Adrien Kuenzy, Teresa Vena
The European Film Academy promotes the European film industry while educating the public. Historical highlights.
It was absolutely essential to prevent “a downfall in artistic taste and a pollution of intellectual and spiritual values – all of which would gradually suppress national identity, native tongues, our inborn desire for the natural beauty of 'otherness'”. The words are drawn from the 1988 appeal signed by a group of artists, presided by Ingmar Bergman, shortly after the establishment of the European Film Awards. The first ceremony took place on the 26th of November 1988 in Berlin, the European Capital of Culture that year. In 1989, Bergman and 40 European filmmakers created the European Film Academy. Bergman and his co-founders, including Pedro Almodóvar, Claude Chabrol, Federico Fellini, Isabelle Huppert, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Giulietta Masina, Liv Ullmann and Wim Wenders, initially envisaged a club limited to 99 members. According to Mike Downey, current chairman of the European Film Academy board, “That idea didn’t last long as the interest in a membership grew rapidly.” The initial objectives were to promote the eclectic character of European cinema and preserve its position against the threat of cultural homogeneity. “As leader, ideologue and powerful presence, Bergman imbued the Academy with many values that we still uphold,” Downey continues. Backed by the film communities of all Council of Europe countries (plus Israel and Palestine), and thanks to the cornerstone funding provided by the Berlin Senate and numerous donors, “the Academy was able to lay a solid foundation for the panoply of cultural organisations across the continent that support and fund our work today.”
The family grew
In 1996, German director Wim Wenders took over the presidency of the Academy. During his 24-year tenure, Wenders attempted to open up the institution to a wider circle of interested parties and experts. The club's exclusive character gave way to a broadly diverse community, with producers joining the authors and actors who had previously dominated the scene. In addition to the office of the president, the Academy has an executive board, which consists on average of 17 to 20 people, as well as a management board. Due to the more diverse composition of the members, the structure of the executive board has also changed. “Although the proportion of women in the award-winning films has only increased in the last few years, women have long played a key role within the institution,” notes British producer Rebecca O’Brien, who was on the executive board for ten years from 2013, the last four years of which were spent as deputy chairwoman. “The participation of many different people has allowed the Academy to incorporate varying points of view,” O’Brien continues, “this is important if you want to become aware of political motives.” The larger the “European family” is, the stronger the Academy’s political influence will be. In this way, the Academy has begun to take a stance more often when it perceives a threat to the free artistic expression of filmmakers. Although the annual presentation of the European Film Awards has always been the Academy’s main focus, the demands for the resonance of this recognition have increased. Over the years, various initiatives have been developed in cooperation between the presidency, the Executive Board and the Management Board to emphasise the importance of European filmmaking and to strengthen it in the face of global competition. The approaches are diverse, going as far as measures to preserve the film cultural heritage, for example, and by honouring important film locations since 2015. Giving European films a wider audience reach has been at the centre of activities in recent years. This includes the introduction of the Audience Award in 1997, which was institutionalised as the LUX Audience Award thanks to the support of the European Parliament. “Cinema makes it possible to break down prejudices,” says O’Brien, “the diversity of European cultures is conveyed.” And as such, this contributes to defining and to strengthening Europe. Wim Wenders was followed by Polish director Agnieszka Holland. She was in office from 2020 to 2023, until French actress Juliette Binoche took over the presidency in 2024.
A thriving academy
Today, the European Film Academy is thriving and has nearly 5,000 professional members. It is involved in numerous activities, such as European Film Month and the new European Film Club, which aims to encourage cinematic culture among young people aged between 12 to 19. “My aim since accepting the chairmanship has been to make the Academy, far more than just the organiser of an awards ceremony, but also a place that inspires activism in cinema,” says Mike Downey. Its current initiatives allow the Academy to reach a much wider audience. “In the post-pandemic period, we’re still rebuilding audiences for European film and its distribution across the continent,” Downey concludes. “More controversially, I think we need to look carefully at our film funding models and ask ourselves whether the sheer volume of films being made in Europe is to the detriment of their global distribution. The most important thing the Academy can do is to never waver in our pursuit of excellence and to choose and honour the very best of European cinema every year.”
Image : European Film Academy, Sebastian Gabsch