The Netherlands is not going to the World Cup. Is that a tragedy or a windfall? It depends. Those in the cinema business will not mourn it. At the presentation of the annual figures, traditionally in Amsterdam's Tuschinski Theatre, Hajo Binsbergen of Filmdistributeurs Nederland also looked ahead. Thanks to missing Orange, he foresaw high cinema attendance in June and July.
Sunny
Looking back, too, his mood was sunny. 'Very healthy,' he called the past cinema year. For the tenth consecutive year, the number of visitors increased, by 5.3% to almost 36 million in 2017. This means the Netherlands is doing better than, say, the United States, France or Germany, where figures are stagnating.
This is partly thanks to continued investment in new buildings, refurbishments and introduction of new technologies that make the cinema experience even more of, how shall I say, an event. Premium large formats (PLF) is what it's called in the jargon. The latest in this field is 4DX, a hall with moving seats, scents and wind and rain simulations. 'Draws you into the film as if you were part of it yourself,' I read on Pathé's website. The same promise with which 3D was touted around 2010.
100 years of the Cinema Association
So on 18 February, the industry can celebrate rather carefree that 100 years ago the Bioscoopbond was founded. At the time, a club of moodily dressed, cigar-smoking gentlemen, as president Winnie Sorgdrager of today's Nederlandse Vereniging van Bioscopen en Filmtheaters recalled. She also recalled that at the time, film screening was beginning to outgrow its initial status of fairground entertainment. Which led me to think that with all the efforts for the PLF experience, fairground entertainment might be making a comeback. But this aside.
How long can this growth continue? Is saturation not on the horizon? Binsbergen's words suggested that the industry is not thinking about that for the time being. The average Dutch person goes to the cinema 2.1 times a year. That is more than Sweden, but not yet as often as in Britain (2.5) or France (3.4). So the optimist concludes that there is still room for growth.
Netflix
In any case, it can be said that with all the digital competition, classic film screening, with or without PLF, is holding up well. Favourable to film producers' overall sales is also that sales via Video on Demand have risen again. Much needed, after the collapse of DVD sales. To what extent film viewing via other channels will still put a brake on cinema growth, Binsbergen did not elaborate. That said, new powerhouses like Netflix, Amazon and Google are about to become formidable players. Not only in terms of distribution and screening. The online giants will also become a formidable competitor to traditional Hollywood studios in the near future, increasingly producing films themselves.
Dutch film remains problem child
Back to 2017. In summary, a lot has remained the same compared to 2016. Not only the steady growth, but also the once again very moderate market share of Dutch film. At 12.0%, even a fraction less than in 2016. 'Quite a shame', Sorgdrager mused, and that is still putting it mildly. Last year, not even a single Dutch film made the top 20. That had not happened for 20 years. Striking also that one and the same film, Soof 2, was the best-attended Dutch title in both 2016 and 2017.
Perhaps the much higher Dutch market share of a few years ago was a matter of visual illusion. For largely caused by the coincidental fact that we Gooische Vrouwen and Gooic Women 2 had. Each accounted for more than 2 million visitors. Lacking such a superhit, we are hard-wired back into poor reality. Everyone wants things to get better, but how? Concerned parties have come to a new VAT covenant with the government. In short, this means that from next year 50% more money will flow from the receipts via the Abraham Tuschinski Fund to the production of Dutch films. This was revealed last month in the Autumn meeting also already mentioned. But it will take more than just money.
Safe formula
After all, doesn't Dutch film rely too much on a safe formula? We take a look at the ten best-attended Dutch films of 2017. In brackets the number of visitors.
1. Soof 2 (355,911, including 2016 897,571)
2. Our boys (300,949, including 2016 361,988)
3. Dikkertje Dap (251,336)
4. Misfit (238,729)
5. Dummie the Mummy 3 (222,518)
6. Garden in my heart (217,363)
7. Mees Kees langs de lijn (211,939)
8. Bella Donna's (201,697)
9. Brimstone (192,093)
10. Away from you (187,089)
The first three already show it. Romantic comedy and children's film is the now over-proven recipe. Exceptions are the school comedy Misfit and Martin Koolhoven's ambitious and contrarian feminist western Brimstone. Which, incidentally, attracted considerably fewer visitors than Koolhoven had hoped and expected.
Sequel films
For that matter, international (read US) cinema is not averse to formulaic films either. Hollywood continues to bet heavily on sequels or other well-known source material. Just look at the international top 10 in Dutch cinema.
1. Despicable Me 3 (1,338,156)
2. Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge (1,017,987)
3. Beauty and the Beast (850,372)
4. Fast & Furious 8 (848,174)
5. The Boss Baby (801,190)
6. Dunkirk (755,610)
7. Star Wars: The Last Jedi (696,826)
8. Fifty Shades Darker (685,766)
9. Sing (672,849)
10. IT (580,667)
While some question the sustainability of this strategy of milking out tried-and-tested material, this will not change any time soon. The industry that produces blockbusters can be compared to a supertanker. Once on steam, it steadily puffs along, but difficult to change direction. New sequels we can count on in 2018 include Insidious: The Last Key, Maze Runner: The Death Cure, Ocean's 8, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Avengers: Infinity War, Fifty Shades Freed, Mission: Impossible 6 and much more.
What are we looking forward to in 2018?
But what are we really looking forward to? Scottish Lynne Ramsay already proved that things can be different with her first US production, the disruptive revenge drama You Were Never Really Here. This week, the Golden Globe winner Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri at our cinemas. In addition to Ridley Scott's strong reconstruction of an illustrious kidnapping All the Money in the World. About money and power. Plays in 1973, but feels current. Something similar can be said of Spielberg's solid The Post. The story of the first female editor of a major US daily. How she upheld press freedom by revealing how successive presidents hid the truth about the Vietnam War. The latter three, coincidentally or not, with a strong female lead.
Childhood
Not a heavyweight, but already lavishly praised, is Lady Bird. The coming-of-age of a rebellious seventeen-year-old girl in a conservative Californian milieu. Written and directed by actress Greta Gerwig. In cinemas in April. Also promising is The Florida Project (February), with which Sean Baker gives us a look full of joy and wonder at childhood.
Our own Nanouk Leopold arrives with the strongly acted Cobain (premiering at Berlin Film Festival), about a teenager's struggle with his drug-addicted mother. Uplifting and moving is the already audience award-winning documentary at IDFA Deaf Child. Alex de Ronde portrays his deaf but unabatedly sprightly son. Deaf Power! Also, the Golden Globe-winning film for best foreign film Aus dem Nichts by Fatih Akin is totally contemporary. A story about a family, justice and revenge, inspired by right-wing extremist murders in Germany 2013.
Cinephiles note that from 18 January, EYE will re-screen five films by the renowned and influential Jean-Luc Godard. The liberating innovator who was one of the driving forces behind the French nouvelle vague. Also at EYE, the brand new biopic Le redoutable, in which Louis Garrel plays a distraught Godard, at the time of La Chinoise in search of inspiration. A fine tribute that for some hardliners is a bit of a sacrilege anyway.
Silver Rose
As an encore, on this well-attended Tuesday afternoon in Tuschinksi, two more awards were presented for great merit for Dutch film and cinema culture. The Jan Nijland Silver Rose went to Lauge Nielsen, until recently managing director at Pathé. A strategic thinker and doer according to the jury, and also 'the nicest gentleman in the cinema industry'.
Dana Linssen, editor-in-chief of De Filmkrant, received the Silver Rose. Formally an incentive prize, although that sounds a bit strange for someone with such a great track record. The jury saw an independent film magazine with which generations of film lovers have grown up and recognised in Linssen a critic with an infectious love of film. Someone who always knows how to make you think and also encourages young talent. Still, nice to see that film criticism and the cinema industry go through the same door together very well here.
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