Presentation for Locating Media Industries: Cities, Spaces, Places conference: "Media Industries in Small European Countries: Extending Networks; Reinforcing Competitiveness"

While maintaining cultural and artistic idiosyncrasies, small EU countries (such as Portugal, Ireland, Estonia, and Belgium, among others), share common characteristics when it comes to the conditions of production, distribution and marketing of filmic and audiovisual products. The fact that these countries are small markets makes them more vulnerable to dynamics brought about by the globalisation and digitisation of the film industry. Therefore, the competitiveness and survival of these industries are threatened, which means that the preservation of cultural diversity might suffer in the long term - perhaps inevitably. Bearing in mind that each country encapsulates a different reality, this paper intends to map some of the common features (as well as problems) of the industries of small EU countries and identify ways in which these ecosystems are cooperating in order to tackle pressing challenges and reinforce the competitiveness of their domestic markets and thus contribute to the development and cohesion of a conceptually overarching, fragmented and yet unarticulated European film industry. Bringing together approaches from economics, management and film studies, this paper will focus on the importance of locality in media production and address how networks of peripheral cinemas can be strengthened and how a common strategy can multilaterally benefit its members while exploring and bringing to the fore possible artistic and cultural implications and compromises that such synergies might provoke.