BY AUSTIN BURBRIDGE. SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA (CINEMA MINIMA) — The 2008 American Film Market offers plenty of movies for sale, but very few buyers. Independent movie producers have enjoyed easy credit and cash, while big business’ stranglehold on media has nearly eliminated the possibility of independent distribution.
This marks the climax of a trend: Banks and capitalists — in the recent free-market orgasm of cheap credit and surplus cash — had pumped money into independent film production. Independent producers — always grateful for funds regardless of source — took the money and made movies. Many, many movies.
Unfortunately, movie makers had failed to consult distributors beforehand, about the prospects for putting their entertainments before audiences.
Distributors have been suffering another — less favorable — trend, also driven by the triumph of the free market over government regulation. Big media corporations — with the connivance of American politicians — have executed a kind of pincer movement to throttle independent distribution of motion-picture entertainment.
In America in the 1990s, rules to promote competition were eliminated. Big business was permitted to consolidate, to eliminate competition, thereby to control every aspect of cinema from production, to distribution, to exhibition. Today, only a handful of companies control most ways to see a movie, whether in theaters, by broadcast, cable, or DVD — in effect, a cartel.
Now — with enthusiastic participation by the Motion Picture Association of America — American big business is on the verge of eliminating open and competitive access to the Internet by independent companies. The practical effect would be that media companies — which own local cable/Internet monopolies throughout America — would decide what Web sites and which Internet services its subscribers would be permitted to use; and according to the amount they would be willing to pay. The Independent Film & Television Alliance — which organizes the American Film Market — opposes this, in favor of Net Neutrality.
Worldwide, the demand has slackened for independently-financed movies. Multinational media corporations lobby governments internationally, that the same deregulation by which they have come to control media in USA should be enacted everywhere in the name of free trade — taking advantage of popular superstition that globalization is inevitable.
Without a level playing field for competition, independently-financed motion pictures will find few ways to reach audiences.
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