10:45 AM - Noon
Session co-Sponsored by Digital Coast Roundtable and
TIES TransAtlantic Information Exchange Service
Session B:
The EU and the US - Facing the Entertainment Globalization Process: Two Visions for Preserving - Promoting National Industries and Cultures
Those are the terms which seem to illustrate the Euopean-American trench war regarding movies and more generally the entertainment sector. This war is now lasting for decades. Will it go on for one or two more decades? Or are we arriving at a turning point with the strong effects of globalisation cumulated with the evolution towards multimedia industries and the emerging of new generations of authors, producers, directors and audiences? Are those terms of the debate as clear-cut as each side would like to make us believe? Is the recent revival of French movies at the box office in France and in Europe only due to the European protective environment or is it also the result of a new generation of directors ready to compete with US models in a European way? Is the US market so "free" when non-US movies have barely a chance to be distributed throughout the theaters in the country because of the US industry run those theaters? Some of the most recent European/French blockbusters are definitely products of an industrial approach as well as the US is seeing the strong development of an independant cinema refusing the "industry standarts" constraints. On the "copyright front", don't we also see a blurring frontier between positions at a time when the issues on intellectual property are more and more determined by evolutions taking place on and around the Internet? And with the growing business integration between Europe and the USA in the multimedia industry, how long will divergence last? Last but not least, and what is going on with the rest of the world, the non-EU, non-US movies? Which area (EU or US) is more opened to them? What will the EU and US position be in 2010 regarding the movie/entertainment industry in a global context? Industrially packaged productions will certainly fit the "uniformized" side of globalisation. But culturally diverse creations will definitely appeal to the other side of globalisation generating a quest for "roots", "cultural identities" and "inventiveness."
Mr. Bruno DELAYE, Director Culture, French Foreign Affairs Ministry
Mr. Pascal ROGARD, European Motion Picture Directors Association
Vivendi-Universal, speaker to be announced
Speakers to be announced