Budgets and Markets

Chapter 3 Audiences

Producers should be aware, too, of the age of the cinema audience. It is probable that most European film producers are in their 40s or older. They grew up in an era when cinema was incontestably superior to television. Probably, they fell in love with movies in a privileged environment, at college for example, and were exposed to films from all over the world that were among the most important expressions of ideas and emotions at that time. In the 1960s and 1970s, educated European cinema-goers waited with real enthusiasm for the latest offerings from Brazil or Argentina.

All that has changed. There is almost nothing in common between the experience of today's film-goers and the young cineastes of the past. Those young cineastes ...