Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of the field of European film and television co-production and outlines the themes and methodological approaches employed within the volume European Film and Television Co-production: Policy and Practice. It describes the policy-driven European co-production model, focusing both on its historical evolution (emergence of official co-productions and proliferation of co-production treaties), and explores current developments triggered by recent tax incentives, non-official and TV co-productions, as well as digital media platforms. Furthermore, the chapter points to major methodological and theoretical gaps in the existing scholarship. To address those gaps, the chapter proposes a research methodology that would allow scholars to move closer to policy makers and practitioners, ensuring more cross-sectoral dialogue in researching co-productions.
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Notes
- 1.
See for instance the UK-Australia co-production Back of Beyond (1954).
- 2.
For a detailed discussion, see Jäckel (2003b).
- 3.
Although established in 1988, Eurimages only became operational one year later, in 1989.
- 4.
See also McElroy (2016) on the benefits for ‘small nations’ of accessing bigger markets when venturing into television co-productions with partners from bigger countries.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
The Co-production Research Network is a consortium of scholars, policy makers and industry practitioners with a shared concern to improve dialogue across these three domains (www.copro-research-network.org).
- 8.
The recent proliferation of tax incentives across Europe has been identified as a moment of policy transition—from a ‘direct subsidy economy’ to a ‘new economy’, which is ‘mainly aimed at larger scale more commercial film projects’ (Morawetz et al. 2007, 427).
- 9.
There is an increasing number of examples where official co-production status has been granted to projects financed predominantly through tax incentives (Mitric and Levie 2016). Such projects must still be able to demonstrate that they comply with official co-production eligibility criteria, as outlined in the chapter by Hammett-Jamart in this volume.
- 10.
See, for instance, the following links UK: http://www.bfi.org.uk/film-industry/british-certification-tax-relief/co-production and France (p. 29): http://www.filmfrance.net/telechargement/IncentivesGuide2017.pdf.
- 11.
See, for instance, Sundet (2017) for a case study of Lilyhammer (2012–2014) a joint venture between Norwegian public broadcaster NRK and Netflix.
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Hammett-Jamart, J., Mitric, P., Redvall, E.N. (2018). Introduction: European Film and Television Co-production. In: Hammett-Jamart, J., Mitric, P., Novrup Redvall, E. (eds) European Film and Television Co-production. Palgrave European Film and Media Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97157-5_1
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