Rattled by the demise of communism, east European cinema is in bloom, winning a Palme d'Or last year at the celebrated Cannes film festival and exciting audiences with its home-grown films.

In Romania, last year's stark '4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days' by Cristian Mungiu, scored Cannes' 2007 Palme and then went on to give Disney a run for its money at the box office by rivalling Hollywood blockbuster 'Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End'.

In the Czech Republic, two films by two Oscar-winning Czech directors, Jan Sverak's 'Empties' and Jiri Menzel's 'I Served the King of England' clobbered Hollywood mega-productions.

'Katyn' by Oscar-award winning director Andrzej Wajda came second only to 'Shrek the Third' in his native Poland.

The success of domestic productions has drawn audience back into cinemas.

Last year saw a net increase in ticket sales in most eastern European countries, according to the Focus 2008 study published by the European Audiovisual Observatory in conjunction with the Cannes festival.

Ex-Soviet Lithuania lead the public's charge into movie houses, recording a 34 percent rise in ticket sales in 2007 compared to the previous year.

The overall number of movie-goers has also grown. While only a modest five percent of the population in Romania, it rose to 35 percent in the Czech Republic, comparable to France.

"Czech films are about Czech problems," says Marketa Santrochova, of the Czech Republic's Cinema Centre. "Czechs know their own actors and directors. They enjoy watching them."

In cinema heavyweight Poland, a quarter of movie-goers saw Polish films last year. Five of the top 10 box-office hits were home-grown.

A new film by Tomasz Konecki, 'Lejdis', which hit the screens in February, confirms the trend, having already attracted an audience of over two million.

Martin Kanzler, an analyst with the European Audiovisual Observatory, offers a more prosaic explanation of booming audiences for domestic productions — sub-titles in foreign films scare some audience members away.

Post-communist central European states — most of them now EU members — are playing catch-up in many sectors, including the world of cinema where there is still huge potential for growth.

Last year in Poland, by far the largest 2004 EU newcomer, there were just 0.86 ticket sales per capita compared to 2.80 in France. Romania saw a meagre 0.1.

In communist times, film-making was entirely state controlled. It provided the benefit of financial security, but exercised severe censorship. After the fall of communist dictators, the film world made the sharp transition to capitalism.

Two decades later, it is still finding its feet. While old movie theatres have been transformed into clubs, bars or supermarkets, multiplexes are flourishing in vast new shopping malls that have sprung up across the region. New producers, often supported by television stations looking for fresh content, have succeeded in attracting a new public. But the region is yet to produce films with broad international appeal.

"The problem is that there aren't any great authors," says Polish film producer Stanislaw Krzeminski. "There are no authors who know how to write — and give a universal message to the incredible transformations this region has seen in the last 20 years."

"Our young directors can't imagine doing a historic work like the German film 'The Lives of Others'," he added. "I'm a little bitter as the scars of communism are deeper than I thought."

AFP