On Screen Context

From the very beginning, we kept in touch with the public, always observing audience appetite, the desires and what the people are open to. Everyone we spoke to, about the subject of Romanian or Eastern European cinema, noted its scarcity in The Netherlands. This was the itch that made me begin the ROfilmNL project. 

What started as programming and advocacy slowly became something else. ROfilmNL began as an attempt to create visibility. But over time, we realized visibility is not enough. What matters is framing, positioning, and translation. So we began asking different questions. We started to examine how films travel across cultural contexts.

This February, a Romanian film screened at IFFR played to full rooms. The comedy with a single 65-min long take “3 Days in September”, directed by Tudor Giurgiu, made a strong impression on the audiences.  

The same happened with the events we organized independently. They also sold out. The cinemas were filled with a mixed public, a wide range of ages and nationalities. 

The films that break the national barrier, when positioned properly, resonate beyond borders, to an international audience. 

Yet when we approached institutions to curate Romanian-focused programs, the answer was consistently no, sometimes politely, sometimes firmly.

The audience, it turns out, was not the issue. A pattern began to emerge.

Institutions often operate within inherited assumptions about audience appetite.

Eastern & Central European cinema is often treated as ‘special interest’ rather than core programming. This opens another challenge about how proximity does not necessarily translate into cultural integration. The question then becomes what are the necessary ingredients to shift the context from foreign films to familiar and desirable ones. 

We began to realize that what’s missing is durable context, or frameworks, that allow certain cinemas to be read as part of the cultural conversation rather than as occasional events.

We are at this point where we are observing the circulation dynamics. 

Mainly how cultural institutions decide what counts as desirable «for their audience».

Who defines the audience's desires? Institutional programming often reflects inherited assumptions. After analyzing the programme of several indie cinemas across The Netherlands, the results show that US films dominate the schedule. That is expected, due to the marketing power of the big studios. Secondly, France follows, with a strong presence, then the UK, and domestic Dutch productions. The remainder is made up of films from Asia, South America, or occasionally the Middle East, with relatively little presence from Central and Eastern Europe. Of course, one can argue that the classification is not precise. The classifications vary, but across a year of observation, the pattern is consistent.

Then come the next questions: Why does demonstrated audience interest not translate into structural programming support? The programming focused on the familiar «Western world». This context of familiarity makes a cinema feel “inside” rather than “outside”.

It takes time and a lot of risk to offer new stories to an audience. To guide the audience outside the familiar stories and film language. Risk is also unevenly distributed. Some cinemas are programmed as part of the cultural conversation. Others are programmed as exceptions. Film theaters constantly juggle financial risk, which may explain why programming is often planned week by week. For other types of cultural events, programming can be done months in advance. We believe another reason to rarely show unfamiliar cinemas is the fear of audience alienation. As a viewer you’d like to be surprised by new stories, but not so different that they do not create empathy. It is a matter of expectations that the audience has and the chain of film distribution and exploitation is structured to fulfill.

Each cinema or chain of cinemas has an identity created through curatorship over years and an audience built and gathered thanks to this. Few institutions want to alter a formula that already works. From time to time, something different is added but without shifting the overall direction. 

Certain cinemas are treated as events rather than continuities. This is what keeps the distance. Romanian films, and others like them, often fall into the second category: granted visibility, but not belonging.

The issue is not about quality. Production quality rose so much that nowadays Eastern and Western productions are technically comparable. It’s about framing.

In design or curatorship the same visual object can mean different things depending on context. Placement changes perception. Framing redefines value.
Cinema works the same way. 

To give a more clear example, a Romanian film in a “New Voices of Europe” program feels integrated. But the same film as a one-off “special screening” feels peripheral. 

We have clear data that when festivals program Romanian films, they work.

When independent events are organized, they sell out,  which shows there is interest.

Sold-out screenings do not automatically shift institutional perception. Evidence alone is not always persuasive. We could say that integration requires more than audience demand.

Context, usually treated as an accessory, needs to become infrastructure.

We do not claim to have answers. But we want to ask better questions about how cinema circulates and who gets to move. These questions are what led me to start Screen Context, a space to think about how films move across cultural contexts.