Film is a powerful medium for expressing cultural and social meanings, discussing political ideas and values, and driving economic growth. Since its foundation, the European Union (EU) has recognised and sought to exploit the potential of European film for such purposes. The EU also regards European film as a cultural heritage to be preserved and passed on to the future.

EU cultural policy is based on intertwined cultural, political, and economic interests. Since 1991, the EU has been supporting the European film industry through the Creative Europe MEDIA programme to encourage the development, distribution, and promotion of European audiovisual works.

The main challenges for the European film industry have been the low circulation of European films outside their countries of production and its low competitiveness compared to the US film industry.

The challenge is real and difficult to address. For example, in the EU Strategy on European Film in the Digital Era, the European Commission noted that 63% of all films released in the EU in 2012 were European, but only 33% of admissions were to European films. Meanwhile, US productions accounted for 20% of releases and 65% of admissions. Over the past decade, there hasn’t been much change in the productivity and circulation of European films, despite EU support. The market share of US productions in the EU was 58% in 2021 and 63% in 2022.

To increase the competitiveness of the European film industry, the European Commission is funding research projects to provide a comprehensive understanding of the industry and different perspectives on its challenges. The REBOOT project seeks to identify the strengths and gaps in the competitiveness of the European film industry and to explore emerging audiences.

The heritage meanings can inspire audiences and thus be used to promote European films. However, there are several challenges involved.

Multiple objectives of EU film policy

The EU approaches and regulates the European film industry from different and sometimes contradictory perspectives. The first decade of EU audiovisual policy focused on the integration of the European film market on the one hand, and the celebration of cinematic art by emphasising its cultural and linguistic diversity on the other. This balancing act between commerce and art, as described by Anna Herold, Head of the European Commission’s Audiovisual and Media Services Policy Unit, has recently been extended to other policy objectives.

EU film policy has increasingly emphasised the twin goals of strengthening the competitiveness of the European film industry and using European film as a tool in the EU’s external relations.

Over the past decade, EU film policy has increasingly emphasised the twin goals of strengthening the competitiveness of the European film industry in Europe and beyond and using European film as a tool in the EU’s external relations. This emphasis has expanded the EU’s film policy balancing act to include new components, global competitiveness and public diplomacy.

In addition, identity policy goals have from the very beginning encompassed EU film policy, as well as EU cultural policy in general. Such policies seek to promote the idea of Europe as a cultural and value-based space. The Creative Europe programme, for example, states in its first two sentences that “cultural and creative sectors are part of European identity” and that their expressions manifest, among other things, common values.

Film as Europe’s cultural heritage

EU policy considers film as an important European cultural heritage that manifests the cultural diversity of Europeans and allows to learn about the continent’s past. Therefore, the EU has developed policies to protect this heritage.

As early as 2004, the European Commission stated in its communication on the legal aspects of cinematographic and other audiovisual works: “In order to ensure that the European film heritage is passed down to future generations, it has to be systematically collected, catalogued, preserved and restored.” In this regard, the Commission recommended the establishment in each Member State of special institutes for the preservation and promotion of film heritage at national level.

The EU’s interest in preserving Europe’s film heritage has been closely linked to the goal of increasing access to audiovisual content through digitisation.

The EU’s interest in preserving Europe’s film heritage has been closely linked to the goal of increasing access to audiovisual content through digitisation. Throughout the 2000s, the EU has sought to remove various technical and legal barriers to digitised cultural content and to increase access to cultural heritage through digital technologies and shared platforms. The first of these platforms, Europeana, was launched in 2008.

The EU’s latest attempt to share digital cultural heritage, including film, builds on the Commission’s 2021 recommendation for a common European data space for cultural heritage.

Researchers Tuuli Lähdesmäki, Sigrid Kaasik-Krogerus and Katja Mäkinen have noted that EU policy on audiovisual heritage is about the interplay between medium and content. When the policy focuses on the medium, films, television, and radio programmes are considered a heritage in themselves. When the policy focuses on content, film, television, and radio are treated as audiovisual tools for conveying content, such as events and sites, regarded as cultural heritage.

In some EU initiatives, such as A Season of Classic Films organised since 2019, these heritage meanings are inseparable. In this initiative, classic European films have been screened at historic venues and major film festivals across Member States, showcasing the restoration of old films and the European history, traditions, and heritage they convey.

Films convey personal cultural heritage

Although EU policy acknowledges film as a cultural heritage, it has not yet recognised the more intimate heritage meanings that film can have for individuals. These meanings were revealed while researching European Film Festivals, also known as EU Film Festivals, organised by EU delegations with the embassies and cultural attachés of EU Member States and local film organisations in third countries. Such festivals have been organised without explicit funding since 1985, but in 2018 the European Commission launched a special support instrument to better coordinate their implementation.

European Film Festivals screen recent films from EU countries and organise various film-related side events for film professionals and audiences. For the EU, the main objective of these festivals is to strengthen public diplomacy, dialogue, and cooperation between the EU and third countries and their various stakeholders within and outside the film industry.

The festivals also aim to contribute to a more positive image of the EU and to promote European ideas and values. Through the screening of recent films and the organisation of side events, festivals also contribute to the promotion of European film outside Europe.

European ex-patriates and migrants and citizens with a European background and their families form an important audience for festivals in multicultural metropolises.

REBOOT project researchers Tuuli Lähdesmäki, Mafalda Dâmaso, Kaisa Hiltunen, Ruken Doğu Erdede, Elif Akçalı, and Melis Behlil examined the organisation of European Film Festivals through grey literature and interviews with EU delegations and festival organisers in eight non-EU countries, namely Argentina, Canada, Chile, Indonesia, South Africa, Türkiye, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam. The data from two of these countries, the UK and Canada, differed slightly from the others.

Tuuli Lähdesmäki’s analysis of the data from the UK and Canada showed that European films have a specific heritage meaning that is not addressed in the EU film policy. This meaning is based on film as a transmission of personal cultural heritage, including historical, cultural and family related elements that shape one’s identity and sense of belonging to a cultural group.

The UK and Canada include populations and/or large numbers of migrants and ex-patriates with heritage and cultural roots in (continental) Europe. According to interviews with festival organisers, European ex-patriates and migrants and citizens with a European background and their families form an important audience for festivals in multicultural metropolises, such as London, Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver. Such audiences are eager to see European films from their (or their parents’, grandparents’ or relatives’) home countries, to experience their culture, cultural roots, and cultural environment, and to hear their native language. For them, watching European films is motivated by the films’ ability to convey personal cultural heritage.

Heritage meanings in audience development

EU cultural policy discourses have identified film as a cultural heritage and have initiated policies to promote and safeguard film as such. Film as heritage is also mentioned in the guidelines for European Film Festival organisers.

However, neither the policies nor the guidelines recognise the intimate heritage meanings that European films can have. Such a heritage meaning is important for a specific audience segment, which could be better recognised as a potential market niche for European films.

However, the promotion of European films for audiences with European cultural roots in third countries is not without risks and challenges due to Europe’s colonialist and imperialist past. In countries with colonial histories, the promotion of European films for audiences with European cultural roots is problematic, especially in the context of the European Film Festivals, which aim to strengthen international cultural relations and intercultural dialogue. The challenges of promoting European films and Europe through the EU-initiated festival were acknowledged in our South African data.

Heritage meanings of European films are important for a specific audience segment, which could be better recognised as a potential market niche for European films.

In general, niche marketing of European films for specific audiences faces practical challenges, since the resources used for the promotion of the European films are modest compared to more competitive industries, such as the US film industry and Hollywood productions.

Audiences have different reasons for watching films. Personal heritage meanings are one of them. Such meanings could be better recognised in the development of audiences for European films. However, such niche marketing must avoid the risk of underlining European colonial legacies in third countries.

PhD, DSocSc Tuuli Lähdesmäki is an associate professor of art history at the University of Jyväskylä and the PI of the consortium partnership in the REBOOT project.

Article image: Aneta Pawlik / Unsplash

Julkaisu Heritage meanings of European film and their potential for audience development ilmestyi ensimmäisenä Politiikasta.

The presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU) rotates among the member states every six months. The Council is a key decision-making body within the EU, representing the member states’ governments. The host states of the presidency commonly organise conferences delving into contemporary European issues and timely debates.

This spring, the host country, Belgium, invited two hundred European cultural policymakers and representatives of cultural and heritage institutions and networks to a conference entitled “Unity in Diversity? Culture, Heritage and Identity in Europe” to discuss “the role of culture and heritage in the formation and expression of European identity.”

During the past decade, many previous hosts have organised conferences on the same topic. This article discusses why the EU is fascinated with European identity and what it does with it. The approach to the topic draws on my previous research projects exploring EU cultural and heritage initiatives and their governance.

The project results broaden the view of the topic by including in the discussion citizens’ notions of Europe and European identity.  The article is based on my talk at the above-mentioned conference in Antwerp, taking place from the 15th to the 16th of April 2024.

Competing European projects

EU communication often refers to a European project. It means the EU’s aspirations towards a unified, collaborative, prosperous, and peaceful Europe based on common values and an identity drawing on shared culture and heritage.

The idea of linked European culture, heritage, and identity has obsessed European policymakers since the establishment of the European Community in 1957. The idea has remained topical due to various social, political, economic, and humanitarian challenges or crises that the EU and its European project have faced during the past decades.

The EU is not the only actor interested in a European project. The narrative of Europe as a distinct area with common values, culture, and heritage is attractive to many different groups.

The EU is not the only actor interested in a European project. The narrative of Europe as a distinct area with common values, culture, and heritage is attractive to many different groups. These include the European Identitarian Movement, which is an ethnocultural movement asserting the cultural and territorial rights of European-descended peoples, and many radical right-wing parties.

They seek to promote an exclusive idea of Europe and thus justify their xenophobic, anti-immigration, antisemitic, Islamophobic, and racist attitudes and actions. This kind of narrative contradicts the EU’s inclusive European project, which seeks to increase dialogue, inclusion, and a sense of belonging among all people living in Europe.

Tackling challenges with culture and heritage

For the European policymakers, culture and heritage are instruments to tackle the challenges impacting the EU’s European project. This is reflected, for instance, in the European Commission’s increasing interest in cultural heritage in its policy discourse (see Figure 1). During the past decade, the Commission has launched several new policies, actions, and initiatives addressing cultural heritage.

Besides the Commission, the European Parliament has been active for decades in supporting the preservation of cultural heritage and communication about Europe’s cultural memory and history. The House of European History, the Parliament’s history museum, opened in Brussels in 2017, is a flagship of these activities.

Figure 1. Increase of documents (n = 4212) including the search term ’cultural heritage’ in the EU’s official document database EUR-Lex under the domain ’EU law and case law’ from 1957 to 2023. Seven hits from 1957 have been ignored as these documents were consolidated versions of EU treaties dating from 1997 to 2010. © Tuuli Lähdesmäki

Many of the EU’s cultural and heritage initiatives have ambitious objectives, such as “counter[ing] racism and xenophobia and encourag[ing] greater tolerance for other cultures across Europe” and “invit[ing] Europe to respond to the social, political, and economic challenges of the culture sector“, as the European Commission’s website describes the aims of the European Heritage Days.

The key political utility of culture and cultural heritage draws on their potential effect on people’s feelings. Professor Kiral Klaus Patel has underlined this aspect by noting how EU cultural policy is designed “to win the hearts and minds” of European citizens. The policy discourse in the EU’s broad cultural programmes, such as the current Creative Europe programme, explicitly refers to European identity and defines the strengthening of it as one of the priorities of the programme.

Since the 1990s, several scholars have criticised the concept of identity for emphasising it as fixed instead of a process in which our understanding of ourselves and others constantly transforms.

In addition to European identity, many EU cultural and heritage initiatives seek to “increase citizens’ sense of belonging to a common cultural area”, as the decision of the European Capital of Culture says, or aim at “strengthening European citizens’ sense of belonging to the Union” and “common space”, as the decision of the European Heritage Label says.

The emphasis on belonging in EU policy discourse reflects the conceptual debate on identity in scholarship. Since the 1990s, several scholars have criticised the concept of identity for emphasising it as fixed instead of a process in which our understanding of ourselves and others constantly transforms.

These scholars, such as Elspeth Probyn, Marco Antonsich, and Nira Yuval-Davis, have noted how the concept of belonging enables us to capture more accurately people’s changing needs and desires for attachment to other people, places, or modes of being. Belonging is a less definitive concept: one may feel belonging to something, such as Europe, but may not necessarily identify with it, and thus does not have European identity.

What do the participants in EU cultural initiatives think about Europe?

My research team and I have studied how people participating in EU cultural initiatives perceive the European dimension of culture and how they associate with Europe. The first of these studies explored the visitors of three European Capitals of Culture: Pécs2010 in Hungary, Tallinn2011 in Estonia, and Turku2011 in Finland.

The European Capital of Culture is the EU’s flagship cultural initiative, wherein the European Commission annually designates European cities with this title. The data for this study included 1425 survey responses gathered among the visitors to cultural events in the cities.

The responses revealed diverse ways of perceiving ‘the European’ in the European Capitals of Culture. The most common responses addressed the respondents’ everyday experiences of encountering European people – artists, performers, and visitors from other European countries – and enjoying works of art and events created or produced by such artists and performers.

The lack of history in the responses can be interpreted in several ways. For instance, history is often related to identity formation at the national, not the European, level.

Moreover, the respondents recognised and identified ‘the European’ through whatProfessor Michael Billig calls “banal” forms of culture. These forms included well-known symbols of the EU, such as the EU flag, and easily recognised features of diversity in Europe, such as people speaking and performing in foreign languages. ‘The European’ was, thus, mostly perceived from a pragmatic point of view and not drawing on the content of culture.

The respondents rarely discussed ‘the European’ as based on common European culture, history, heritage, traditions, monuments, or historical sites. When they did, they were likely to be highly educated. In general, the notions of ‘the European’ in the data were notably non-historical.

The lack of history in the responses can be interpreted in several ways. For instance, history is often related to identity formation at the national, not the European, level. History, heritage, and traditions were indeed more often discussed in the data related to local, regional, and national culture.

Two approaches to Europe

The second study focused on the European Heritage Label, the EU’s flagship heritage initiative through which the European Commission biannually awards European cultural heritage sites. The study included 271 visitor interviews conducted in 2017 and 2018 at 11 labelled sites in ten European countries. The interviews reveal two main approaches to Europe, namely the ‘Europe of people’ and ‘Europe of nations’.

The first approach is characterised by pragmatism: the interviewees emphasised people’s personal agency and potential to contribute to making Europe. For them, the notion of Europe commonly drew from their experiences of being mobile in Europe and connecting and interacting with people with diverse national and cultural backgrounds.

The interviewees also were asked to describe what European identity is like and whether they feel European themselves. Most of the interviewees felt European, but it was much more difficult for them to describe European identity.

In the second approach, the interviewees underlined Europe as an entity consisting of bounded geographical areas, such as nations and regions, with specific cultural characteristics. These interviewees greatly valued the cultural and national differences inside the EU and regarded them as worth preserving.

The interviewees also were asked to describe what European identity is like and whether they feel European themselves. Most of the interviewees felt European, but it was much more difficult for them to describe European identity. Some of them criticised the concept for being too restrictive and having exclusive and static connotations.

Let’s keep talking about European identity

There is a broad body of literature seeking to define Europe, ‘the European’, and European identity. Some scholars have identified different models of understanding European identity, such as cultural, civic, political, and pragmatic models. Others have sought to identify certain historical phases and phenomena, such as Hellenist aesthetics, Roman law, Christianity, and modernity, characterising European culture and identity.

In recent literature, Europe is commonly perceived as a conceptual entity that has been both historically and philosophically a “moving target” and, thus, so “elusive that it is doubtful whether [it has] any reality at all outside the imagination”, as scholars Ullrich Kockel, Máiréad Nic Craith, and Jonas Frykman have noted.

In recent literature, Europe is commonly perceived as a conceptual entity that has been both historically and philosophically a “moving target”.

Europe is an idea, discourse, and narrative, and thus, there are several Europes and European cultures, heritages, and identities. We cannot ever find a final definition of them since they are plural and constantly transforming. All definitions are inevitably exclusive and inadequate.

More important than finding definitions is, that we keep discussing Europe, ‘the European’, and European identity, and that diverse people in Europe participate in these discussions and bring to the debates their views and experiences.

Moreover, it is crucial that all of us are willing to listen to others’ views and experiences, have a dialogue with them, and broaden our own understanding of Europe. The key role of the EU in this is to support actors and projects seeking to create spaces, events, and platforms for such discussions, listening, and dialogue. 

PhD, DSocSc Tuuli Lähdesmäki is an associate professor of art history at the University of Jyväskylä.

Article image: Antoine Schibler / Unsplash

Julkaisu European identity – The EU’s obsession and opportunity ilmestyi ensimmäisenä Politiikasta.