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Nostradamus 2024: Paradox of Hope · Industry Insights - The EFM Podcast

• 0:00
  JOHANNA: Welcome to Industry Insights, the EFM podcast presented by the European Film Market of the Berlinale. This year-round podcast puts the spotlight on topical and trendsetting industry issues, and it's produced in cooperation with Goethe-Institut and co-funded by Creative Europe Media. My name is Johanna Koljonen, and in addition to being one of the hosts of this show, I spend a great part of my time thinking about the near future of the screen industries in the context of the Nostradamus project of the Göteborg Film Festival. For now 11 consecutive years, I've written an annual report on the near future of the screen industries, and the latest one was released about a week ago at the Marché du Film in Cannes. These reports are based in great part on interviews with experts who have strategic perspectives on the industry, and today we're going to hear from one of them, Tabitha Jackson, a consultant, film executive and member of the Motion Picture Academy. Currently a Shorenstein Documentary Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, and previously, among many other things, director of the Sundance Film Festival. I'm so looking forward to our conversation, but before I invite Tabitha in, I'll take five minutes to walk you through the core findings of this year's Nostradamus report. It's called Paradox of Hope.
• 1:31
  JOHANNA: This year's Nostradamus report is called Paradox of Hope, and this is why. Pretty much everything about the film and TV industries is broken or unsustainable. This goes for our business models, our distribution, our funding structures, our audience relationships, our workplace cultures. Theatrical exhibition is struggling, the market correction in streaming has had brutal effects across the landscape, many people are losing their jobs, and at this precise moment, the industry also has to deal with a dramatic transformation of almost the entire production process, brought about by the new possibilities in virtual production and generative AI, as well as dealing with the new competition from outside the current industry that's made possible by those exact same tools. All of this is happening, of course, in a wider context of the rapidly escalating climate crisis, wars, famines, food insecurity, inflation, and higher costs of living. The world is pretty dark, and the industry fundamentally is not working. We're releasing way too many films in cinemas because we still lack the structures that could reliably offer other paths to market, and our sector is totally dominated by a handful of global media and technology companies. And finally, there's the pressure from all the other audiovisual media that are taking time and mind share with audiences of all ages. It's absolutely possible, a totally realistic scenario for the near future, that traditional film companies and a traditional kind of film storytelling will become rapidly marginalized and possibly obsolete. And yet, paradoxically, many people in our industry are feeling hope, and even a strange sort of relief that the boom years are over, and that we're finally working in an environment where decisions and numbers at least make some kind of sense. Film sales have been positive this year. Theatrical audiences are returning, and they're returning disproportionately to arthouse film. In markets, I should say, where audience development has been invested in, it's really starting to pay off. And everywhere there are strong signals that moviegoers and TV watchers are attracted to quality storytelling and to complex, even uncomfortable narratives. Great film art keeps getting made, and it keeps getting seen. So, in the nightmare scenario, we go on as we have. We make work, but have lower profits and higher levels of bankruptcies and burnouts every year.
• 4:12
  JOHANNA: But there is an alternative path, and that's what this year's Nostradamus Report sketches out. And that path won't be easy, but it is possible. We need to scale up the innovations in distribution and exhibition that have already proved successful to get our films in front of audiences, including in the theatres, which are not necessarily doomed. But to do that, we need to learn from each other and collaborate. We need to lower our financial risk and diversify our business models and slates. And to do that, we need to learn from each other and collaborate. And we really do have to leverage the efficiencies that are being made possible by new technologies to keep our production costs sustainable. And that will involve new tools, new workflows and a great deal of professional training, which we also have to do together because ours is a largely freelance workforce. So if we're not learning at the same pace across our local industries, we very soon won't have anyone qualified to work with. And finally, we need to centre the human in our art, in our work practices, and even in what we greenlight, not basing decisions on what it's possible to finance, but on whether there are real identifiable people out there yearning for those stories.
• 5:35
  JOHANNA: In summary then, the 2024 Nostradamus report finds that our industry has to rebalance our focus from just making the work towards also doing the work of building real audience relationships, because those are the foundation of every sustainable business model. And doing that requires us to flip a mental switch from a competition mindset towards an ecosystem mindset, where collaborating and sharing resources becomes a way to grow the total market for everyone. Can we do that? And also, am I just totally off in my analysis? To find out, I have invited onto the show one of the experts whose wisdom guided me in this process, Tabitha Jackson. Welcome to Industry Insights.
• 6:14
  TABITHA: Thank you so much, Johanna. It's such a privilege to be here, and it was so much fun talking to you as part of your putting the report together.
• 6:24
  JOHANNA: I really would have liked just to publish an unedited version of our very sort of sprawling conversation. That would have been fun, but at least we have this little moment together now.
• 6:33
  TABITHA: Well, listeners, if you love sprawling conversations, stay tuned, because I'm not going to give you crisp data and insights in that way. But I do think this conversation about industry and similarly powerful conversation about culture is really necessary in seeing how the two things link together.
• 6:54
  JOHANNA: Well, maybe let's start there. Is what I'm saying making sense to you? And already you were pointing at this sort of tension between industry and culture. What are you thinking of there?
• 7:06
  TABITHA: Well, yeah, I mean, your summary is really pithy. It does make sense, particularly, I particularly respond to the notion of collaboration as, you know, it's not simply innovation. It's a kind of response to an existential crisis that I think we have in the independent field around structures and systems and breakdowns of trust. I think collaboration is going to be an essential tool of survival for the people who make and distribute and exhibit this work. So that I really responded to positively. The thing that, as you allude to in the report, feels contentious is the notion that there are too many films, too many films in theatres. It depends where you're standing, as with all this work. It depends on what your perspective is and what your purpose is as an individual or an institution. Would we say, I think you quote this in the report, do we say there are too many books? The publishing industry might, but readers and cultures probably wouldn't. The question is, how do we find the work that feels meaningful to us and has value for us as a culture? And how do we make an industry sustainable that can continue to amplify the meaningful work and the reflection of multiple perspectives?
• 8:34
  JOHANNA: Yeah, and I think the comparison to book publishing is actually really good because we also have this whole landscape, even though the balance is quite different in books, because writing a book is such a high threshold task, but we do have self-publishing and these kinds of structures there as well. And a very small amount of people even who are working professionally as authors are making their sort of full living off the commercial market. So I think it's a very fair comparison. I think I should probably clarify to the listeners that really what I'm saying is kind of, I mean, I do agree with you. I don't think we have too many films being, too many stories being told. That's not it. It's just that the current situation, it's too many to be sustainable within the financial structures that we are relying on. So we know that it's always been a gamble, that sort of theatrical window hasn't been profitable for quite a lot of the films, but it's been an investment into the later windows. And when that sort of chain collapses or is undermined or stops working and we just keep making films, then what happens there is that we don't build up any wealth or any ownership in this production company. So the financial security of those companies and I think the physical and mental health of the people working in the industry is taking that toll. We keep working, but we're stretched thinner and thinner. And we're approaching a point where a lot of people will leave or are leaving and a lot of companies are disappearing. So from that sense, it is too much. It's too much to bear. Too many films to bear in the work sense.
• 10:21
  TABITHA: So then the question for me is not, and I'm not suggesting this is your question either, it's not how do we reduce the number of films being made. It's how do we curate differently. And that is something that you raise in the report. But also how do we change the systems and structures to accommodate what we think is culturally valuable? So I think some of the things, I think this is an incredible synthesis of this moment with your big brain and some, you know, a few perspectives from respected people in the field. I have a few kind of questions for you about it. Like, for example, the word “story”, which you just used, I said “film”, you said “stories”. “Story” is such a powerful, it's such a powerful term and it is one that is being used about everything because “story” has been commodified so successfully as the thing that people respond to find satisfying. It's a primitive and deeply human way of communicating our world. But it is also now a deeply commodified unit. I don't have a problem with “story” per se, but when everything is “story”, including what the industry will support and distribute, that's the only unit of creative expression or understanding the world that is valued in monetary terms. I think that's dangerous for the culture and I think the role of our creative endeavor and including the industrialized bit of it is in some sense to help us understand the world and it really affects our behavior, whether that's from elections to who we trust. So I think the form is one thing, so that word “story”. The other word which comes up in the report is “good”. If we could, you know, support the good films rather than the mediocre one, which is a whole podcast in itself about who gets to determine what is good and on what basis.
• 12:29
  JOHANNA: And “quality”, I think, is that word. It's a policy word.
• 12:34
  TABITHA: Right. And “quality” is still a subjective term, which you totally acknowledge and you describe the report describes what it means by “quality”. But I think these are things which also speak to why is it our, I think the range of perspectives that you brought, probably minus mine, incredibly useful at giving us a temperature check on what is happening in Europe and the US. But as we talk about the financial viability of this of this endeavor of filmmaking, there's a whole world, which is the global majority, which is where obviously the biggest audiences are, which is, which are not necessarily represented in this report. And I just wondered if you felt that that was a fair insight and how you thought about that when you when you chose the people.
• 13:35
  JOHANNA: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And actually, that's two different questions. So but let's start with the world. I think it's really clear that I mean, in a similar way that we say this is a report about the screen industries, but we tend to center the sort of film and TV perspective or the perspective of the traditional industry, because that is who we're working for. And of course, the report is commissioned by a film festival and film market as well. In a similar way, we talk about the world. But what often happens when you speak to professionals in North America and in Europe, the rest of the world is a place where talent comes from, and where you export films, right to their audiences there. And there are individual storytellers there, but the local industries are kind of secondary important. That's how it's how it's perceived. And I think it's also that's also a bandwidth issue. I think that a lot of people, of course, we can't think about everything. And it varies year by year. But I would say that I have found that I am individually and onto this project is being most useful with the European standpoint that we may be even started slightly with a sort of northern European perspective. But it's sometimes you have to some years we have to write a lot about what's happening in the US because there are companies there and dynamics there that are so dominant and have such effects on the global landscape. And when the streamers started to expand, that was very much it. And right now, I think I have turned this year to Europe and to specifically to independent film in North America, because I think we're in similar situations. And our relationship to this power dominance by this small handful of companies, including I think the US majors arguably would still kind of from from the perspective of indie film are also part of that sort of dominant layer. Is that the question becomes well, we can't really fight like financially, we don't really have the scale, even though some people in Europe are trying where it's very difficult to compete on budgets and compete on techno how certainly with these companies. So, so everybody else in Europe, and partly then independent film in the US as well, has the situation where we have public service companies and we have public funding. So we do have a resource that is that is that makes independent film possible to maybe to do something with here. If we can untangle ourselves from our direct dependence on these dominant companies. And that's what what turned out to be interesting this year and I think that the selection of interviewees has to do with that.
• 16:16
  TABITHA: Yeah, that's such a powerful answer, Johanna, and sorry I didn't mean to put you on the spot, but, but I knew there was a why. No, but I think the concentration of power in what is a global industry but where the power is concentrated in terms of resources and distribution is and green light power is really important just to acknowledge and name it. And I think, as the report indicates, we need to find other ways of existing. We have so much to learn from communities who have nevertheless made incredible work and got it seen by huge audiences, or are trying to make work under authoritarian conditions and so on. We have to learn from other places. So, so I can't wait for this conversation to continue and expand to the things we don't know yet.
• 17:13
  JOHANNA: I think that what you're saying, I mean, that's also part of the answer and I mean I alluded now to the fact that there are some some sort of constellations in Europe that have figured out ways to sort of take like a number of international distributors. Like basically getting pooling money from everywhere except North America and saying hey, but if we just work together we can compete, we can make this sort of hundred million dollar type films, and we can get them funded outside of that part of the system and sort of take the fight to that arena that has never been available before and I think what's happening now in the effects for instance is making that more available. And then there are locally dominant. I mean of course we know that there are amazing film industries that are very mature in places like Japan and South Korea for instance and just sort of working around the US, working around Hollywood essentially is so interesting. And I don't see why the sort of newer, like the Nollywoods and the Bollywoods which aren't that new either, but that are also mature production environments in their own sense, like I think we're going to see very new constellations and that's going to be part of the way of finding resources and audiences and funding structures and artistic collaborations that aren't relying on this whole system necessarily.
• 18:31
  TABITHA: Yeah, no I think that's right and also within the additional to the kind of hundred million dollar movies is like how are people making the work and I love the bit of the report that talks about the labels of mainstream in our house aren't particularly useful, but so the subjective organic work that is coming from makers that is not necessarily being made to meet market demand but is being made because it's an urgent way of seeing the world, how that work is amplified and lifted up and that we can take cues from how filmmakers are able to get stuff done on way lower budgets than we think is possible as an industry. So yeah, the word “ecosystem”, I think it was overused a few years ago and lost its value and now with the collapse of many of the existing systems, that word has potency again and I think the word “ecosystem” for either independent film or for documentary for example. “Ecosystem” is useful because there are two big splits, I think, the film industry and the film community or the documentary industry or the documentary community. They're different entities, they overlap, they're not the same, but they are part of making this whole endeavor work and what we know about ecosystems of course is that the health of an ecosystem is often determined by diversity, biodiversity, diversification and so what your report also leads us to is we have to diversify. And it used to be with the public broadcasters and international pre-sales and the streamers, there was one little sweet spot for a moment for some people, which meant that things could work. By no means was a perfect day in the industry but then we saw with the kind of erosion of power of public broadcasters and the impossibility of piecing together, financing through pre-sales that then we were left to the streamers and if you weren't providing work that the streamers needed for their subscriber basis then all those old systems had petered out and we're seeing that in sales at festivals etc.
• 21:01
  JOHANNA: Yeah, it's interesting, this all connects back to what you were saying about “story” before. I also find that it's not comfortable and we really, again, we had an editorial conversation on the team which was like, well I'm saying “film storytelling” in a couple of places, what does that even mean? But the problem is, so one of the kinds of diversity that is necessary, I think, in a sustainable ecosystem, very clearly is a sort of format diversity. And that this kind of, the kind of like valuable or quality or whatever you want to call it, the sort of specific perspective storytelling, specific perspective on film, film made with a specific perspective on the world that we tend to call art house for lack of a better word, that that kind, that quality of precision and view and artistic ambition can exist on all kinds of platforms and on all kinds of formats. And then it's, I think in a lot of policy documents sometimes people, in some countries we call all of that “film” and in some countries we call it “audiovisual” and that means neither of those words is very clear. What I would suggest is, all of this is in some sense film and then within all of those formats can contain the kinds of film, whichever kind of film you want to be making that can exist in all of these formats and not just in the theatres. Because of course, again, like some films are best in the theatres, but even the films that are best experienced in theatres are mostly experienced not in theatres. Yes. And we need to be open to that as you also put it so beautifully yourself in the interview and the report. So that's why I'm using this inconvenient word, “story”, just to signal I don't just mean feature film. Right. I don't just mean the feature length. Yes. Yeah.
• 22:52
  TABITHA: I mean, just going from there, I think you also quote the numbers of films that submitted to Sundance this year, 17,000, the highest ever. I would guess, based on my experience at the festival, that probably 13,000 or 14,000 of those films would have been short films. Yeah. And how we think about short film, I think, will also be incredibly important over the next three to five years. And I would say just personally, there's a film, there are two films actually that are kind of in me, partly because they're short and I can watch them over and over and over again, and also because of their form, the short form, the utterly distilled piece. They have stayed with me. They're like “Ten Minutes Older” by Herz Frank. And there's a beautiful film whose title I will mangle but it's an Israeli film called something like “I think this is the closest to how the footage looked”. And it's about grief and loss and image. And so the potency of short film, which is not recognized by the industry as a kind of supportable form, is totally missing a trick in an age of short form content and content, I think, is an industry word not a community word. So how we think about form, how we think about meaning, how we think about how to engage audiences with that is key to your point about formats and form.
• 24:30
  JOHANNA: But that's really interesting. I've been thinking about this for years, that here we have all of these fantastic filmmakers coming out of film schools and within the traditional system you would often, where you begin is by making shorts. And we in the industry kind of understood it as, we said it was short film, very valuable art form. But what we meant is, yes, you can play around in this until you're ready to make a feature. And if you need to support yourself, obviously won't be able to do that making short films, most of you. So you are allowed to go work in television or make advertising even in the worst case scenario to pay your rent until you get to make your feature film. That's sort of the sub between the lines. That's what we've been saying. But then, of course, if we're serious about the fact that short films are this incredible art form that is different from the feature in what it does, and what it can do. And I think we agree, and I think actually most people in the industry even would agree. It's astonishing to me that it hasn't, that we haven't found more ways of leveraging that in an online environment where that shorter content has so much where other kinds of short content have so much use. I mean, there are some non-fiction, the New York Times of course curates non-fiction films. The Guardian, I think, does the same. So there are some places where they have built huge audiences and virality even to what I would consider to be art films, fiction and non-fiction. And I can see that there would be potential business models around that as well, including like direct economic relationships with an audience. Including tips, like if you have a short film that's seen by a million people, not very many of them need to give you a dollar for that to really make a difference in paying the rent. So how do you see that developing in the next few years?
• 26:21
  TABITHA: I don't know. I'm just about the big talk. I don't have any answer. But no, I mean I think it is interesting that YouTube is the biggest platform and we often, it's surprising how we don't talk about YouTube as much as we talk about Netflix and Amazon and Apple and Hulu. So I think the, okay, I think to answer your question I would just raise another big theme of the report which is around audience, and I think, the direct relationship between filmmakers with their audience has been one of the casualties of the less acquisition of films by organizations now, but acquisition of data. We the viewer are the product now, not simply the film. So I think that this rebuilding starting from local is really important for the filmmakers to know who their audiences are so that they can talk to them and keep them abreast of work. And so vital that local cinemas figure out a way of understanding who is coming to see what films and who they are. So in order for this system to work, which is now predicated on data, there are some huge gaps in the field and I'm glad that, you know, people like the Scherenstein Center, the work of Keri Putnam there at the Kennedy School at Harvard, is looking at this. Who actually is the possible audience for independent film? How do we know that and what don't we know that would be crucial in rebuilding those connections between creator and exhibitor and audience? Because that's also how you're going to get to, what's your term? It's not “eventized” but “engaged”.
• 28:11
  JOHANNA: “Engaged”, yeah, “engagement theatrical”.
• 28:14
  TABITHA: “Engagement theatrical”, which I read as a kind of enhanced community gathering around film. And I think that is what is getting people to leave their houses and their huge TV screens often to go to an environment which needs to deliver something else. I thought that was a really interesting bit of the report.
• 28:41
  JOHANNA: Yeah, I should, “engagement theatrical” is sort of what I, I mean, it's just seeing movies in movie theaters really, but I'm calling it “engagement theatrical” because I think that right now, it would look very similar as what's happening right now, except the difference is that we on the industry side would respect the audience who shows up to the theater more and also invite more audiences in a respectful way where we see that they are making a commitment, and we would make a similar commitment to get the right films in front of the people whose hearts are yearning for them or who are needing that escape or whatever it is. And I think actually that it's interesting what you're saying about data and the audience relationship, and I will note, I should say also that since the pandemic, the theaters are really working super hard, not just the art house theater. I think exhibition has never had to work as hard as they're doing now and they are really leaning into the innovation and they're also figuring out baby steps, but they're thinking about how, what they can do with their data because they are understanding that they and the producers are on the same side in this. Everybody wants the audiences in the theaters to grow, but it's difficult, of course, because they are also seeing a lot of their own data as confidential, just like the streamers are. But the truly uncomfortable thing, and I am skirting around it in this year's report because I feel like I have maybe said impolite things about it before, is that if we're being honest, like everybody in the sort of, let's say this is the European festival type of film industry, people are saying, well, we can't possibly know anything about the audience because the streamers aren't giving us any data. And I question whether they ever have. I work with some of the Nordic film schools this past winter and I shouldn't say where, but a teacher at one of these very respected film schools said that she meets students all the time who say that they don't care about the audience, they're making film for themselves. And we are allowing that to happen and we are training, we have had a culture perhaps around the third filmmakers in particular that that's an acceptable way of being in the world. And they haven't had a relationship to the audience because the audience ultimately hasn't paid for their films. I mean, ultimately they have, but the gatekeepers have been the funders and the commissioners in the, secondly, TV to some degree. That it's been the taste and the interests of a few hundred or a few thousand individuals across Europe and the festivals of the world really that has decided what film is valuable and what film gets made. It isn't really the audiences. And I think that what happened with streaming, and I feel like this is such a taboo, I shouldn't be saying this out loud, but I feel like there was like an underlying disconnect from the audience that has then, which then was ultimately like that relationship was fully broken in the last five to ten years. And that places us in this situation where the filmmakers don't know where to begin even to answer the question still, you know, I listen to pitches too like, who is the audience for your film? A lot of people genuinely don't know.
• 31:51
  TABITHA: And I, this is such a meaty question, because I'm conflicted on this, because I think it is important that, because my career, essentially, even working at the BBC and Channel 4 and Film 4, that who makes the work, and you know, we can call it auteur filmmaking. That's problematic also because it implies it's just one person. Exactly, yeah. But who makes the film is incredibly important if you believe in the power and necessity of subjective filmmaking and what they want to express about the world isn't and often shouldn't be dictated by what audiences want to see. It should be dictated by what needs to be said. However, I also agree with you that for this work to have cultural power, it in some way needs to connect with an audience of some kind at some point. And so for the film team, once they've made the work, then seeing, well, if this was important for us to make, who might also find it important to receive? I think there is a way of doing that, which, as you say, isn't completely just self-absorbed. And in which case, well, that's fine. Go and make the film then. But don't take other people's money and resources if that's what you need to do. If you actually want to meet audiences, then it is on you to think very carefully about who is the right audience or set of audiences for that. So I think that's right. But once we get into saying, as has become a kind of lazy shorthand on the pitch circuit, certainly questions about story, where's the character arc, where's the conflict, those things which predetermine a form. And then, but we don't see an audience for this, or who is your audience, I think that shouldn't necessarily be a make or break question, because how would you ever get innovation or new forms or new languages to describe the world we live in?
• 34:01
  JOHANNA: I think in that room, I would be so happy if somebody said, people who are asking this question, people who, like me, are feeling this feeling, or people, like it doesn't have to be, it's this demographic. It doesn't have to be demographic data. It could be something else, but you have to have some idea. Or it could be one specific person. It doesn't have to be, oh, like this demo and this is, or like these people who aren't following this hashtag on TikTok. We can be much more nuanced than that, but I think just some thought would be helpful.
• 34:33
  TABITHA: And if someone says, is there an audience for this? Then the answer is probably yes. If we and marketers and publicists and we have a thoughtful rollout campaign, yes, if we do our work properly, there will be.
• 34:47
  JOHANNA: And that's the other part of this, where I think, I mean, there are some spaces, like in comedy, you do show films, the film to humans, just to see, like, are the jokes landing? Like, are they getting it? Is there something off with how I'm trying, like, have I succeeded in what I'm trying to achieve? Yes. And I wrote in the report as well, like in an impact documentary, your whole project is changing something about how people act in the world, and then you're super invested in who they are and what they're currently feeling and what you want them to feel when they leave. And I think it's more of those kinds of approaches to the audience that I would sometimes wish that fiction feature filmmakers also would just be a little bit more invested in, like, did it land? Like, did I succeed? Because of course, wouldn't they want their film to be loved and understood or hated and understood?
• 35:33
  TABITHA: Yes, or argued over, yes.
• 35:45
  JOHANNA: Just to make sure that people don't miss the point. That's also a way of involving the audience in an artistic way, and that's not the same as letting a test, you know, and recutting your ending or that kind of thing. Although that can sometimes be the answer.
• 35:50
  TABITHA: I think that's right. The other thing it makes me think, this discussion of, you know, I didn't go to film school, so I'm speaking from ignorance, but what film school students are being taught, both about their voice and about the impact of their work, is vital. It seems to me that we are moving from one system to another that is yet to fully emerge, and we're moving because the old system from an industry point isn't working. And from a cultural and values point isn't meeting this moment of where we are. And so, and that, I would say, is also the split between the industry and the community, in a sense. So that's a bumpy ride as we try and figure out how to make the system less inequitable and more sustainable. But one of the things I think from funders is the point about not simply valuing the film, the output, but to value the filmmakers. And to make, even if you talk about it in the more kind of corporate terms about return on investment, don't bet the farm on one particular movie. Make sure that that person, if you perceive them to have talent or something interesting to say in an interesting way to say it, that will resonate in the broader culture or can certainly alter the culture in some way, then invest in the person that's making the film or the people that are making the film. And that, you know, their healthy, a healthy environment for producers, which particularly in nonfiction just doesn't exist, is key to sustaining work and increasing the ability to take risk. And the risk, the creative risk, risk meaning, oh, but what if people don't like it or, oh, people haven't seen this told in this way, will they get it? So will their finances come back in? That's the only way the field is going to be able to move forward by experimenting, failing, failing better, finding something that totally clicks, learning from it, moving forward. But if we just go one film by one film, people are going to drop out because there's nothing keeping them alive between the two.
• 38:12
  JOHANNA: Yeah. So it's one way, like we have to have this in one dimension or one axis in this landscape, is keeping, is through time, right? Is keeping those sort of careers, keeping these individual humans alive and thriving so they can go on to artistically do things. And then at the same time in the sort of on the other axis, we have this question of doing every innovation or learning film by film is too slow. We can't have every person learning film by film because the cycles are so long and that's why we have to learn from each other. And I'm looking at the time we've spoken for so long. So I will ask one more question. I hosted a panel in Cannes after my presentation of the report and Matthijs Wouter Knol, who's heading the European Film Academy, he said, he agrees that this sort of collective path and learning together would work, could be a path to survive and thrive for the film industry. But he doubts that we will be able to work together. And I wonder what you think about that. Is there a collective moment?
• 39:14
  TABITHA: Yes, there is. There is a collective moment. I mean, it's just that I don't think there's an alternative to the collective moment for the reasons I said before. And the finding ways of working together after being so independent, particularly in the independent film space, will be bumpy, but it will be human and it will be productive. And I think it's the only the only thing that's going to keep us going structurally is to find different ways of working together. And the hierarchical structures, I feel, will need to change and the distribution of power of who gets to speak, who gets to resource their work, who gets to invite others in, will also change because that's the way we're going. So the question is, can we keep up with the technological progress? Probably not. Can we keep up with the moral progress? We really need to focus on that. Can we turn this into an endeavor of human progress? I think we can. I think we can. And that will take the industry and the community to do that, to make a healthy ecosystem.
• 40:27
  JOHANNA: Yeah, I had this moment this week, when I was, I listened to some conversation online with about Hollywood studio producers who are some of the most arguably powerful people in the industry side still, you know, deciding as gatekeepers, and who are now organizing for health care because they also are individual humans who have bodies and, you know, they also need to be able to make a living during those sometimes 13 years when a film is in development, for instance. And then I'm at the Marché and I see a panel of these incredibly badass, powerful producers typically, who are all working in authoritarian countries and they're talking about film collectives, you know, fighting for political change in different ways, often with danger for their lives. I think, OK, but there is something to me, this, of course, these two examples are just anecdotal example, but it still feels like there is a moment when a lot of people, every level of power in this environment are saying, no, you know what, we have to do this together. And that's to me that is hopeful. That's the hope.
• 41:33
  TABITHA: That's the hope. And that question, which is my favorite question ever. What if that's going to determine what our future is?
• 41:42
  JOHANNA: Yeah. Thank you so much for taking the time to do an interview for the report and for taking time again to be on the show, Tabitha.
• 41:49
  TABITHA: An absolute pleasure. Sorry about the rambling, but that's what I love.
• 41:52
  JOHANNA: Sorry about my rambling, but that's how I roll. Thank you so much. All right. Bye bye.
• 41:58
  TABITHA: Thanks, Johanna. Bye.
• 42:01
  JOHANNA: That was all from us today. If you'd like to hear Tabitha talk more about transformative film art and filmmaking, she and John Cooper co-host the podcast The Film That Blew My Mind. Both of them are former directors of the Sundance Film Festival, and they invite filmmakers on to talk about life changing movies. The 2024 Nostradamus Report, Paradox of Hope, is available as a free download thanks to support from our partners BoostHBG, Kulturakademin Region Västra Götaland and the Nordisk Film & TV Fond. Find your PDF on the Göteborg Film Festival website. We'll link to it in the show notes. Or just visit www.goteborgfilmfestival.se/nostradamus. This season of Industry Insights is produced in cooperation with Goethe-Institut and co-funded by Creative Europe Media. This episode has been developed in partnership with the Göteborg Film Festival. Do tune in to future episodes of Industry Insights as well, and give us a rating on your favourite podcast platform. For more information, visit the European Film Market at www.efm-berlinale.de, that’s www.efm-berlinale.de Thank you for listening.