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Complete PICLE corpus of essays by Polish advanced EFL students (330,000)
Cinematography is another field of cultural activity in which the American influence is observable. One does not have to count the percentage to see that majority of what European cinemas show are American films. It will not be an overstatement to say, that they are often of questionable value. Not only are they trashy, but they may exert an unfavourable influence on European cinematography setting, sometimes, standards of a happy-end soap opera or shoot-em-ups, to mention just the most prevailing. One might argue that e.g. Polish films are also of bad quality. But every country produces market-oriented as well as ambitious and artistic movies. The point is, that American productions outnumber the native ones and are very often marketable. It would be, of course, tendentious and unfair to overlook good productions which are made in America. Not many of them, however, become box-office hits. They often go unnoticed (because they are not promoted on a great scale) and are low-budget productions which, were meant, from the very beginning, for a small audience. Thus what usually appears on the European cinema market are commercial films which, surprisingly, are favoured by picture-goers and which people will prefer to their home-made productions. Such a situation led to a difficult condition of native film industry in some countries. There are fewer and fewer artistic films made in Europe because they are not profitable and their productions need sponsors to come off. Various film festivals, like those in Venice, Berlin, Cannes, Karlove Vary, Toruń, Gdynia prove that European cinematography frequently exceeds the American one. But if the inflow of such a great amount of American movies continues, even those festivals will not be able to promote national movies.