, which is obviously good news for east European films," the expert added.

Watch out for an east European epic at a cinema near you soon.

Article is part of a European Voice Special Report on EU Enlargement and considers the popularity of central and eastern Europe for Hollywood film makers.