Barthema Fund (working title)

8/7/2019 Barthema Fund (working title)

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EuMena & Barthema FundEuro-Mediterranean Cooperation in international filmmaking: A new, high value (low cost) platform

Enrico Buffagni (M.A) Political Science, Universit di BolognaEuropean Certificat Audiovisual Financement and Commercialization (ECAFIC)c/o Institut National de lAudiovisuel, [email protected]
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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VisionThe EU eastern enlargement, though successful at various level, did not succeed in creating deeper bonds among the general

population. Today we have, simultaneously, a situation whereby the cultural elite watch (and award) Rumanian films in Cannesand the general public despise Rumanian as thieves, rapist, and murderers. If you think that this might be a little far-fetched, justgoogle this two words: Veltroni and Rumeni .There are certainly a lot of causes for something like this to happen. But one can hardly deny that the unifying power of Stories,in this case remarkable in its absence, have a huge impact in the way two peoples look at each other.We would have needed stories that could unite us, that could have given meaning to our coexistence and cooperation.

Instead, we got a custom union and some, the best pupils, a common currency.

The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership constitute no merger , of course.But many things are bound to change, dramatically. Many already have. Migrant workers from southern Mediterraneancountries are, already, an important minority in Italy. We simply cannot afford to miss other opportunities like those we didmiss with the EU enlargement.The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership cannot downgrade itself into just another multi-decennial exercise in bureaucracyharmonization. Italy, at least, cannot afford it. Italy cannot afford to exert just an economic leadership, simply because of thesheer size of its economy. Our inevitable leadership cannot rest on shallow cultural foundations.To Italy, the Euro-Meditarranean Partnership must be the encounter with a part of a former self.A dear friend of childhood, one of those that know you for real.Life brought the friends for different roads but has also brought them together again. Unfortunately with almost no memory of their glorious past, retrospectively seen almost as a fairy tale.

We need a Sherazade that will keep telling us stories of the old days, to recover them, otherwise he would forget them once andfor all. We cannot just trade goods and services as if nothing happened. We also have to trade identities and meanings.Visions of our past that can help us to envision the common future that we want for our children.


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MissionBathema Fund will strive to perform that role, to gather the Stories of the past the could (re)unite us in the present and help us

build the common future.Cinema has always been an highly effective tool in this regards and could be instrumental to a new understanding and in forgingnew opportunities for economic growth and prosperity.In this document Ill explore a set of actions that I consider to be the most effective way to create economic value (andhopefully increase political clout) while strengthening the cultural bonds between southern and northern shore. Because of the shift in power that we are experiencing in international relations, we are entering in a time in which there

will be much more room for movies that tells Mainstream stories with a southern point of view. Until today it was alwaysobvious that the Mainstream should emanate from a Western Cultural Framework, from Western Institutions.A single producer had just no incentive in creating movies that could have resonate in cultures different than the predominantone. A Movie monoculture was produced and rammed down the throat to all the others. That used to be the rational choice butclearly, it no longer applies (see domestification ).

ObjectiveOne film after the other we would build a bridge, via Italy, from south to north.Such a bridge would be able to support a stronger relation between Italy and Maghreb, would help the accumulation of intellectual capital that will enhance both international clout and political initiative vis--vis other established players. A strongenough relation will also re-balance the geopolitical weight while enhancing Maghreb standing as an haven of stability, vis--visother regions, riven with conflicts.


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Established tools for Cooperation

The current forms of support for filmmaking that European countries provide are essentially of two kind .The EU programs and the National ones.

The EU programs are so bureaucratic, so concerned about efficiency and accountability (in the allocation of public fund), thatthey end up being very inefficient, simply by crowding out so many talents.Of course, as always, it all depend on expectations.

If the proxy of choice for efficiency is the number of international prizes won by the supported movies, chances are that onethe bureaucrat will get a promotion. If, on the other hand, the goal is Public Relevance, there are better way to pursue (andachieve) it.Nationals support , on the other hand, is very often delivered through grants provided by the festivals to the artists that theyhave chosen. In essence what happen is that the most important Festivals (which receive public money) breeds youngfilmmakers at the beginning of their career. They help them in establishing fluid personal relationship with national producersand talents. These are very helpful thing to do. Most of these filmmakers, though, are not meant to deliver movies that mighthave a lasting impact in the public discourse.

The importance of such a programme is better understood when one takes into consideration the fact that Fond Sud is part of Quai dOrsay et pas du Ministre de la Culture . Nations States (since 1988)have activated all sorts of grants, residence, trainingand networking programs, through institutions linked to Cannes, Berlin and Rotterdam festivals.


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And new ones: Torino-Dubai (Gulf + Levant) New initiatives are being launched, almost by the day.The meteoric emergence of new actors like Dubai International Film Festival , with substantial financial firepower is alreadysending shockwaves in the cultural landscape of the region. Torino Film Festival took notice and has been quick in offering a

bilateral tool that will intertwine the two regions, strengthen and thicken the level of cooperation.You might question whether or not it is a bit of a red ocean , a (somewhat) stale formula. But they did execute it very well.There is now a clear need to rebalance the weight with an initiative from the Maghreb . The challenge is to create somethingthat will go far beyond the professionals networking, something much more content oriented.

Not that fast, though. Before we go there I want to show you the business trend that support my thesis .


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Next big trend: Domestification :


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from Finance


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to Media/Entertainment


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In order to rise up to that formidable challenge

the EU decided to stick to its core competence


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Bureaucracy


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Euromed Audiovisual

The whole idea of managing the haute couture of the audiovisual industry as if it werea Doha Round Session is hardly understandable, especially because they seems to be in good faith.It is hardly an exclusive EU problem, though. As much as the executives appointed by Funds to take

care of Hollywood, tries to dumb it down to the level of a White Goods Industry , the Audiovisualstubbornly remains an Industry of Prototypes .Cinema represent the high-end, haute couture side of that industry.The kind of logic that presides over Euromed Audiovisual is aimed at preventing flamboyant failures.And indeed, it succeed. Unfortunately the cost of preventing them is widespread mediocrity.What it ensure is smooth, flawless and tasteless stuff. But this would not be the worst.The most ludicrous thing is that they then expect to exert substantial soft power out of that sloppy stuff.Why is it so hard to realize that the average population in the global south is young and hungry for a better future?They are going down a completely wrong path, always because of the same old colonial mindset.They seem completely unable to listen. At least the results of their choices ad actions (or lack thereof), shows an irrefutablelevel of tone deafness.Barthema Fund (and its main tool, EuMena) will look for the voices of the Mediterranean.And will do it in an holistic way, without counterproductive compartmentalisations, like having programs that promote

European cinema and others that look for talents, always separate, un-integrated. Two branch of the same companies each oneoblivious of the others jobs. If it sounds a lot like AIG, it might be because they are both a recipe for failure.


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On the one end Unmatchable Financial firepower,on the other, Hopeless Bureaucracy.

I hope that by now you might have come torealize the refreshing contribution of


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EuMenaHow can you achieve, at once, ideas and visibility? How can you communicate what you stand for and, at the same time,

harness your audiences vision and aspirations. Ask them!Ask the people to help you understand which stories are waiting to be told. Ask them how they should be told.Why nobody ever did it? Because it has not been cinemas mission to strive for foreign policy objectives with artistic tools.As I have written, the market is currently split between those who produce director-driven projects (arthouse) and those who

produce mainstream. The former do makes movies that reflect (upon) the present world, the (overwhelming majority of the)latter have been busy selling a narrow, disempowering mindset that used to be functional to US agenda, but that has been

backfiring a lot, recently, especially since the Iraqi war crimes.At the very core EuMena is an attempt to create a platform. Such a platform would:-Empowers and enfranchise young (and otherwise potentially restless) people.-Feeds into Barthema Fund effort to build a sort of Italian-Maghrebi Consensus (as grandiose as it may sound).Essentially Barthema needs Eumena in order to know better. EuMena needs Barthema to show its raison d'tre. Ultimately EuMenas fuel is Responsibility. Responsibility made miracles. No human being that receive a call (that he

perceive as personal) can escape the responsibility. The key thing is, of course, be able to strike the right chord.

In order to accomplish that, EuMenas format needs the appropriate viral, bottom-up communication campaign that wouldreach out to our targets through the words of their own peers.This would be a rather long multistage process, one that cannot be easily summarized.

For the sake of the argument let us say that we will identify a certain number of Italian intellectuals: historians, law professors,economists, theologians, writers as well as visual artists. (in declining order of necessity and urgency).They will:-Suggest us their ideal counterpart in the Maghreb and-Give us their version of the facts.Which are the most excellent personalities that comes to their mind?Which are the most decisive historical (and relatively unknown) events that can help us in creating room for a better understanding of the pre-colonial centuries?


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Maghrebi intellectuals, apart from providing us the same kind of advise of their northern counterparts, would have to help usunderstanding which public personas are best fit to embody the communication campaign that we need in order to makeBarthema Fund, and especially EuMena , a milestone in Mediterranean cultural history.

EuMena its an Cyber-Installation, an informational flux, the telematic equivalent of Heraclitus river.Any registered individual can post a document that he consider relevant for the understanding of our coexistence in theMediterranean. It can be anything, from an abstract of an Ibn Khaldoun text, to an episode in the life of an ancestor, to arevealing personal experience.Any of this documents will appear of EuMena website for a given time, before leaving his place to the next upload of the next

person, and to disappear.This collective monument to the impermanence represent a huge challenge.How long will be able to last before dying, for lack of contributions?What would the eventual exhaustion of the will mean, if anything?In a way EuMena its like the fire at the time of Prometheus, it should not let die.Like hope in the future.


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and Barthema Fund:

The ContestThe Contest is neither about Screenplays nor Concepts. Each competitors have to present a package that include:1 page Concept + a Rough Scenes Breakdown (no literary form, no dialogues, just facts)

I came up with this idea while I was listening to an interview to Jim Chanos 1, the legendary American short seller that was thefirst in calling Enrons bluff. Chanos was telling how in China it is considered normal for the apartments to be sold unfinished,with no equipment or even tiles. Since many Chinese peoples do buy apartment out of speculations, the more impersonal theyare, the more liquid (easier to be sold). The same is true for a (mainstream) screenplay .And by liquid I mean not just the right price, but also a quality of openness. A completed screenplay shows just one story, for good or for bad. It is way costlier to change a completed script that to write another one from scratch.

Writing a mainstream screenplay is a lot of hard (and highly qualified) work. Writing it on speculation(no commission) israther rare. Finding not just one , but enough high value scripts (already written) that fits into Barthema agenda, enough of them

so that we can set up a real Contest is, clearly, the ultimate mission impossible.But that represent a huge opportunity for us to promote the Contest and its objectives, to harness young peoples talent.If everything were simple we would miss the chance to tap into the enthusiasm of the same people that we expect to have as our audience, once the movies will be released.

Who will establish the values hierarchy among the proposed subjects? Great question!First of all, there will be a rough selection that would be performed on-line by the people who will chose and ranks the projects.Once we will have a more reasonable number, the task will be completed by an international jury, composed by three kind of

players: producers, screen players and distributors. The only difference with movie contest (admittedly a huge one) is thatinstead of awarding the accomplishment they would award the relevance and the potential . In just one plain word: the concept .

1 http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10960
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10960http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10960


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Salam Aleikum


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and peace be with you


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StakeholdersPotential Stakeholders, for different reasons are all the Italian companies that maintain trading operations with Maghreb.

But also Maghrebis National Energy Companies and the Governments, that run a trade surplus and have therefore the means(bilaterally speaking) to contribute to Barthema Fund.

Stakeholder would also be all financial institutions that have substantial activities in the Maghreb, both local or Italians.In light of media attitude and their never-ending quest for controversies, it could be advisable not to involve any Big PublicCompany and to stick, instead, with some of the many privately owned SME (engineering, energy) that hold relevant activitiesin Maghreb. Moreover Barthema Fund should not be explicitly availed by the Italian Government and instead appear to be just anew episode of the fluid ongoing Region-to-State bilateral relations that are that are increasingly happening.When it comes with the institutional level, therefore, some italian regions (Lombardia, Piemonte,Veneto, Emilia Romagna,Toscana, Lazio, Campania e Sicilia) have, by themselves, a (nominal) GDP that is comparable to that of some states on thesouthern shore. Only a handfull of these Regions, though, meet our stricter conditions:-The presence on its territory of some important Banking Foundation.-A strong industrial base.

-Direct access to the sea (the absence of which, at least on a symbolic level, would have sounded weird).


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How much money does Barthema need?

This documents is thought as a long pitch.There are so many different way of bring it about that to put a price on it would be an exercise in guessing.If, nevertheless, I were to be requested to make a back-of-the-envelop calculation I would say: depending of the number of countries involved, the kind of communications campaigns, the quantity and quality of the collateral initiatives, the cost of the

jury, etc. from of a million to infinite.Im pretty convinced that of a million would be a decent budget, that would allow us to do a lot of things.These are, nevertheless, considerations that need a much more thorough examination.Just consider what you get.EuMena alone, is, in itself, as a piece of relational art , worth way more than the entire budget.Just imagine what Sophie Calle would create were she interested in the social side of things rather than in the personal.In fact, even her 2007 Venice Biennal work, Take Care of Yourself , though collective, was really much the sum of individualexperiences.Leaving aside the uncountable value provided by the dissemination of ideas, the creation of an audience and the consolidation of

a shared conscience, there are more measurable one.The treatments the Barthema fund receive are up to be commercially exploited.What we have is raw material but development cost are cost nevertheless. In a mainstream movie the screenplay account for 5% of the total budget. Do your own math. If you subtract Barthemas expenditures to the Final price of a couple of MainstreamScripts you will see that we are actually making money. There are countless way to recoup the small money allocated in the

budget. The most obvious is the development of a symbiotic relation with a publisher that might be interested in create content based upon the findings of Barthema Fund.Having said that even Hollywood, with all its might, is a small industry if we compare it to Goldman Sachs or Exxon.I recommend you that we never loose the right perspective. A cultural initiative should be judged according to parameters thatare not exclusively financials. It is in nobodys interest to throw money without getting benefits, but it is also true that with suchsmall figures, even the highest possible returns would mean nothing in absolute terms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_Arthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_Art


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Conclusions:

Time has come to work for a deeper Mediterranean integration.Cinema can be of great help in providing the public with food for thought.Unfortunately, for all its great strength, the Cinema, alone, cannot reach a sufficiently broad audience.It is, therefore, imperative, to expand the potential pool since the very beginning of the storytelling process.With two complementary initiatives, each of them unprecedented:EuMena and Barthema Fund will help build a bridge able to support a stronger relation between Italy and Maghreb. Help theaccumulation of intellectual capital that will enhance both international clout and political initiative vis--vis other established

players. A relation strong enough will also re-balance the geopolitical weight while enhancing Maghreb standing as an haven of stability, vis--vis other regions, riven with conflicts.

Barthema Fund (working title)

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