2001 was an exceptional year for both cinema-goers and film-makers in Europe. Nine hundred and twenty million cinema entrance tickets were sold across the EU with attendance figures hitting highs not seen since the early 1980s. European films performed especially well, with four out of the top twenty films in the EU homegrown. Films such as Bridget Jones’ Diary and Le fabuleux destin d’Am四ie Poulain also drew large audiences from countries outside the European Union, including Japan. I am pleased that the Osaka European Film Festival is giving Japanese audiences the chance to see a whole range of excellent European films that have recently proved exceptionally popular in Europe such as Der Schuh des Manitu which achieved an impressive 18% market share in its native Germany.

The EU audiovisual industry contributes some 65 billion to the Union’s GDP. As well as being of significant economic importance, it has a special role to play in expressing the diversity and openness of European culture. In 2001, the European Union announced plans to make available almost 1 billion to Europe’s cinema and audiovisual industry through initiatives by the European Commission and the European Investment Bank.

The European Commission’s Media Programme is now in its third incarnation ﾐ Media Plus. The Media Plus Programme and its predecessors Media and Media II are dedicated to strengthening the audiovisual industry in Europe. Media Plus, working in tandem with Member States’ audiovisual support programmes, supports the industry by training professionals, developing new projects as well as distributing and promoting them. It also financially supports a number of film festivals across Europe. The budget for the programme, which will run until 2005, is in excess of 400 million.

European cinema remains remarkably cost-effective. The average budget of a European film is a mere 4 million compared with 48 million for a Hollywood movie. Nevertheless, the European film industry continues to make first-rate films even when it lacks the financial strength of the American studios. While the small-scale of European productions often means that such films are pigeonholed as minority ﾒart-houseﾓ films, many cinemagoers, in both Europe and Japan, are shying away from action-packed blockbusters in favour of high-quality European cinema.

This year’s Osaka European Film Festival offers a number of choice selections of new films from across the EU. It will also be showing films such as Nuovo Cinema Paradiso and Metropolis are classics of European and global cinematographic heritage. They are well loved by the people of the EU and Japan and I am sure that festivalgoers will enjoy the rare opportunity of seeing these classics on the big screen.

I would like to wish the Ninth Osaka European Film Festival every success in the hope that the festival will continue to serve as a cultural bridge between the people of the European Union and the Kansai region. At a time when the EU is looking to more closely develop its contacts with Japan at the grassroots level, events such as the Osaka European Film Festival are all the more important. Enjoy the films.