The list of nominations for the BAFTA’s and the Golden Globes and the list of nominations for European Film Festivals (Cannes, the Venice film festival, the Berlinale, etc) reveals just how much more international European festivals are than their British and American counterparts. The contrast is stark. Now take a look at the foreign films on offer at a mainstream cinema in Britain near you – the number is usually zilch, zero, nada. All of the above are representative of the country’s lack of promotion of and interest in foreign cinema. Why is the British and American Film Industry so ignorant of foreign films, what is at loss by being isolationist and what can be done?
Vincent Cassel in 'La Haine'/Britain and America's attitude towards foreign films
Film festivals have different aims and interests, and rightly so. But there is a telling correlation between the number of international film nominations an award festival has and its level of prestige – the more prestigious and ‘quality’ film festivals tend to have more foreign films on offer. It is clear that the Oscars, the Golden Globes and the BAFTAS focus primarily on home produce, but they also, to their own detriment, totally underrepresent the international film scene – foreign films rarely make a big furor on the red carpet. The exception this year is The Artist. The appeal and success of this film indicates ‘the problem’ of foreign films, or rather, our problem. Although The Artist is a French film, it – crucially – is a silent film. ‘Films with subtitles’ often provoke either automatic dismissal or accusations of elitism. This is partly because in Britain and the States foreign films have been lumped together with alternative cinema; equally, the people who go to see foreign films have often been branded with the stigmatic and all-too-easily-applied label ‘pretentious’. Sure, sometimes foreign films are arty, but sometimes – they’re not, and thus should not be relegated purely to the ‘niche’ pile in film’s lost property office. Unfortunately, foreign films are mostly shown on a regular basis only at specialist cinemas. The only famous American film award festival with a decent number of foreign film nominations is Sundance, an independent festival. All this has helped to create the if-it’s-a-foreign-film-it-inevitably-must-be-arty-farty myth that is so popular in Britain and America. The American film industry’s bad habit of re-making foreign language films into their worse, American versions (Vanilla Sky, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – to name but a few) helps to propagate this illusion, dissuades people from watching ‘films with subtitles’ and, frankly, patronizes us.
Combatting the prejudices
For a country that is notoriously open to and accepting of other cultures, the prejudice against foreign films in Britain, at an institutional, media and casual-conversation-over-coffee level is both surprising but also symptomatic of a larger phenomenon – our fear of other languages. Our linguistic isolationism is evident: the English school curriculum places much less emphasis on languages than most European school curriculums; the English reading public reads less fiction-in-translation than the reading populace of other countries; the average English film-goer watches less foreign films than the average European film-goer, etc, etc. The reasons for this are manifold – English being the dominant international language, our reluctance to be part of Europe, a residue of Imperialist mentality – but they should not be treated as excuses.
The most obvious solution to disbanding the presumptions about foreign films is to increase the British public’s exposure to them – for British mainstream cinemas to show more foreign films than they currently do. There is nothing wrong with specialist cinemas, the Curzons and the Picturehouses, but you find very few of those outside the big cities. Similarly, there is a myriad of small foreign film festivals in London (celebrating anything from Polish to Korean cinema), but they are often not widely advertised and some of the smaller ones seem to be organized by a minority community mainly for that community. Again, the majority of foreign film festivals in England are held in London. This is inevitable given that London is the Capital city and is far more cosmopolitan than the rest of England. And this is exactly why more foreign films should be shown in mainstream cinemas and why British and American film awards should be more representative of the international film scene; this would give nominated foreign films more publicity and a wider distribution.
The fault does not lie entirely with the industry and with cinemas. They do not show many foreign films because they will not be as commercially successful: many people have certain assumptions about foreign cinema or can’t be bothered to read subtitles. Nonetheless, this is an attitude the cinemas encourage by not showing foreign films and, as for the financial issue, showing one foreign film along with five English-language films will not exactly bankrupt them.
Astronaut saving his wife's ghost in a space station (Tarkovsky's 'Solaris')/How to save foreign cinema in Britain
Yes, reading subtitles is slightly more demanding than not doing so (mind you, subtitles are much better than dubbing) and there are different films for different moods. And no, there is nothing inherently valuable in watching a foreign film and they are not necessarily better than British and American films – they just offer something different. If you limit yourself or are limited to only watching English-language films you miss out on some real cinematic gems. But a lack of interest in and generalized misconceptions and about foreign films are mostly due to a lack of exposure to them – it’s a bit of a catch 22 situation.
Comments