By Daniel Janssen
Staff Writer
After several years of considerable budget cuts in cultural spending, a drastic change in mentality seems to have hit the Dutch Government. Last week’s decision to stimulate the country’s film industry with €20 million was not only a pleasant surprise for many Dutch filmmakers, but the national population seems to be satisfied with the monetary support. Within a country that is often critical of its own audiovisual productions, what will this significant change in funds mean?
In light of the global film industry, the Netherlands has been quite conservative in their spending. The “main player” in governmental spending on film is the Dutch Film Fund, which is granted a sum of around €27 million to distribute every year. Before you start to think that this is already a lot of money, consider this: The 50th most expensive film ever made (Shrek 3) still worked with a budget six times the size of the entire budget for Dutch film (165 million). Black Book, one of the most internationally renowned Dutch films, set the record for “most expensive Dutch film of all time” with a budget of merely €18 million. This is just an illustration of the difficulty of actualizing your film in the Netherlands: it is an art of its own.
Because the lack of a solid market in Dutch film, most of her producers rely on their government for funding. To bring about a project that requires more than a budget that looks like casual change to most of Hollywood, filmmakers from the Netherlands are forced to look for funding abroad. Unfortunately, the Dutch “talent drain” in film is just as much detrimental to the quality of films in the Netherlands as it is disadvantageous to the Dutch economy: jobs disappear and the Dutch GDP decreases whilst that of other countries is stimulated.
On that note, one can see the answer to the aforementioned question: €20 million can mean the world to the Dutch film industry. This sum would nearly double the figures for film in the Netherlands. It’s still no Hollywood, but it is more than just a push in the right direction.
Daniel Janssen, class of 2015, is a Psychology and International Relations major from Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands
