I’m back after spending the summer touring family and friends in different regions of France, as usual. However, new was the devastating wildfires that I could observe from the smoke in the sky and the ash in the sea. While I fear seeing more of these in the future, I was pleased to catch a glimpse of the rare solar eclipse.
After my holiday, I flew to Sarajevo, where I was pleasantly greeted by festival participation of young people and women from the region. On 20 August, the SAA co-organised two panels with CineLink Industry Days. I moderated the first panel, which included Lidia Radlinska-Gutek, Melina Alagić, Kiril Gjozev and Gregor Štibernik. Our aim was to show the impact of collective management organisations when authors' rights are enforced, and the challenges they face in the absence of laws and political will. Our member ZAPA in Poland has built a mature system, collecting EUR 60 million and enforcing a remuneration right dating to 1994, that has now been extended to VOD. In contrast, Bosnia's Association of Filmmakers described a decade of frozen payments and a revoked licence that is still stuck in court, while North Macedonia's AZAS cited ongoing administrative obstacles despite growing recognition for the country's films. Our member AIPA in Slovenia shared a success story about using the transposition of the DSM Directive to secure remuneration rights that benefits all its members: authors, performers and producers.
The second panel was about AI in film, and the most memorable part was the exchange with the audience. Sonja Prosenc, Jana Vozarova, Sashko Potter Micevski and Joanna Szymanska had spent the session raising concerns about the erosion of craft skills and works being ingested into models without consent. However, two Gen-Z audience members pushed back during the Q&A session. They asked why AI is singled out for scrutiny when green-screen and VFX work go unlabelled and adding that they have no problem with AI learning from existing works. I replied that, indeed, big AI companies want to appear as allies of young artists, but in fact they just want to become indispensable and make money. The discussion was a useful reminder that consensus on AI within our sector is thinner than our panels can suggest, and it will be interesting to see how the debate develops.
Both sessions clearly show that our advocacy for collective rights management and AI transparency is far from finished. Read about them in our news.
While my colleague Annica attended several other interesting talks (read about on her LinkedIn), I took on my Cineuropa jury hat and watched the films nominated for the Andrea D'Aquino Award. I was genuinely impressed by the high quality of the filmmaking, despite the films’ very limited budgets. Together with my co-jury member, I selected the winner: the directorial debut '17' by Kosara Mitić. It is a difficult film to watch, dealing with the subject of sexual violence among teenagers. I must admit that I wondered at times if it was exaggerated, but colleagues from the region confirmed that this is the cruel reality.
I was also pleased to see our Patron Urša Menart at the festival with her film 'Everything That's Wrong with You' (see Cineuropa's interview with her).
Since I am back to the office, I have been preparing for the many meetings, travels and events coming up this autumn. Let me highlight a few of our events:
I am looking forward to sharing more information further ahead.
I wish you all the best for your own return to work!
Warm regards,
Cécile
