European Screen Agencies and Sustainability: Interventions for Greening the Screen

Abstract

This chapter examines the role that European screen agencies play as public bodies mediating the impact of the climate crisis. Agencies such as Det Danske Filminstitut (Danish Film Institute, DFI), Screen Ireland (Fís Éireann), and Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds (Flanders Audio-visual Fund) are publicly funded bodies with a mandate to support the film- and television-making capacity of their nation. In the last few years environmental sustainability has emerged as a tentative concern amongst some of these agencies. Drawing on empirical evidence from interviews and discussions with professionals within screen agencies, and from a review of the policies enacted in countries such as the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and Norway, this chapter offers a critical account of the relationship between screen agencies and the climate crisis. It presents a typology of the responses currently being pursued, revealing commonalities in the approaches employed and several problematic logics underpinning these interventions. The chapter concludes that as screen agencies are not environmental agencies with mandates to act, they approach and frame the climate crisis with specific institutional values in mind, carefully balancing economic growth and creative practice with expectations around environmental sustainability. For them to be more effective and urgent agents of environmental change the wider screen industry culture will have to change.KeywordsScreen agenciesPublic fundingSustainabilityExpertiseAction-led responses