yearbook 2004/05 - The European Film College

Big bear
By Jens Rykær
LET’S GO TO THE MOVIES
‘Lord of the Rings’ made a difference
– again
Finally. Peter Jackson’s Return of the King – Lord
of the Rings part 3 swept the academy floor effectively
and not only took eleven Oscars, but
all the Oscars in all the categories in which it
was nominated. Never happened before. The
whole project has been highly acclaimed for
its technological achievement without losing
sight of the basic story about the eternal struggle
between good and evil and the corruption
of power. The trilogy has already placed itself
among the highest grossing films of all time.
Box-office has been titanic. But which film has
still the record of having sold most tickets? Gone
with the Wind (1939) of course. But then again
– it has been screened for- ever.
Also in Big Bear The Ring made a difference.
As in all other charts throughout the world
Viggo Mortensen and his crew knocked out
all competition and made one wonder: what’s
next. Will this feat ever be repeated? Have we
reached the limits of adventurous filmmaking
or do we, the audience, still have surprises to
come? Of course we have. Just have a look at
Winged Migration (2001), that finally hit Danish
screens last autumn. How Jacques Cluzaud
and his crew managed to create such a subtle,
poetic and dramatic masterpiece, flying with
birds throughout the world, is a mystery from
both a technical and a logistic point of view. We
had to do a repeat in Big Bear with that one.
The top ten of Big Bear was again dominated
by American and domestic films. Nice to see
that our own filmmakers still succeed in winning
a remarkable market share. Close to 30%.
Top grosser was our own member of the board
Nils Malmros’ Facing the Truth sharply followed
by this season’s Bodil-winner Inheritance by Per
Fly. Also this season we saw that just a handful
of titles would totally dominate the market. In
Big Bear the best performing ten films take two
thirds of the whole box-office. Exactly the same
pattern we see everywhere else. A bit scary foboth
cinema owners and potential investors of
course. In spite of an overall positive economical
trend globally it is no wonder that (especially)
the cinema segment within the business are very
reluctant towards further investment in modern
technology – the state-of-the-art digital projectors.
It is still extremely costly to invest in these
machines. Around 100.000 Euros per screen!
Who’s to pay? Apart from no more handling of
heavy reels and the cost of shifting them around
between cinemas, what’s in it for exhibition not
to say the audience? Basically nothing – apart
from the digitally animated productions that
obviously do have an added value. Therefore
Big Bear is still a classic 35mm cinema with
the possibility of screening tapes and DVDs at
a so-so screen quality. But we are still just an
E-cinema.
65 film ran through the projectors, 19 of them
Danish,12 especially for children and families.
In addition, quite a few for schools downtown,
the childrens’ film club and the elderly (see
p80).