Kyiv court repeals requirement on Ukrainian-language dubbing of films (11/05/06)

Kyiv court repeals requirement on Ukrainian-language dubbing of films

by Yana Sedova
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

KYIV - The revolutionary decision of the previous Cabinet of Ministers requiring the dubbing of foreign films into the Ukrainian language faces the fate of the Titanic.

The Kyiv Appellate Court repealed the Ukrainian-language quotas on October 17, siding with the Association for Ukrainian Cinema Promotion that filed a lawsuit against the Cabinet of Ministers for issuing its decree.

"This decision bans the Ukrainian language in our distribution industry," said Viacheslav Kyrylenko, the former vice prime minister for humanitarian affairs who led the campaign to dub movies into Ukrainian.

The quotas stipulated Ukrainian-language dubbing for 20 percent of feature films released since September 2006, 50 percent as of January 2007 and 70 percent as of July 2007.

Since September, all foreign film distributors were obliged to show the Ministry of Culture both a Russian and Ukrainian version of each film as the only way to obtain a distribution license.

The Association for Ukrainian Cinema Promotion asserted that the Cabinet decree violated the Constitution of Ukraine, which protects the use of the Russian language and languages of all national minorities in Ukraine.

Distributors now use other arguments, mostly economic, against Ukrainian-language quotas.

Every year, about 300 foreign films are released in Ukrainian theaters, they said at an October 27 press conference, and dubbing all of them into Ukrainian would be too expensive. Currently, Ukrainian distributors simply obtain their films dubbed in the Russian Federation into the Russian language.

"Dubbing costs about $50,000 per film, and there are many low-budget movies that never bring as much of a box office return as blockbusters," said Tetiana Smirnova, executive director of the Cinema Forum of Ukraine and the Association for Ukrainian Cinema Promotion. "European feature films might disappear, and only Russian and Hollywood movies would stay in the market."

Distributors blame B&H Distribution Co., the largest in Ukraine's film market, in lobbying its business interests and trying to establish a monopoly through its support of Ukrainian-language dubbing.

After the Cabinet decree, only B&H was willing to pay for dubbing the Disney film "Cars" and "Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest."

"B&H Co. earned $12.5 million last year, and that is why they can afford the dubbing," Ms. Smirnova said. "But small distributors can't. So we could have at least started with providing movies with Ukrainian-language subtitles."

At the same time, distributors said movie-goers aren't interested in watching films in their original languages with Ukrainian-language subtitles.

Insisting that the issue is not political, distributors said it's simply not their duty to promote the Ukrainian language.

Distributors say there are no copy laboratories with appropriate production capacity. The only laboratory at the National Dovzhenko Cinema Studio can produce 100 copies per week at most, while the market needs tens of thousands of copies per year.

The distributors also claimed to have conducted their own opinion polls in 32 eastern and western cities, which supposedly convinced them that 80 percent of movie-goers want to see films in the language they're used to, namely Russian.

In eastern Ukrainian movie theaters, for example, the Ukrainian-language version of the animated film "The Ant Bully" drew an audience of up to 10 movie-goers, compared to several hundred for the Russian version.

"In situations like this cinema theaters are unable to pay salary to its staff," said Ihor Ihnatiev, the manager of Luksor Ukraine, a distribution company.

The pirated video market swelled because movie-goers couldn't see films in the Russian language, said Mykhailo Sokolov, president of the Association for Ukrainian Cinema Promotion. "If these 80 percent do not see a movie in a language they want, they will buy home video movies," Mr. Sokolov said.

However, his claim was false on two accounts.

During the Ukrainian dubbing experiment, Ukrainians had the option of viewing films in Russian or Ukrainian. Furthermore, the Ukrainian-language versions were shown only during unpopular movie-going hours, namely during mornings and afternoons.

Box-office reports don't support the distributors' claims.

In heavily Russian-speaking Donetsk, the average audience for a Ukrainian-language version of "Cars" was 37 moviegoers, compared with an average audience of 32 movie-goers who opted for the Russian-language, said Bohdan Batrukh, the general manager of B&H.

The Association for Ukrainian Cinema Promotion requested a more comprehensive approach by the government and guarantees of the government's financial support for the industry, particularly any Ukrainian-language dubbing.

"We now see that the market is not ready for the Ukrainian language and it's not profitable to release a lot of films in Ukrainian," Mr. Ihnatiev said. "The state should have better supported national film production."

A happy ending appears elusive in the long-suffering soap opera in which the Ukrainian language plays the role of the beautiful, yet neglected Cinderella.

"I believe the deputies, the media and society will not keep silent," Mr. Kyrylenko said. "They had the possibility to see movies dubbed, or at least subtitled, in the Ukrainian language for the first time in Ukraine's history. It's too early to close the book on this story."

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