Bill would place promotion of film and TV production in Minnesota under new state agency
Apr. 15—ST. PAUL — Under a bill that has been proposed in the Minnesota Legislature, MN Film and TV, a nonprofit organization that currently promotes Minnesota as a location for film and television production, would be dissolved and its duties given to a new state agency.
The new agency, which would be called Explore Minnesota Film Office, would ensure that filmmakers across the nation recognize the vast potential Minnesota has to offer them and their productions, according to the author of the bill, state Rep. Liz Lee, DFL-St. Paul.
"Minnesota boasts stunning scenery, vibrant cities, and a rich cultural tapestry," Lee said in a description of the proposed legislation contained on the Minnesota Legislature's website.
Minnesota is the only state in the country that uses a nonprofit to run a film production tax incentive and putting those incentives under direct lawmaker control makes sense and is long overdue, according to Melodie Bahan, executive director of MN Film & TV.
Bahan said if the legislation is approved, the nonprofit she operates would dissolve and a new state agency would be formed that would hire its own staff.
Bahan told The Forum she and her staff would have the opportunity to apply for jobs at the new agency.
According to Bahan, MN Film & TV was founded in 1983 after Minnesota lawmakers passed on establishing a state agency to promote films and the state began losing out to other states as a location for movies. She said the most famous example was the 1980 film "Ordinary People," a movie based on a book written by Minnesota author Judith Guest and directed by Rorbert Redford, who shot the film in Illinois, which at the time had the beginnings of an official film office.
Despite being a private nonprofit and not a state agency, MN Film & TV has been serving the same purpose that state-operated commissions do in other states: providing resources and information to filmmakers and promoting the state as a location for filming, according to the nonprofit's website.
In 1995, Canada upped its promotional game when it began offering the first film production incentive in the form of a federal tax credit.
States in the U.S. began creating similar incentive programs and in 1997 Minnesota set up a rebate program administered by MN Film & TV that was among the first of such incentive programs in the U.S.
However, the program lost its funding in 2002 and by the time funding was restored in 2006 almost 20 states had established production incentive programs of their own, according to MN Film & TV, which certified 239 projects for incentives from 2014 through 2017.
During that period, the state's $18 million investment resulted in at least $82.5 million in direct spending in Minnesota and attracted independent films such as "Dear White People," "Thin Ice," "Wilson," and "The House of Tomorrow."
In 2017, Minnesota lawmakers cut funding for the rebate program to $500,000 per fiscal year and funding for the program currently remains at that level.
In 2021, Minnesota created a transferable tax credit program aimed at attracting big-budget projects to the state and in 2023 legislators raised the tax credit cap from $5 million to $25 million.
In January of this year,
the movie "Marmalade" was released,
a film that was shot entirely in Minnesota and one of the first productions made possible by the new state tax incentives.
