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Veteran Director Dang Nhat Minh points out shortcomings of the movies that are funded by the state.
"When the tenth month comes" directed by Dang Nhat Minh
Dang Nhat Minh, a veteran director who has made a number of famous films, such as "Co gai tren song" or "The girl on the river" and "Thuong Nho Dong Que" or "Nostalgia for the Countryside", and specially "Bao gio cho den thang muoi", or "When the tenth month comes" was listed as one of the best Asian movies by CNN.
He voiced his opinions to DTiNews on the shortcomings of the State-funded Vietnamese film industry.
On April 29, 2011, The Prime Minister issued Resolution 645 to address both the monitoring of content and the promotion of the literary arts. This resolution included a programme to effectively use State funds in this area.
Theses movies are made by private firms on State commission, especially for special occasions such as National Day. The State puts up a large amount of funding for movies that often are largely ignored by audiences. Audience opinion seems to be that State-funded films are for preservation and not for showing.
Budgets for State-funded movies become divisive
In the past ten years, when the state wants to hire a production firms to make movies, only the firms' chairmen are invited to the bidding.
They companies never indicate the movie crew beforehand but hire the crew after they earn the commission. Once the funding is guaranteed, the companies could care less about who would be directors or actors. They could hire amateurs to complete the product.
The movie director, then, have no real saying in the financial management despite the fact that they are the one who directly create the movie. In this tug of war, it is the financiers who usually win.
For State-funded movies, representatives from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) with the Ministry of Finance (MoF) make most of these decisions, creating divisiveness over the management of funds.
Movie makers
Along with directors, cinematographers, sound people and others who are responsible for production departments largely feel that they are not treated properly.
MCST, MoF and the State Pricing Commission hold meetings before production in which they decide detailed budgets for each department without the input of the workers themselves. The difference in payment for a veteran director and an inexperienced one, for example, might be minute.
For these films, production teams are paid only in royalties on the movie's earnings, as accounted by the Ministry of Finance. These royalties are usually about five times less than those funded by private companies and are quite uncertain.
Payment is also unregulated by the Copyright Office of Vietnam or the inspectorate of MCST, leaving artists and craftspeople largely unprotected.
While the intellectual property in music industry is relatively enforced, the same is not true for the film industry.
Director Dang Nhat Minh has proposed some of the revisions to the policy applied to State-funded films about production quality, promotion and sales to avoid losses, with more input from directors, more attention paid to DVD sales and the distribution of those funds, stricter enforcement of intellectual property laws and holding a conference with the MCST to review the production quality of the films it has made over the last ten years.
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