Budapest Film Office - Coordinated Public Premises

The Budapest City Cabinet asked Vice Mayor János Schiffer Dr. to start negotiations with the local authorities and professional organizations regarding the coordination and simplification of the authorization of shooting on public premises.

Thanks to the new film law the number and the cost of productions in Hungary has significantly increased, as well as the number of shootings on public premises. There were more authorizations issued in the first half of 2005 than throughout 2004 and by the end of 2005 the expenditure on shooting exceeded 30 billion HUF in Budapest alone. While interest in Budapest has risen (which delivers considerable profit for filmmakers, tourism and municipalities) authorization procedures are slow and bureaucratic. This can partly be explained by the fact that administering rights are often divided.

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Budapest is a popular location for shooting: the historical sites, the city’s structure, the modern infrastructure quality catering services and film services attract international filmmakers to the city. However competition with the neighboring countries is very strong, our advantage is temporarily since the other countries of the region are also planning to introduce tax allowances similar to our film law. Therefore Hungarian and foreign producers are pressing for simpler location authorization processes and easily accessible public utility services.

The Budapest Film Office is planned to be set up during the summer, before the poll for local authorities. The Municipality of Budapest would like the 24 districts to harmonize authorization procedures, and create a uniform tariff system. The Budapest Film Office would enable filmmakers to arrange all administrative procedures in one office regardless of how many districts the shooting would involve. Additional authorizations would be issued here as well; arrangements could be made here with public utility services. The Film Office would inform the public, would deal with the restrictions and traffic burdens the shooting would impose.

International experience shows that it is not the fees for using public premises that deliver the most profit, but rather availing of additional services (filmmaking companies, security services, public utility services, trade and catering services) and the film shot in the city could have a strong promotional value.

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The Municipality of Budapest believes that a one-person Ltd. would be the best solution, which would maintain contract based relationship with the individual districts. The Ltd. would provide wide range of services for productions and through coordinated promotion it would offer locations and service in Budapest for international productions.

The divided nature of the local authority of Budapest imposes a lot of burdens on the actual realization of the idea. The municipalities of the individual districts would have to delegate certain powers in order to achieve the integration. There are districts where authorization procedures are already quick and effective and these districts do not see an integrated, one office-run system as effective. The fear of loss of profit and the ignorance of the outer districts might also aggravate the integration.

After negotiations the Municipality of Budapest plans arrange the setting up of the Budapest Film Office, which the districts can join from then on. They would like to make agreements with the public utility service providers, the filmmaking companies and would draft a harmonized tariff system.