Current issues
In recent years important changes have taken place in the procedures for subsidising, producing, distributing and exhibiting films in Việt Nam.
These changes began in 1999 with the relaxation of regulations for the distribution of foreign films and continued in 2000 with the formation of a joint venture between the
Việt Nam National Film Distribution and Screening Company (FAFIM Việt Nam) and the American Visionnet Company, facilitating the release of brand new first-run foreign films in Việt Nam and the construction of several new multiplex cinema complexes in Hà Nội and Hồ Chí Minh City. This has succeeded in luring people back into the cinemas, but since market forces dictate that the new cinemas show predominantly overseas product - and in Visionnet’s case 70 per cent of the box office revenue accrues to the foreign partner - the likely benefits for the Vietnamese film industry remain unclear.
Further changes were made to government regulations in 2002 with a view to ending the monopoly of FAFIM and introducing an element of competition into the film distribution and exhibition system.
For decades each of the state-owned film studios had produced around 10 films a year, each film funded in its entirety from state subsidy at an average cost of around 1 billion VNĐ (cUS$63,500) per film. These films were then sold for up to 200 million VNĐ (cUS$12,500) each to FAFIM, which distributed them to its cinemas and took all the box office income. Given the substantial defecits run up each year by the state film companies and the lack of incentive for them to produce high-quality films, the Department of Cinema recently introduced stringent new rules for vetting film scripts, warning that henceforward only films of quality with potential audience appeal would be eligible for subsidy. At the same time private enterprises (including joint venture companies and foreign investors) were permitted to make and distribute their own films and to establish their own studios, cinemas and entertainment complexes, albeit under the overall control of the Ministry.
Gái nhảy (‘Bar Girls’) and
Lưới trời (‘Heaven’s Net’) were two of the first films to be distributed by the filmmakers themselves under the new regulations, rather than via the state-owned FAFIM, which under the old system would have had the right to buy them outright at a minimal fee and then pocket the box office takings.
The new legislation has succeeded in opening up the film distribution and exhibition market to private competition, but potential private-sector investment in the domestic film market continues to be impeded by the complexity of beaurocratic procedures and weak copyright management, and critics also argue that the legislation itself does not provide sufficient clarity on the rights at law of private enterprises. In any case, the
FAFIM joint venture company Visionnet International remains the most successful player in the field, not least because it can import nine to 10 copies of a film at one time, three times more than fledgling private competitors.
Since these new regulations were introduced, a small number of private film studios has since been set up, notably the Lý Huỳnh Film Company of Hồ Chí Minh City. However, the aim of these private studios is to produce entertainment-orientated rather than artistic cinema, and film industry professionals maintain that if quality filmmaking is to develop fully in the private sector the government must offer tax incentives for the setting up of private film studios in order to help them get off the ground and bring in much-needed investment, thereby boosting the Vietnamese film industry as a whole.
In the meantime there is increasingly heated debate amongst leading Vietnamese film practitioners regarding the artistic merits of commercial films such as Gái nhảy and its sequel Lọ lem hè phố, the advent of which some see as a worrying trend which could threaten the future production of more serious 'artistic' product.
