Have you thought about what kind of cinema audience the nation you are part of is? What can be said about our general attitudes towards this popular media? This question was also the basis for my own interest in this theme. As a cinema fan from a small middle European country, where the national cinema after the change in the 1989 went through a lot of turbulences and changes and till now hasn’t fully recovered, I was not only interested in the state of our national cinematography but was always interested in the comparison with European and other countries of the world.
Finding the right indicators
But to do this it is of course necessary to choose a measure by witch to compare various countries around the world and their enthusiasm towards this medium. When searching for one, there is of course the first problem of finding the right data, which would be provided in sufficient scale for major world regions. This problem can be solved partly by the comprehensive but not really exhaustive yearbook called Focus: world film market trends. But then the problem is which indicator to choose? Is it the share of national production in cinemas that defines a great movies going public? Or is it the number of national feature film produced yearly? And is not the number of visits the average person makes to a cinema the best way how to measure the enthusiasm of the movie going public? But by choosing of only one of these examples I would only pick one factor that would distort any possible comparisons. Also as the latter experience from the research shoved the various indicators can be extremely varried for the same country and choosing of one indicator could distort the comparability of the results. That’s why I realized right in the start of my journey towards a tool for comparing "cinephilness" of countries around the world, that I would have to find a right mix of various indicators and of course differentiate them according to their importance.
Defining the main goal of the index
In the process of constructing this formula I realized that it is important to define what the final indicator should be expressing. In this this first post out of several of following I will therefore try to find the indicator that is mostly coherent with the basic aim I set off at the start of my journey - finding the most "cinephille" country, not defined by the economic importance of that region but rather by the inclination of the public towards this medium. But I find it important to take into consideration also the relative strength of the national production and the attitude of the public towards it, which reflect the vitality of the national cinema production. But the more economy-centric analysis will be the topic of my next posts.
Components of the index
So without describing the process of selection of indicators and calculation into too much detail I will present you my first draft of "Cultural cinema index" and later its results. So what indicators are included in this index? And what importance do they play in the actual index? These questions are answered in the table nr. 1 below. There are 6 important indicators that I identified as important in determining the "Cinemaphilness" of various countries. These are of course chosen on the basis of the data available, but are in the "not average" form used widely across industry. Of course according to the aim of the index I attributed various values to these indicators in the final value of the index.
As the most important factor (35 %) I identified the average cinema attendance per capita in the world. This indicator for me defines clearly how "in love" with the cinema the general audience in the various countries is relatively to the largeness of population. The second most important indicator is the % of the national market share in cinemas in the world (30 %). This factor is important because it indicates the strength of the national cinema industry, which is the basis requirement for a healthy cinema culture. It also shows how enthusiastic the general audience is towards its own cinema culture. Of course this indicator cannot stand alone without the view of the number of feature films produced per million of inhabitants (15 %), which indicates even more the economic strength of a local industry and reflects the importance that is attributed to the cinema as a medium (for example in Europe there is a strong correlation of cinema production with public funding). By taking into account the "per capita" factor in all of these indicators it is possible not to discriminate the smaller countries, which are of course in a weaker position than stronger markets.
The next three indicators create only 20 % of the whole value of the cultural index, but are nevertheless important to take into consideration. The % of the average gross box office per capita in the world, tells us how much are the audiences willing to pay in the cinemas per year and is therefore one of the indicators stronger connected to the economic strength of the industry rather than cultural factors, but the relative small value in the index (only 10%) makes it possible not to distort the cultural image too much. The fifth indicator % of the average number of screens per 100 thousand inhabitants in the world tells us about the density (or rather the volume of screens since it doesn’t take into account the proportion of multiplexes and less than 8 screen cinemas) of the cinema network in the country, which indicates the general demand of public towards the cinema infrastusture (5 %). The last factor is connected with the first most important indicator mentioned above, but % of the average admissions per screen in the world tells us more specifically how frequent and heavy is the cinemas infrastructure used by the general public (5 %).
| Indicator (% of the average value in the 67 most important markets) | % value in the index |
| % of the average cinema attendance per capita in the world | 35% |
| % of the national market share in cinemas in the world | 30% |
| % of the average number of produced feature films in the world per mil. | 15% |
| % of the average gross box office per capita in the world | 10% |
| % of the average number of screens per 100 thousand inhabitans in the world | 5% |
| % of the average admisions per screen in the world | 5% |
100% |
Results - ranking of the countries acording to the "Cultural cinema index"
After explaining the basic framework used for the calculation of the "Cultural cinema index" we can move on to the actual results of this research. Of course these results are only preliminary, and are of course vulnerable to yearly fluctuations in results, but nevertheless by reliance on more than one factor create a solid comparability tool. The actual ranking of various countries is included in the table nr. 2. According to country you are from, you can find the ranking in the first column of the table. In the third column is the actual Cultural cinema index. The other 6 columns represent the % of the average value of the included indicator for all the countries included in the research.
Cultural cinema rating ranking TOP 20
First in analyzing the results we will look at the first 20 countries with the highest index. Considering their geographic location we can see that 11 countries (from initial 34 included in the research) are from Europe (Luxemburg, Iceland, France, Ireland, Malta, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Spain), 6 countries (out of 17) from Asia (Republic of Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and Bahrain) only one (out of 11) from the whole region of North and Latin America (not surprisingly USA) and than there are also Egypt (out of 5 African countries) and Australia. So we can clearly see that the regions of Africa and South America are lagging behind the more traditional regions like Europe, certain parts of Asia and North America.
TOP 10 - US leads the way
And what is the situation in the first top 10 countries? As for a European, who is used to think in lines of the "good European independent cinema culture" vs. "bad commercial blockbuster cinema industry of US" it may come as a surprise, that the first place belongs to the "nemesis" of European cinema culture US. But looking at the results and the chosen framework for the calculation of the index the reasons of these results are clear. US has the 3rd most active citizens when it comes to attending cinema projections (4,2 per capita) and not only that they also largely prefer national productions (even when largest portion of it are of course the major blockbusters, but this situation is the same in most countries of the world). With this enthusiasm of the cinema going public comes another important indicator: number of screens on 100 000 inhabitants, where the US takes lead with more than 12,5 screens, which is a really high number considering that the next country with slightly comparable level of population in terms of number of screens per capita is Spain with just 8,7 screens.
TOP 10 - Mini states
Another 4 countries from the top 10 are as expected of a measure considering per capita indicators small mini states with high GDP per capita like Iceland, Luxembourg, Honk Kong and Malta. All of these states have high proportion of movies made per capita, since they are developed enough that they can afford the high cinema output and in the case of Hong Kong this is one of the most active region in terms of cinema production. Icelandic people are generally considered as one of the most active in terms of culture. This is confirmed by the highest per capita cinema attendance in the whole world 5,3, which is when I consider the case of my own country an unbelievable number (in Slovakia the average persons goes to cinema only 0,8 times a year).
TOP 10 - Asian countries
On the 4th and 5th place there are two distinct Asian countries. Both of them achieved the highest ranks without much controversy. Not only do they produce large amounts of movies, have an intensive cinema going public, but also attain an above average national market shares. India is a specific case when considering per screen admissions, since there is a low number of per capita screens but still a high level of cinema attendance. In terms of box office India is one of the least advanced, because the prize of the ticket is still extremely low (only 0, 57 USD, compared to the highest prize in Switzerland 13, 9 USD). So considering the rapid economic development in India we can expect that India will movie even further in the Index, together with China witch is currently on the 32nd spot. But will move rapidly upwards in the coming years due to the development and deployment of screens and economic development. South Korea reaches above average results across table, most importantly there is a high level of national market share and the public are intensive cinema goers.
TOP 10 - The traditional European states
The rest of the top ten are filled by 3 European countries. The most obvious and most expected is the position of France, which is considered as the most "cinephile" country in Europe. There is not only a high number of screens per capita, but the public attends cinema screening really often with national production taking a large portion of the market. Ireland is among the top 10 despite the catastrophic national market share in cinemas, which is amongst the lowest in the world and that despite the high level of cinematographic output per capita. The public goes to cinema a lot but the national cinema production isn’t obviously of their interest. The position of Norway is the result of high level of cinema production output, gross box office per capita and strong network of cinema screens.
Index in regions of the world
But when considering general trends it is of course important to take a more general perspective and try to grasp the characteristics of a whole region. Therefore I compiled average scores on the "cultural cinema index" from various regions of the world, based on the results of all countries coming from that region (see table nr. 3). The results clearly show the dominance of the three regions mentioned above and the lagging behind of Africa and South America. But since these results are created only out of limited number of countries, it is important to take this into consideration.
Place | Group of countries | Average score on the "cultural cinema index" | % of the countries from the region | % of population included |
1 | North America | 31,99 | 13% | 87% |
2 | Asia | 22,11 | 23% | 83% |
3 | Europe | 20,82 | 68% | 83% |
4 | Africa | 8,34 | 11% | 21% |
5 | South America | 8,1 | 67% | 95% |
Table Nr. 3: average score on the "cultural cinema index" in the regions of the world
In the case of North America the results are strongly influenced by the results of USA (59,22) and Canada (23,81) and the low % of countries examined (only 13 %). Therefore these results only show the results of the highest developed regions, but still we can consider them as representative, since these 3 countries (including Mexico) represent 87 % of the whole population. The second position of Asia is strongly influenced by the same above mentioned issue. In this case the percentage of examined countries is also low (23 %).
Because of these reasons it may come as a surprise, that Europe takes only third place. But in this case the sample included 68 % of countries. Of course the remaining 32 % of countries belong to the least developed of the region, so the conclusion can be drawn that the inclusion of these wouldn’t increase the overall score of Europe. One interesting thought in this regard is to consider the average scores in the 5 biggest markets (26,76) and 15 old member countries of EU (23,93) that are higher than in the average of Asia region. To compare, the region of the 12 new EU countries (including my own Slovakia) reaches a considerably lover scores of 14, 12, which is closer to the scores of the last 2 regions on the world (Africa, South America), and speaks about the potential of the cinema sector in these European countries.
Conclusions
To conclude this rather lengthy blog contribution I can state that the proposed index for measuring of the "cinephilness" of countries of the world can be used as an interesting and pretty accurate tool. The actual structure of the index or the importance of various indicators can be of course disputed, but this would only change the ranking slightly. One of the main setbacks is that this index doesn’t distinguish between the "more cultural" and blockbuster type of cinema and its appreciation by the public. To find quantitative statistics in this regard on such a wide world level was impossible.
So what were the actual results? There were no big surprises. USA took the first place and generally the small economically strong countries and larger richer countries took the lead. The first less developed country in the index ranking (besides the India on the 4th place due to its large population) was Egypt. The first European country from the past Eastern bloc of this continent can be found on the 26th place (Czech Republic). China as currently the most dynamic country in the cinema world took the 32nd place but this wont last of course long. The opposite end of the ranking is filled with countries from Latin America and Africa (11 from 20 last countries). From the perspective of European countries only 4 out of 20 last places are filled by Romania, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Lithuania, all of which belong to new members of EU or are not yet members. Considering the traditional western countries of EU below the first 30 ranked countries we find only Portugal and Greece, which are amongst the least economically developed. So there is one major conclusion to be drawn, that only confirms the obvious: cinema seems to be in most cases mainly the past time of the most economically developed societies. This is of course connected with the free time and resources needed not only for the cinema production but also for the large scale attendance of general public. Concluding I would like to ask you for any reflection that would further help me to work on this tool and connected themes.
References:
- Yearbook 2008, 2009, 2010: Film and home video, European audiovisual observatory, 2009, 2010, 2011, Strasbourg
- Focus on film markets trends 2008, 2009, 2010, Marché du films, Cannes
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