Author: Anastasia Platonova
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What does the decision to ‘re-subordinate’ the State Film Agency to the Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications indicate?
On Friday, 7 February, the Cabinet of Ministers adopted a resolution to re-subordinate the State Film Agency back to the Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications. As if trying to undermine the axiom that the law does not have a retroactive effect, the state continues to ‘merge’, ‘spill’ and ‘transfer’ institutions accountable to it back and forth without thinking that the problem should be sought not in the form of subordination, but in its own management practices and approaches. We will explain what the return of the State Film Agency to the management of the MCSC means and what the consequences of this decision may be.
In the three and a half years since the Cabinet of Ministers separated the State Film Agency from the then Ministry of Culture and Information Policy in November 2021, the institution has not only managed to turn into a kind of headless horseman, effectively losing control but also become a parody of a dedicated film industry development agency.
During this time, instead of realising the agency's potential to become a separate ‘ministry of cinema,’ the then-leadership of the State Film Agency only managed to engage in systemic conflict with the film community, attempts to manually control processes in the sector, and open confrontation with the Dovzhenko Centre team, which has been trying to save the institution from destruction for several years.
However, it is unlikely that the reason for the ‘reverse re-subordination’ of the State Film Agency to the Ministry of Culture is the Presidential Office's awareness of the institutional crisis in the agency and the need to return it to a certain strategic framework. Talks about this began in the autumn of 2024, when Olena Kovalska, deputy head of the Office of the President, said that ‘there is a need to review the tasks of the State Film Agency and its structure and subordination. Now, this institution is subordinated to a minister of the Cabinet of Ministers, and this needs to be changed.’ By the way, Kovalska, who has a degree in marketing and extensive experience in marketing in the banking sector, is called the curator of the cultural and humanitarian block from the OP. So let's face it: the Presidential Office apparently had the intention a few months ago to finally pay more attention to the State Film Agency, which is in a systemic institutional crisis, and after the dismissal of its former head Maryna Kuderchuk in the summer of 2024, something was up in the air.
However, the mechanism for implementing this intention looks somewhat clumsy - even at the level of the stated motivations. After all, in 2021, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal motivated the transfer of the State Film Agency to the Cabinet of Ministers by the need to ‘give it a significant status by making it a separate central executive body with the ability to formulate policy.’ At present, the current Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications, Mykola Tochytskyi, motivates the reverse process by saying that ‘coordination of the State Film Agency by the Ministry will allow it to more effectively support the development of the industry and promote cinema as an element of cultural diplomacy.’ It is somewhat reminiscent of the standard practice of the state when the rules of the game are changed right during the game, isn't it?
Photo: Mykola Tochytskyi / Ukrainian State Film Agency
But the first and most important question is what will happen to the agency itself in the near future. Obviously (according to Olena Kovalska), the structure of the institution's tasks should be changed, and the emergence of another development strategy for the institution or even the entire industry is not excluded (although the industry has not yet recovered from the previous one, which caused a lot of protests and was described by the film community as a ‘threat to the environment’).
The question of who will head the State Film Agency remains relevant (in light of the Presidential Administration's influence on strategic decisions regarding the film industry, this position could be considered something like the status of the Queen of England, who rules but does not govern, but as long as the State Film Agency remains an institution at least de jure, we will treat it accordingly).
Therefore, it is now quite possible to organise a new competition for the position of the head of the agency, as well as to appoint an acting head for the period of martial law. If the competition is planned, it may require close attention from both the community and the public - after all, if we recall the previous competition for the position of the State Film Agency director in January 2020, which ended in scandals and lawsuits, hopes for transparency in the new competition are illusory.
Equally important is how the recent changes in the re-subordination of the State Film Agency will affect the institutions reporting to it. Unfortunately, the rule of ‘my vassal's vassal is not my vassal’ does not work here, so changes in the activities (accountability or task structure) of the film agency may affect the institutions it manages.
Most questions are currently about the work of the Dovzhenko Centre: will Order №100 on the reorganisation of the centre, which started the institution's struggle to survive, be cancelled? Will a contract be signed with the director who has already won the competition twice? Or will a new competition be announced? Or will the Centre be accountable to the State Film Agency, but the Ministry of Culture will actively interfere in its work, as it used to do in the past? What will be the role of the OP?
It also remains to be seen whether the Ministry of Culture (or the Presidential Office) will now take a more active interest in the affairs of the National Film Library or whether it will still be managed directly by the State Film Agency.
So, in a situation where the film industry (and culture in general) is in a state of systemic underfunding - this year alone, the state has cut funding for the State Film Agency four times, from UAH 618.3 million to UAH 170 million - micromanagement and manual control practices on the part of the state cause nothing but tired disappointment.
At the moment, it seems that the decision to return the State Film Agency back to the Ministry of Culture is neither good nor bad. And not only because, in the current situation it is difficult to make things worse, but also because the same people will be making decisions about the film agency as before.
But why, in this situation, it was decided to transfer the State Film Agency from one pocket to another is a more interesting question. Perhaps this step is part of a bigger plan that will soon become clearer. So, as usual, we should not relax and keep an eye on the hands of government officials.
Illustration: Ukrainian State Film Agency
