Europe: Film production is up but audiences fall

A total of 921 feature films were produced in the 27 member states of the European Union in 2007, according to the European Audiovisual Observatory after a provisional data collection. Indians must be laughing at these numbers as India produces about 1000 films a year. But how many of theses Indian films could compete at international levels, would contest Europeans. The report is published on www.iefilmi.com.

There are two highlights of this EU report; the production of films is slightly up, but the number of audiences in cinema halls is falling down. In 2007, cinema attendance in the European Union was 919 million tickets sold whereas, in 2006, it was 932 million admissions.

This data includes for the first time production figures from the two new EU member states, Bulgaria and Romania, and historic figures have been adjusted to reflect this change. Based on these adjusted figures, European production levels for entirely national and majority co-productions have increased by 1.1% year-on-year and by an annual average of 5.1% since 2003 (754 feature films).