East Europe’s Cinema Industries Since 1989: Financing Structure and Studios

AbstractThe decade worth of the East European transition allows us to sum up important lessons of the stormy and profound transformation in cultural administration. The East European cultural industries were the first ones to suffer massive cuts and withdrawal of secure funding early in the 1990s. Cinema was affected most notably. In all of the East European countries filmmaking underwent volatile structural changes and was subjected to often contradictory undertakings in administration and financing. The crumbling production routines caused a creativity crisis in many filmmakers. Problems included unfair competition, deepening generation gap, and decline in feature, documentary and animation output. The concurrent crisis in distribution and exhibition led to a sharp drop in box office indicators for all productions carrying an East European label. At the same time some East European films enjoyed an international critical acclaim. The volatility in East European cinema coincided with a clearly articulate...