“Wallimage Coproductions takes advantage of the sound box provided by the Cannes Festival, opening next week, to draw up a flattering assessment of the last five years,” explains L’Echo in its subscribers’ edition.
Certainly the results are flattering, but they are also impartial, as specified by Michel Visart in his economy section on the RTBF website : “After the call for offers, the consultants of Ernst & Young were asked to answer this question: how many euros impact for one invested euro? The selected time period stretches over five years, between 2009 and 2013.”
A report is available on economic channel Canal Z . It starts with strong, indisputable and impressive numbers: “66 million euros economic impact in three years.” Who does better?
“Wallimage Coproductions signed 134 agreements for financial support to cinematographic work (…) since 1st January 2009,” as detailed by Sud Presse and the other papers who chose to take over the Belga press report, which states that “the investments agreed upon by Wallimage went from 3.5 million euros in 2009 to 5.2 million euros in 2013.”
Going into more detail about these investments, Belga notices that : “The film shoot sector (41%) is the one generating most expenses, followed by the production and post-production costs (33%). Finally, Wallimage invested in Belgian films for an amount of 6.9 million euros, compared to 9.5 million for international films, yielding an economic impact of 27.6 and 38.9 million respectively.”
No matter how one looks at it, the success is undeniable. The only surprise could possibly be the name of the absolute champion in terms of returns on investment. That would be Largo Winch 2, a spectacular international co-production filmed partly in Belgium.
This allows La Libre Belgique to call “Wallonia” a “hotspot for European film” in the title to an article recounting the broad lines of Wallimage’s history and its philosophy: “Six months after the Dardenne brothers win a Golden Palm for Rosetta at the Cannes Festival, Wallimage is created. It is early 2000 and the beginning of an economic dimension of the film industry at the heart of a Walloon enterprise. This company, an economic fund receiving grants from the governments in Wallonia and Brussels, has now co-financed over 200 films. Their eclectic catalogue is not the result of a particular editorial concept – blockbusters, small productions, animated films, genre films, Belgian or foreign – their sole standard for eligibility concerns the economic impact of the film for Wallonia.”
Finally, the RTBF radio podcast records Michel Visart going into the “complementary strategy of Wallimage Entreprises and its 10 million invested in order to take part in the capital of 29 enterprises, but also the ACA, a training facility created by Wallimage to respond to a need for skills expressed by the new audiovisual enterprises in Wallonia.”
A synthetic and interesting post to get a general idea of the situation.
La Libre also mentions these two approaches, stating that “the Wallimage Entreprises subsidiary was created in 2008. Today, it grants funds to 29 service industries covering different steps of the production process – ranging from the shoots (f.e. TSF.be) to the distribution (f.e. Belga Films), over special effects (f.e. Digital Graphics). Finally, Wallimage also recently set up the ACA, a cell dedicated to teaching cutting edge and very specific techniques related to the audiovisual professions, in order to train the future professionals the industry needs.”
The study carried out by Ernst & Young leaves no doubts: the strategy and choices made by all elements of Wallimage are indisputable successes and very profitable for the region. This observation is contrary to certain gloominess close to bad faith that reigns sometimes.
To have a concrete and complete overview of the objective impact of the investments made by the Walloon Region in the audiovisual world through Wallimage, you can download the reports on our site., here and here .
