by Federico Greco

"My company, "New World", which started in 1970, grew very rapidly until we were the leading independent American distribution company. We’d been doing mainly low-budget American films and I wanted to change the image of the company a little bit and also I had always admired the films of some of the greatest of the European film directors, particularly Fellini, Bergman, Truffaut and, actually from Japan, Kurosawa. I heard that Bergman’s newest film Cries and Whispers did not have an American distributor so I arranged to look at it and I thought the film was wonderful: it went on to win an Academy Award and I struck a deal with the American representative of Bergman and opened by venture into art films with Cries and Whispers.
My feeling was that these films were reaching a smaller share of the American audience than they deserved to. Some of them were being distributed by small companies who were sort of “afficionados” of film but not official distributors. When occasionally they went to a major distributor – the the majors are the best distributors in the world – but the majors weren’t really geared to distribute that type of film, or have the technique, a way of working, and that didn’t work for these little films. We were strong enough to get the best theatres, arrange the best terms and so forth, and generate publicity, but small enough to handle the films individually. For instance, at the opening of Cries and Whispers... yellow roses are important in the film, and we handed out yellow roses: it was a formal opening – to all the women who came to the picture and it was detailed work like that. It worked very well until... I then distributed another film for Bergman , Autumn Sonata. I distributed a number of films from Truffaut, from Fellini - Amarcord from Fellini , Let me see... a film from Kurosawa.
Over a space of seven or eight years, the films we distributed won more Academy Awards for best foreign film than all the other companies combined.
And we only stopped doing it when we sold New World Pictures. I kept my core of staff and sold New World one day and the next day I was in operations with Concorde, my new company.
I haven’t seen as many European films recently as I have in the past few years. The independent film business in the United States has become much more difficult and I’ve concentrated on doing what I specialise in.
I have a feeling that European films have changed a little bit. I know there are a number of good young directors, but I don’t see the greatness of Bergman, Fellini and so forth.
I like the concept of the Dogma theory. It fits to a certain extend with the way I’ve been shooting but is even more austere, more pure, if you want to use it that way adn I think it opens up a way to do films more intimately and for less money. Allowing the filmmaker more freedom of expression. I think at times it can become self-conscious I’m not totally in approval of the idea of every shot being hand-held. I think, at the moment we’re sitting, we’re talking. I don’t think I need or anyone needs a hand-held shot of you sitting there or me sitting here. I would prefer the steadiness of putting the camera on a tripod but I like the idea of hand-held, natural lighting and particularly hand-held when there is movement of the characters on the screen. So I think it’s an exciting new movement but can be - as most new movements are – they become modified a little bit and go into the mainstream and I think that that’s what will happen to Dogma. And I think that it’s been however as we say in America, "a breath of fresh air" for cinema.