Film in Skane
Hollywood, Bollywood and ...Skane? Not yet leaping to most minds as a major film capital, Skane is gaining the attention of film producers and directors seeking cost-effective production facilities, skillful workers in the film arts, and a highly varied range of spectacular locales.
And though the beachhead is a small one, it is a strategic gain on high ground. And one that illustrates what imprinting images on a film audience can mean to the region associated with the imagery.
Consider Inspector Kurt Wallander. Wallander has wandered the countryside around the picturesque coastal town of Ystad since 1991, when he searched for the notorious Faceless Killers who committed a grisly double murder in a farmhouse. He is been tracking murderers most frightful ever since.
How he nabs anyone amid the throngs admirers who follow his every footstep, literally, is the growing mystery in Ystad. The good inspector - mid-fifties, melancholic, struggling to bear up under serious illness and a truckload of world weary insight - springs from the brooding mind of Henning Mankell. A former merchant seaman, Mankell seems to take down a literary prize every time Wallender takes down a killer. He is one of Swedenís greatest exports, with over twenty-five million books thirty-seven languages. Before the Frost, Mankelís 2003 novel, the seventh Wallender novel of ten thus far, was the biggest selling novel in Germany, besting even Harry Potter, and seventh biggest worldwide. Mankell also directs a theater project in Mozimbique and backs African projects on health and development.
Wallenderís current tasks include helping levitate Skane’s film industry. The gumshoe appears game for it. Yellow Bird films, started by Mankell and film producers Lars Bjorkman and Ole Sondberg to transfer the detectiveís exploits to screen, created a center of gravity for film.
Karin Johansson-Mex, film coordinator at the Department of Trade & Industry for Region Skane, says before this effort, there was only a couple hundred thousand Euros in the regionís film fund, and Skane lacked the handy production detail of a film studio.
Yellow Bird approached Ystad’s town council with a modest request for funding so Wallander could do his sleuthing in the novel’s setting instead of up north. Johansson-Mex says that with neighboring towns and organizations like Film in Skane and Region Skane kicking in, thirteen millionSwedish kronors, or nearly a million and a half Euros, were cobbled together.
A pittance by Hollywood standards, but enough to march on the aging army garrison in downtown Ystad and claim it for Ystad Studios, the heart of which is a huge brick building where the Swedish army once tested missiles. Now the building, large enough to allow two movie productions at once, tests stage craft, contributing mightily to the 20 full-length feature films spawned in Ystad.
Among them are thirteen feature films about the intrepid inspector, done by a German film company and, says Johansson-Mex, sold to Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Germany, with deals discussed for Croatia, Greece and Spain. When production began in 2004, German tourists to Ystad started ratcheting up a third. A British company now plans to film a series, perhaps hungering for a detective to replace a kindred spirit, the dearly departed Inspector Morse.
And hence the regional impact, symbolized by a German lady who parked all night at a Wallender crime scene reading the novel by flashlight - no word on if she locked her doors. Itís tricky to quantify economic impacts, but impossible to deny them. Natasha Banke, Film Commissioner for the Oresund Film Commission - which also works with Denmark, notes that based on experience in similar regions, a successful international film can increase tourism up to ten percent per year for several years following a film’s release.
A very conservative calculation including the number of viewers of the Wallender films, (estimated to be at least 128 million), and visual and dialogue references to Skane in the Wallender films, the value of media exposure, virtually free, is over sixty million Euros. Depending on how the figures adjust, this can mean an increase of two million tourists over several years, increasing their use of lodging, restaurants and recreation, bringing a value of up to 1200 million kronor. Banke notes that this means the return on kronor invested by the regional government is somewhere between 24 and 92 kronor for every krona invested.
There is also the spin-off effect of a viable cluster of supporting film production companies, all fluent in English and many staffed with skilled personnel trained at nearby universities that tailor classes to order for what the film industry most desires. The quality of work is high, and extremely cost-effective compared to Hollywood, says Johansson-Mex.
Banke points to the highly regarded 2005 Finnish film, Mother of Mine, about Finnish children placed in foster homes in Skane to keep them safe during WWII and then taken back from families they’d become part of. It was filmed in Ystad for less than a couple hundred thousand dollars. Including TV showings, it will eventually reach an audience of over hundred million.Ystad Studios currently retains sets of Wallander’s home and police station that tourists can wander through, musing over the inspector’s father’s terrible paintings that Wallander feels compelled to keep.
A nearby visitors center allows visitors of all ages to explore and experience the film making arts.
Soon, Sweden’s first vampire film, Frostbite, will wash up on American shores. Think long winter nights.
