Interesting stuff from Variety:
By
KATJA HOFMANNPolitical grandstanding by Oscar winners has long been a feature of awards night. But politics plays a role in the Oscar drama long before the acceptance speeches have been penned.
Take the selection process for the foreign-language film category, for example. This can be a political minefield that makes the United Nations look veritably zen-like, with each country's entry functioning as a diplomatic envoy to the all-powerful King Oscar.
"The foreign-language Oscar is a great chance for a non-English-language film to be noticed by a worldwide audience and for a country to show off its filmmaking culture," says Tivi Magnusson, producer of Danish entry "Adam's Apples."
Denmark is one of the countries where the choice was relatively straightforward. Boffo
Boffo performance and reviews marked the pic as a clear winner, while its success in Toronto showed it fared well with North American audiences.
In other countries, however, tempers can run high.
"The decision-making process in each country is political. 'Fateless' got selected by Hungary, but they didn't nominate us for the European Film Awards, because they felt that in Europe they didn't want to be represented by a Holocaust drama but a film that deals with the Hungarian revolution of 1956," says pic's producer, Andras Hamori.
"But by having 'Fateless' in the Oscars," he adds, "they're making an international gesture that Hungary is willing to face up to its role in the Holocaust."
France, meanwhile, decided it didn't want to be represented by a bunch of penguins. Instead of nominating the phenomenally successful docu
docu "March of the Penguins," selectors went with the WWI drama "Joyeux Noel," which picked up a Golden Globe nom last week alongside "The Promise," "Kung Fu Hustle," "Paradise Now" and "Tsotsi."
The choice was controversial, as the pic had not been released on the main cinema circuit in France by the time of the application deadline, but had played for only a week at a small arthouse theater in St. Pol-sur-Ternoise.
Emmanuel Priou, one of the producers on "March of the Penguins," says the team behind "Joyeux Noel" had been doing a great deal of lobbying to receive official backing for the movie. Indeed, the pic screened in Cannes in front of European cultural ministers.
Not without vitriol, Priou says, "To the established French film industry our film is like a UFO, because we're all first-timers. If we had been representing France at the Oscars, it would have been a pain in the neck for a lot of people here."
Whatever lobbying, politicking and backstabbing goes on in each country, the Academy itself does not get involved, "otherwise we'd never get out of the morass," says the Academy's director of communication John Pavlik.
Some have attacked the Academy, saying the qualifying rules in the foreign-language category no longer make sense in the increasingly international production climate and should be changed.
In Italy, the Acad's rejection of the country's initial entry, "Private," on the grounds that it was in Arabic, Hebrew and English rather than Italian, sparked criticism across the industry.
"Cache" (Hidden), helmed by Austrian Michael Haneke, was rejected by his homeland because it is in French rather than the country's language, German.
"As filmmakers from a small country like Austria, we're forced to take on the language of another country to get our films financed," explains "Cache" producer Veit Heiduschka.
Heiduschka also complains the Academy's regulations are confusing, because three years earlier Haneke's "The Piano Teacher," also in French, was accepted.
Austria previously had sent the Academy a version of the pic dubbed into German; while this was acceptable in 2002, the regs have since changed.
"Now it's the language of the original soundtrack that counts, not the language of the submitted version," Pavlik says.
He adds, "The rules change every year. After each awards ceremony they (the Academy) look at the regulations and see if they can be improved."
According to Pavlik, AMPAS
AMPAS tries "as hard as they can, but they will never make rules that make everybody happy, because rules don't do that."
However, even producers whose films do meet the foreign-language requirements want the Academy to start thinking outside the national box. "The cultural borders within Europe are coming down. This is reflected in the diversification of Europe's languages and the increase in European co-productions," says Fred Breinersdorfer, writer-producer of German entry "Sophie Scholl."
"I'd welcome it if the most prestigious film award in the world would support this exciting process and reflect this development rather than insist on national demarcations," he adds.
This year's Palestinian entry, "Paradise Now," seems to indicate the Academy has already started to move beyond the politics of nationality.
Shot in Arabic by Dutch-Israeli helmer Hany Abu-Assad, the drama about two Palestinian suicide bombers is a Dutch-German-French-Israeli co-production and scooped European picture kudos at the Berlin Film Festival this year. Yet it's still accepted as Palestinian by the Academy.
"It's technically European, but emotionally it's a Palestinian film," says the pic's producer, Bero Beyer, whose intention was not to make a political pamphlet but first and foremost a good film.
"If anything, we wanted to open up the dialogue and take abstract politics to a human level -- which is where the solution to this political problem will be found," says Beyer.
By
ROBERT KOEHLERThe unspoken ideal behind the official submissions to the Oscar's foreign-language film category is that they reflect the world, and it can be safely said that in the 2005 field that ideal is amply fulfilled.
+ Josef Fares' Swedish film, "Zozo," a young Arabic-speaking Lebanese boy is the central character.
+ In Jamil Rostami's Iraqi film, the characters don't speak Arabic, but Kurdish.
+ In Christian Carion's French film, "Joyeux Noel," World War I soldiers from Scotland, Germany and France exchange Yuletide greetings in various languages.
+ In Gustavo Loza's Mexican film "On the Other Side," separate dramas revolve around boys in Mexico and Cuba and a girl in Morocco.
+ In Eyal Halfon's Israeli film "What a Wonderful Place," Tagalog, Thai and Russian can be heard, while some characters' lingua franca is English.
+In Gavin Hood's South African pic "Tsotsi," a local slang dialogue known as Tsotsi-Taal (blending English, Afrikaans and southern African tribal dialects) dominates the soundtrack.
+ In Eric Khoo's film from Singapore, "Be With Me," no fewer than four languages share screen time, including Cantonese, Mandarin, English and the regional Chinese language Hokkien.
Much like the rest of international cinema these days, in which more films from more countries in more (and multiple) languages are being made and shown, the 55 entries convey a 21st century world in which globalization means far more than the unfettered trade of goods, services and ideas across borders and regions, but the blurring of borders themselves as languages refuse to be fixed to a specific nation-state.
This involves fundamental aspects of the Academy's foreign-language contest, in which the rules specify that qualifying films must have "a predominantly non-English dialogue track," and that films be submitted on a national basis, with no more than one film per country. Moreover, the film's dialogue track must be "predominantly in the official language of the (submitting) country... except when the story mandates that an additional non-English language be predominant." (The Golden Globes' foreign film category makes no such requirements.) But as films are made increasingly in co-production arrangements with costs and risks shared among countries, and as countries' own stories, cultures and politics contain more than merely the "official" language, the multilingualism on display in world cinema and the current Oscar field suggest a more complex world where old notions may no longer easily fit.
AMPAS
AMPAS' foreign-language committee topper
topper, producer Mark Johnson
Mark Johnson, ponders that "you have a lot of co-productions, and these films that cross over languages are partly the result of filmmakers' stories in an era of globalization, I think, as well as a marketplace where there's a lot of co-financing."
This means that, as in Carion's film, the U.N.-like confluence of languages organically emerges from the film's events (as in the meeting of WWI trench soldiers). In Klaus Haro's Finnish entry, "Mother of Mine" (where, as in "Zozo," the narrative involves a war refugee lad in Sweden), story and shared production duties (Finland and Sweden) make the film possible.
Michael Barker
Michael Barker, co-head of Sony Pictures Classics
Sony Pictures Classics, distribbing both "Cache" and "Joyeux Noel," debunks any notion that there's a trend toward films with multiple languages complicating the Acad's rulebook. "You have past nominated films like 'Four Days in September,' which had a ton of English in it, or 'No Man's Land," which won, with I don't know how many languages on the soundtrack. This is nothing new, but part of what's basic to the international nature of global cinema."
The smudging of easy boundaries of language has indeed been a fascinating aspect of non-English language films for decades. "Joyeux Noel" deliberately recalls Jean Renoir's 1937 "Grand Illusion," in which Renoir dramatizes his humanism in a WWI setting with a German commandant (Erich von Stroheim) alternating between French and German with his Gaul POWs. Marcel Camus' 1959 Portuguese-language "Black Orpheus" may have been the first South American-set film to win the foreign Oscar but, being French-produced, was the French submission. Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo's 1965 "The Battle of Algiers," meticulously depicting the Algerian revolt against French colonial occupation, is entirely in French and Arabic.
Indeed, the disqualification of Italy's initial submission this year, Saverio Costanzo's "Private" (on grounds that the film's language track of Arabic, Hebrew and English contained no Italian at all), received howls of protest from Italian film officials, who cited Pontecorvo's Oscar-nominated "Algiers" as a counter-example. But, as a simple glance at the AMPAS website shows, this merely reflects AMPAS rules, which are amended over time. The 2003 rule change that now requires that the film be considered on the basis of its original and undubbed soundtrack disqualified Michael Haneke's Austrian entry, "Cache," this year (filmed, as has been the Austrian-born Haneke's practice for several years, in French with primarily French actors), while Haneke's "The Piano Teacher"
"The Piano Teacher" -- also in French -- qualified for Austria in 2002 on the basis of its German-dubbed version.
By
IAN MOHRMore and more foreign films are getting lost in translation in the U.S. That's the word from studio specialty division heads as well as pure indie players bringing films Stateside from overseas.
Even when a film nabs an Oscar nomination, the numbers, lately, just don't add up to a major bump. Every awards numbers-cruncher come Oscar time knows that an Academy nom can greatly goose a Hollywood pic's bottom line, but only the hardware can help imports, say the experts.
"A nomination does not mean all that much," asserts Sony Pictures Classics
Sony Pictures Classics co-head Michael Barker
Michael Barker, whose banner is distribbing Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Belgian submission, "The Child," this year as well as French submission, "Joyeux Noel." "But when the foreign film Oscar is won, the profile is greatly elevated. The foreign film Oscar also adds positively to a DVD release, and that distinction does generate some revenue."
Indeed, by the end of February earlier this year, Fine Line acquisition "The Sea Inside" -- helmer Alejandro Amenabar
Alejandro Amenabar's fourth feature, starring Javier Bardem
Javier Bardem as Spanish quadriplegic Ramon Sampedro -- was drifting towards the $1 million mark at $967,457 after 11 so-so weeks in release.
But when the first frame of March mercifully came, the foreign-language film winner jumped to $1.25 million on its way to more than$2 million by mid-May.
Foreign films are also unable to rely on the safety blankets of pay TV and DVD deals the way many studio projects can today.
"Video business and TV business is a key part of why you decide to make any movie," says Mark Gill
Mark Gill, head of Warner Independent Pictures
Warner Independent Pictures, who has Hany Abu-Assad's timely Palestinian pic "Paradise Now" in the running this year. "Less and less foreign films do qualify under pay-TV deals. So it looks like the 1970s, when there's no-pay TV and no DVD. It's, 'Make your money from the theatrical release and good bye.' "
Breaking down today's foreign distribution economics, Gill says that $1 million for a foreign film at the B.O.
B.O. is a big hit. "You have to make careful bets, and low-cost bets," he add. " 'Paradise Now' is a movie we did because it has something important to say."
That means many companies are staying out of the foreign film game: Of the 56 official Oscar submissions this year from around the globe, just 12 have U.S. distribution -- almost a 40% decline from last year, when 19 pics had Stateside representation.
Last year, the Swedish Oscar nominee, "As It Is in Heaven" had no U.S. distrib
distrib.
So why are U.S. auds not coming out for foreign fare? The answer is more complex than the usual challenge of selling subtitles to English speakers.
Richard Lorber, whose Koch Lorber banner is rolling out "The Syrian Bride" -- a pic helmed by an Israeli Jew, co-written by a Palestinian, and centering around a Druze family divided at the impermeable Israeli-Syrian border -- says documentaries have taken a bite out of the foreign film pie.
"It has become harder for foreign films to find an audience, and it takes longer and has become more costly," he says. "The ascendancy of the documentary has averted some of the attention of foreign filmgoers, as documentaries compete for people's time the way they never did before."
U.S. distribs are being choosy, and many are picking topical pics as a way of intriguing auds.
Daniel Battsek, the new head of Disney's specialty arm Miramax, bought a foreign film as one of the rejigged banner's first two pick-ups this year under the former Buena Vista Intl. exec. But Battsek added that he bought "Tsotsi" -- Gavin Hood's South African adaptation of a novel by Athol Fugard's, and that country's official submission -- without an Oscar solely in mind.
"We genuinely bought the film for itself," he said of the subtitled pic about a thug who steals a car, not realizing that there is an infant inside. "The Academy submission is just part of the release strategy. In the U.S. and the U.K. as well, subtitles can put a block on audiences, just like black and white. But that can go away. I don't think anyone has it written on their forehead, 'I will not see a subtitled film.' "
Last year, before Battsek took over, Miramax took Zhang Yimou's "Hero" to nearly $54 million domestically. Harvey Weinstein
Harvey Weinstein marketed the film as a genre pic, capitalizing on the star power of Jet Li, and opened on more than 2,000 screens. Other pics to perform last year, at more modest levels, were "The Motorcycle Diaries" ($16.8 million) and "House of Flying Daggers" ($11 million).
One upside in the foreign category for smaller companies is that Oscar winners can come from pure indie players competing with the studios.
"Foreign films have had their ups and downs, but we've had some pretty big ups," said Zeitgeist Films
Zeitgeist Films' co-prexy Nancy Gerstman, whose company won a 2003 statuette for "Nowhere in Africa." This year, Zeitgeist is back in the running with another German import, "Sophie Scholl: The Final Days."
Lorber says that fewer foreign Oscar submissions have U.S. reps because the quality of the pics is down on average. "When I look at the list of Academy entries, I am disheartened," he said. "There is a lack of originality as directors are aspiring to all the worst commercial attributes that make American films disappointing. Foreign films used to be marked by more risks, but those aspirations have been bypassed by the American indie filmmakers who have learned to do that."
