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Posted: 10 August 2010
The Proposed Abolition of the UK Film Council
Context: what is/was the Film Council?
• Margaret Thatcher’s government, believing in the free market economy, abolished existing government quotas and levies in place to assist the film industry in the 1980s; The industry then struggled financially in that decade and the start of the next• From 1995, National Lottery funds were committed to the UK film industry – at first, £84 million over a five year period; the UK Film Council was set up in 1999 as the central body to allocate funds (the government’s ‘strategic agency’)
• According to its own figures, the Council has backed more than 900 films, helping to generate approximately £700 million at the box-office worldwide
• It has worked with a range of partners across the UK, including Regional and National Screen Agencies and the British Film Institute; the nine regional agencies, which include Northern Film and Media (located in Newcastle), and the national agencies for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are not yet threatened by the current government proposals, and may continue once the Film Council has disappeared
• The Film Council aimed to make the UK a ‘global centre for film in the digital age’ and its earlier investment and support of digital screens (more than 240 screens nationwide) has enabled this country to be ahead of the rest of Europe in terms of digital exhibition
• Through its different funds, the Council aimed to support commercially-viable, mainstream projects and new filmmakers/innovative films; Andrea Arnold’s low-budget Fish Tank (left), winner of Jury Prize at Cannes, was widely regarded as a good example of successful Film Council investment in smaller British films, although critics complained it was an exception rather than the rule• UKFC also invested in training (providing £6.5 million a year to Skillset to support a national film skills and training strategy), promoting Britain as an international filmmaking location and raising the profile of British films abroad; in short, The Council claimed that ‘the Lottery money we distribute is key to keeping the engine of British film creativity running’
What is being proposed?
On 26 July 2010, soon after the coalition government was installed and had pledged to cut public spending, the new Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, announced proposals for the streamlining of various public bodies (or, to use the pejorative term that implies bureaucratic waste and inefficiency, quangos) attached to the Department of Culture, Media Media and Sport (DCMS), with the aim of ‘establishing a direct and less bureaucratic relationship with the British Film Institute’. Government and Lottery support for film will continue – it is not the funding that is being abolished but the organisation that distributes - it according to the government statement, with Hunt apparently in favour of keeping the tax- breaks, introduced by the previous government, available to film-makers
“If we are going to face budget cuts, I have a duty to ensure that taxpayers' money is spent where it gets the most bang for its buck. It is simply not acceptable in these times to fund an organisation like the UK Film Council, where no fewer than eight of the top executives are paid more than £100,000.”
Jeremy Hunt, Culture Secretary
Some important questions
• Is the UK Film Council an inefficient quango?
• Are its administrative costs (£3 million – the amount set to be saved by its abolition) outweighed by the commercial benefits it achieves for the industry and the investment into the British economy it attracts; could these gains be achieved without it?
• Are the co-ordinating strategies of the Film Council in the best interests of the film industry in this country?
• Will the loss of UK Film Council support – financial and strategic – to other organisations, including the BFI, screen agencies, Film Festivals and training bodies, jeopardise their existence?
• Has the Film Council been too committed to promoting transatlantic projects that could have been made with Hollywood money in any event; should it have been more focused on independent British cinema? Or have they achieved a fine balance between small-scale, independent film and more commercial cinema?
The response: in defence of the Film Council
“Abolishing the most successful film support organisation the UK has ever had is a bad decision, imposed without any consultation or evaluation. People will rightly look back on today's announcement and say it was a big mistake, driven by short-term thinking and political expediency. British film, which is one of the UK's more successful growth industries, deserves better.”
Tim Bevan, Chair of the UK Film Council
• There was an immediate response from the Film Council to the news, by way of a statement by Tim Bevans (as above). By its own estimate, the Film Council has invested £160 million of Lottery money on films that have generated more than £700 million at the box office (thus generating £5 for every £1 of lottery money invested)
• The Film Council claims that the success and profitability of the film industry, returning more than £1.2 billion to the Exchequer each year and supporting around 100,000 jobs, would be endangered by its abolition.
• Some of the figures for 2009 suggested that, with the Film Council’s help, the domestic film business was flourishing at a time of recession:
UK cinema admissions rose to 174 million, the highest figure for seven years;
British films and talent won 36 major film awards, 17% of the total available;
UK film exports exceeded £1.3 billion, 92% higher than in 2001.
• An online petition to save the Film Council was launched, gathering 20,000 supporters in two days
• A letter, condemning the abolition and signed by more than 50 British actors (including Sir Ian Holm, James McAvoy and Dominic Cooper) was published in The Daily Telegraph on 5 August: “It is our camera crews, lighting experts, set builders and a whole host of other skilled people who give our film industry such an edge. Their expertise which the UKFC has done so much to foster, is the main reason why so many top Hollywood film directors choose to make films here in Britain… Everyone, including those in the film industry, knows that times are tough. But the UKFC doesn’t waste money, it makes it. Thanks to its efforts, our film industry – worth £4.5billion a year – has rarely been stronger.””
• Rebecca Hastings (producer, Sixteen Films, and on the Film Council board): “The government is saying there will still be lottery funding, but its distribution that is key. That is a dark art as it is, but to axe the current system with no idea how to go forward is outrageous.”
• Liam Neeson (actor): “It's a powerful industry that provides a credible entertainment for millions of people - I know we need to tighten our belts but not with our movie council. They can't, we need it."
• Mike Figgis (director): “”I’m interested that the DCMS says it wants to build a more direct link between the BFI and government – I thought its whole thing was detaching government from interfering with the running of our culture. They don’t strike me as people who understand the film business, or even the culture business.”
• Ronan Bennett (screenwriter): “Every single writer, director and producer I know in this country considers the Film Council essential to film-making in the UK. Along with BBC Films and Film4, the Film Council was the main port of call for those of us trying to get feature films off the ground, especially if those films tended to be outside the mainstream. It was not staffed by bureaucrats but by people who had made films, who loved film, who knew film-makers and understood their struggles.”
• Daniel Barber (director, Harry Brown): “I’m very worried… as a film maker, I would like my second feature to be born of our culture. If I can’t find the money here, I’ll go to America and end up making American films.”
• John Woodward (chief executive, Film Council): “There is now no clear view from government as to what film support measures will be retained (with the exception of the film tax credit) or where operations for lottery funding will be anchored … it’s back to the dark ages.”
• Lord Puttnam (president of the Film Distributors' Association, former film producer, member of House of Lords): "Over the past decade, the Film Council has been a layer of strategic glue that's helped bind the many parts of our disparate industry together. It is sure to be widely missed, not least because the UK cinema industry is in the midst of a fundamental transformation at the heart of which is digital roll-out."
• Martin Spence (general secretary, BECTU trade union for the media and entertainment industries): "This decision is economically illiterate and culturally philistine. Film is an export success story: we sell British production skills throughout the world. And film is also a crucial cultural resource. But the industry is desperately fragmented and long experience tells us that it needs a national agency to achieve its potential."
The response: criticism of the Film Council
• A year earlier, Colin McCabe (Professor of English and Film, film producer) has criticised the ‘fantasy’ that the Film Council could deliver a ‘sustainable film industry’ to rival Hollywood and called for its abolition; he was critical of its monopoly of film funding (it spent more than £300million of subsidies) and its domineering agenda: “I have talked to many producers and have been startled by the level of venom I have encountered. For the UKFC’s aggressive commercial strategy, completely at odds with comparable European bodies, has gone hand in hand with the frequent contractual request that they have final cut on a film, overriding both the producer and director.”
(see Prospect magazine, December here)
• A number of journalists and bloggers were critical, like McCabe, of what they saw as the Film Council’s failure to support innovative and creative talents, with filmmakers like Andrew Kötting and Terence Davies struggling to have their films financed.
• Some producers and directors who had been critical of the Film Council’s methods and the way they had been personally treated were glad to see its abolition
• Alex Cox (director, writer): It's very good news for anyone involved in independent film. The Film Council became a means by which lottery money was transferred to the Hollywood studios. It pursued this phoney idea that James Bond and Harry Potter were British films. But, of course, those films were all American – and their profits were repatriated to the studios in Los Angeles.”
• Chris Atkins, director of Starsuckers, a documentary critical of power structures in the media, criticised the Film Council for refusing funds and assistance on the film and made a series of criticisms of their funding and operational policies. For example: “the UKFC distribution fund … doled out more than £4 million a year in grants to help to release finished films (to pay for posters, advertising and so forth) and Pete Buckingham, the head of the fund, has given public money to some unlikely choices. In 2007, the impoverished rock band the Rolling Stones and the unknown director Martin Scorsese collaborated to make the forgettable Shine a Light — essentially a piece of marketing to plug the Stones’ album. The Film Council handed over £154,000 to promote Mick and Keith despite the Stones being worth more than £100 million. Furthermore, the grant went directly to a distributor that is part of an American studio.”
(full article here)
The response: international perspective
• In the vacuum of a body to lobby on behalf of Britain as a film-making location, other countries looking to capitalise: Jackie O’Sullivan of the Australian film support agency, Ausfilm: “the UK Film Council is a fantastic co-production partner for us, but on the other hand, if it doesn't exist I wonder if there is a question mark over the whole sustainability of the UK film industry. Will the big US studios still go to the UK? The UK is a competitor for Australia. If the big US studios are not going to go to England we would like to see them come to Australia, and we will be chasing them.”
• Clint Eastwood wrote to the Chancellor, George Osborne, to stress the role of the Film Council in helping Hollywood directors to shoot their films here, referring to his own experience shooting The Hereafter in London.
“The UKFC was instrumental in providing us the crucial, detailed information we needed to make our decision to ultimately shoot in the UK. Without such assistance during the early stages of pre-production, the likelihood of a London shoot would have been greatly diminished.”
Clint Eastwood
• Voices in the American press has voiced their surprise at the failure to invest in the potentially lucrative entertainment industry. San Francisco Chronicle: “History teaches us it's better to deficit spend, but people don't learn so well. Instead, Britain takes aim at movies and The UK Film Council. Britain should keep the UK Film Council as it's key part of the UK's presence in the healthy entertainment industry.”
