Robert

I’ve always been a huge fan of ‘world’ cinema and can’t imagine how my experience of films would have differed if I’d only watched English language films throughout my life (my Greek girlfriend can confirm how poor my multi-lingual skills are).

However, I really can’t count the number of times I’ve felt let down by the lack of care and effort that has gone into a films subtitling. White text on a white background, spelling mistakes and bad timing are problems that occur all too often for my liking. If you’re distributing a ‘foreign’ language film, surely the one thing you’d check is the subtitles, they’re pretty damn important!

Ultimately though, the worst problem I’ve had with a subtitled film is when I bought a copy of Harry, He’s here to Help and the subtitles didn’t work at all. It was almost enough to make me take French lessons…almost.

At the European Independent Film Festival, we receive films from all over the world and in many different languages – French, Portuguese, Hebrew, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Icelandic, English and even Aussie (*do* they qualify as speaking English in the land down under?). This ultimately raises the following question: how can filmmakers and subtitles work together to appeal to the international audience?

The ECU 2010 Official Selection will be subtitled as follows: English films will be subtitled in French, French films subtitled in English and all other foreign language films will be subtitled in English. We believe this is the best way for the international audience and jury to watch, appreciate and get maximum ejoyment from the ÉCU 2010 Official Selection. With the Official Selection announcment on the 15th February, and the festival one month later, competing directors need to start thinking about how to address the subtitle situation if they have not done so already.

Who knows, maybe our directors will use this article and it’s advice as inspiration to breathe new life into a project, which at this point, they’re sick of staring at.