Abstract
Various politico-economic aspects of Europe-wide co-production practices are evaluated through the prism of the film industry of Eastern Europe, a region where international financing was of vital importance for film production throughout the 1990s. The study investigates a) the changing Western European priorities in cultural policies and the resulting disappearance of aid targeting Eastern European cinema (with the example of Fonds Eco); b) the current financing set-up of co-productions that provides opportunities exclusively for established European ‘auteurs’, and makes migrating to the West an imperative career-move for aspiring filmmakers from these nations; c) the emergence of new regional co-production configurations that transcend former and even current political division lines and are based on principles of regionalism; and d) the functional problems of the programmes meant to assist distribution (with the example of Eurimages).
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