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Help Fund
Here a historical reminder is needed: The film production of fiction goes back to the 1960s with the production of some films produced by the State. Independent production only started in the late 1970s, thanks in particular to the creation of an incentive formula called the "Support Fund". This relative progress was the result of the mobilization of the professional association of filmmakers, created in 1967, which convinced the authorities of this need.
While this support fund, governed at the time by a commission appointed by the director of the Moroccan Film Center, allowed the production of some 25 feature films, but the experience quickly demonstrated its inadequacy in relation to professional requirements. Indeed, the aid granted was very insufficient and could not guarantee the minimum of artistic quality desired. This is the reason why it has aroused many criticisms, more or less well-founded, although sometimes malicious, especially from uninformed voices.
Faced with this observation, the filmmakers were quick to demand the recasting of the fund and the increase of its resources to cope with the rapid evolution of production costs, which resulted in the mid-1980s to replace it a new mechanism called "Assistance Fund", the distribution of which was entrusted to an independent commission this time of the Moroccan Film Center and composed exclusively of representatives of the professional cinematographic chambers.
Whatever one may say, this reform has allowed the emergence of a certain number of works that have succeeded for the first time in "reconciling" the public with its cinema. As proof, it is enough to recall that the number of the spectators knew during this period a spectacular increase, exceeding the 40 million per year.
However, as expected, the liberation of filmmakers' energies gradually came up against the fund's lack of dynamism. Indeed, the limited resources of the latter could not accompany the evolution of the costs become increasingly important and which ended up constituting an insurmountable handicap against the legitimate ambitions of the professionals.
Again, we had to review the copy and make the necessary adjustments. Thus, in the mid-1990s, and after many consultations with the supervisory authorities, a new reform succeeded in substantially increasing the fund's resources, but at the same time it changed the composition of the commission. granting of aid. The latter, formerly composed exclusively of representatives of the professional chambers, is now composed only of what has been called "civil society", which has been considered as a lame solution in that its new members can not all claim to the quality of experts in this specific technical-artistic field. It must be remembered that elsewhere, especially in Europe, it is the cinema professionals who sit in such committees, without this raising the least opposition or suspicion?
Then, in an additional concern for transparency, the filmmakers proposed the transformation of the aid granted to lost funds, as before, in a Advance on recipes to give place, in case of public success of a film, to the refund at least part of the advance granted.
However, this measure supposedly gradually feed the pool of the pool so that a movie's earnings can also benefit others, as is the case in France, for example, but its application was misleading because it does not take into account the depreciation in advance of the investment of the producer, as in France, which we are inspired by, especially as the operating circuit is reduced more and more because our films can no longer find places of exploitation and the public is deprived of theaters.
In the end, if the fund, established since the late 1970s has partially fulfilled its role of incentive for 40 years, we must recognize today that it has shrunk down and began to become a the development of national cinematography as it is now confronted with the following difficulties:
1- The allocated envelope has not changed in 15 years, despite the significant increase in production costs.
2- Since the new era, the arrival of a new generation of filmmakers who legitimately seek the same support, which makes the distribution of the fund extremely tense and demonstrates the inadequacy of its resources.
3- The lack of artistic criteria in the choice of film projects submitted to the commission of advance on receipts, projects whose diversity and number increase the difficulties of this commission which, instead of being
