The purposes served by a national film industry are a happy perennial of public debate. On Wednesday, the prime minister indicated – to no one's surprise – that his government thought the pre-eminent one should be making money. Speaking at Pinewood studios, Mr Cameron predicted approvingly that Lord Chris Smith's investigation of Britain's £4bn film industry, out next week, will call for government and lottery support to be directed more at entrepreneurial film-makers and box-office hits than at technically innovative or culturally important projects. It probably will, since that is what the then plain Chris Smith MP said 12 years ago when as culture secretary he set up the UK Film Council, the body his Conservative successor axed within weeks of taking office in May 2010.
There is a strong case here for defining terms. Precisely what is meant by the British film industry is as familiar an argument as deciding what it is for. There are films that are culturally British – War Horse, which its maker Steven Spielberg described this week as his "first British film", or Harry Potter – films featuring British actors and British landscape, based on British books, but made with Yankee dollars. There are films that are culturally British and made with British money, like the Film Council's greatest success, The King's Speech. But then is Shame, made by the British director Steve McQueen and starring two British actors but set in New York, also British? And of course the industry itself is so much more than the fare at the local multiplex. It is the studios, the post-production facilities, the technical knowhow and the locations, film rights and distribution and cinemas.
The second term that needs defining is sustainable – the word most often applied to the objective for government and lottery funding. It would be possible to have a sustainable film industry that made money from Britain's unquestioned expertise in production, without actually originating any films at all. In 2010, UK film production generated a record £1.1bn for the wider economy. But that denies the cultural significance of an industry that is an irreplaceable way of telling the world something about life in Britain (although it is not always obvious quite what: Bend it like Beckham was the first British film to be screened in North Korea). Chris Smith's Film Council set out to concentrate on the commercial. Its determination to recoup on its investments left it short of friends, and according to its closing down audit, a poor record of success. It also paid its top executives considerably more than cabinet ministers. Labour had already begun to question its worth before cuts-hungry Conservative ministers delivered the death blow. So it is a nice political irony that its last year was the most successful ever in terms of international recognition (King's Speech, The Deep Blue Sea, We Need to Talk about Kevin) and investment in British films – while the transfer of its functions to the BFI appears unlikely to save any money.
David Cameron wants a system of funding that rewards success. In headline terms, that could mean two things, one bad and one good: the bad is a likely reluctance to take risks in what is an inherently risky, high-cost industry where fewer than one in 10 films recovers their production costs. Even if it worked, it might prompt the Treasury to wonder why the government needed to invest in an industry that made money anyway. But it could mean less clawing back of public investment. That would remove a gripe against the old Film Council. However the funding criteria are drawn up, the BFI will still have to wrestle with the Springtime for Hitler factor. Film finance is almost as creative as the industry it serves. Keeping up with the sharp accountancy that sometimes amounts to straightforward grant farming is a matter of constant vigilance, and not a bad justification for regularly reinventing the wheel. The Film Council made some enemies – but it helped make some good films too. The trick for the BFI will be to tell the good from the bad and the plain ugly.
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11 January 2012 10:20PM
Looking for commercial return on cultural investment is very dull and very short term and very superficial . On that basis no one would ever have invested anything in Tracey Emin or Banksy or the young Ken Loach or Shane Meadows or so many other of our most creative innovators. Cultural investment in talent has long term benefits that by definition can not be predicted or prescribed. It is our politicians who so expensively fail this country time and time again.
11 January 2012 10:27PM
I like that you mention Loach and Meadows, for me the best British film has to be Kes, but I was also incredibly moved by Dead Man's Shoes, and I think one of the strengths of good British cinema is its ability to move you, but then jolt you back to reality before you start getting snivelly (although hey, I'm no film expert).
The other day I saw ''The Great Ecastasy of Robert Carmichael'' and was shocked by the gratuitous violence, combined with a total lack of 'point' or message. A shame, because I thought technically it seemed quite good. One of the problems with some British film nowadays may be the desire to emulate American film, and it just comes across as a crappy knock-off version.
P.S. If you go to Comment > Comment is Free > All Posts, it reads
''Britain's film industry: closing credits
Editorial: the purpose of the national film industry needs to be definined''
11 January 2012 10:34PM
Yeah, probably not the best examples to use.
11 January 2012 10:48PM
Talk about clinching the case for your opponents....
11 January 2012 10:49PM
This approach could be viewed as an attempt to control, and censor, those independent voices that challenge the norm etc.
Make nice films, or else! We don't want the nation subject to notions that are in anyway subversive....
11 January 2012 10:50PM
I watched David Lean's Great Expectations last night and the evening before, Oliver Twist. These films show the British are able to make movies of such incredible and lasting quality. Nothing Hollywood has done is superior, yet it is Hollywood that reigns supreme.
Come on, let's blow them away! (But in an understated & nuanced British style.)
11 January 2012 10:51PM
Why makes you assume that an entrpreneurial film maker's box office hit will not be technically innovative or culturally important?
In my experience the biggest hits are usually all of those things. I loathe this elitist culture of 'it's ethier entertaining and low art or it's superior art but unpopular amongst the oiks who go to the multiplexes. Bollocks.
Wait until you see what happens to The Artist when it gets a nationwide release.
11 January 2012 10:57PM
Only if you're extremely dim.
Removing subsidy means standing on your own merits.
If you can find a backer for your cutting edge, challenging-the-norm, really-out-there effort (and there are plenty of Guardian readers with deepish pockets) then you'll be fine won't you?
If even these people won't stump up then it might just be that no-one really wants your film.
11 January 2012 11:07PM
The UK film industry is turning itself into a theme park for all things London and a publicity company for the establishment and the Royal Family. It is not the 'UK' film industry , it is the Notting Hill industry.
11 January 2012 11:15PM
ironic that the pm closed down the film council then wonders why we're not making hit films any more
oh i wish we had someone in clever in charge
11 January 2012 11:16PM
Any film that needs State funding is probably going to be crap. After all, as capitalists are motivated only by selfish motives (those bastards), why would they pass up the chance to invest in a film people want to see?
11 January 2012 11:47PM
I take it a sustainable film industry is one where you are at liberty to cull several billion of your extras so you don't have to pay them a dollar a day for what they've already done.
12 January 2012 12:26AM
I thought that government shouldn't be wasting its time trying to pick winners? If that's the philosophy for other industries, why isn't it true for the film industry?
Did Julian Fellowes stand up to support Cameron because he thinks that public money should be funding more films like Gosford Park? Frankly, after the last series of Downton Abbey - with such ludicrous scenes as the family gathering round the bed of the cousin's fiancee who is dying of Spanish Flu - I think the money would be better spent on more innovative, imaginative work.
12 January 2012 1:49AM
The main problem with all the arts is they have been cornered by the upper middle classes.
They all come from the same view point with the same life experiences.
12 January 2012 6:24AM
Really difficult questions, but I'l have a stab at them.
1. The British film industry is that bit of Britain that makes films.
2. The British film industry is for making films.
12 January 2012 7:29AM
I think it incumbent upon the Guardian to campaign for a film to be made of David Cameron's life ('The Rubber Man Can'?) with himself portrayed by an American accent at least as bad as Dick Van Dyke's in Mary Poppins.
Oh it's a luvely oliday fer Maggie...
12 January 2012 8:08AM
The problem is that Cameron, like all politicians - especially Ed Balls, suffers from political tourettes. They can't go anywhere without saying something on a topic of which they know absolutely nothing. Of course, if they did confine themselves to areas of their own expertise they would become Trappist monks.
The film industry, like much of the media in which the UK does seem to have a comparative advantage, is based on creativity. What would an old Etonian with a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford know about creativity? The closest he gets to it is when the likes of Kelvin McKenzie (the mentor of many a PM) dream up a piece of fiction about the EU.
As for the purpose of the British film industry- easy, whatever you're doing keep on doing it.
12 January 2012 8:23AM
If he wants to make money Cameron should invest in the games industry. At least we're not the best part of a century behind in that commercial field.
12 January 2012 8:59AM
Most of what we do as far as turn over is service related especially post production, (about 70% domestic and >20% US based.
Breakdown for financing large projects is..
(%)
Cash flow 46
Bank loans 20
Leasing 17
Private investment 12
Grants / Lottery 3
Other 2
So the diversion of funds from some projects from one area to another (more commercial?) projects does not really have as great impact as depicted although your last paragraph is pretty much on the money.
To be totally honest, whilst we may want to keep as much of a share of funding as possible, the revenue streams end up in the same place most of the time anyway, and whilst it is given that some people will always complain, the biggest relief would be the relaxation (or ideally underwriting) of credit terms from the lending institutions... just like any other business really.
12 January 2012 9:21AM
So, how much state support does Hollywood get?
12 January 2012 9:22AM
Even a dimwit like Cameron should be capable of understanding risk in anything sold to the public. The film industry is awash with big budget flops and small budget hits because, ultimately, it is the public who decide. Or is Cameron's secret agenda to brainwash every living soul into adoring what our rich masters tell us we adore?
12 January 2012 9:24AM
Excatly and this has no problem making money. The issue some people seem to have is that a huge part of the Britsh film industry is producing films for Hollywood. Persoanlly if the Aemican film industry want to come here and spend millions of dollars hiring biriish cres buildings and actors I dont have a problem. (its like a reverse export)
12 January 2012 9:25AM
Maybe a government body for film should have more of a DARPA-esque role - seen as british film seems to find funding through other private routes reasonably well.
Focusing on the radical ideas, things that wouldn't get funding otherwise, with a wide variety of small investments.
12 January 2012 9:30AM
In what way do Tracey Emin and Banksy need investing in? They are commercial 'artists' you take or leave what they produce.
12 January 2012 9:35AM
For films to make money, they have to get shown. The multiplexes are American-owned and exhibit predominantly American product. British films cannot succeed economically without American support in production and/or distribution. Perhaps government and lottery support should be directed towards the means of exhibiting and promoting British films rather than towards the creative end of the industry.
12 January 2012 9:45AM
It used to be a lot more than it is now through tax breaks depending upon the production group, but probably the most funded are the Canadian and Australian industries.
Or was that not your point?
How much direct or indirect state funding does the Nissan plant in Tyne and Wear get?
12 January 2012 9:58AM
but for the record, California funds Hollywood to the tune of about half a billion dollars per year. I don't know what other states to, but in New Zealand (also a big player in PP) there are significant breaks as well.
Conclusion?
A good business needs the support of the state.
12 January 2012 10:23AM
IndigoDavei hits the nail on the head.
One of the biggest Hollywood propaganda coups - swallowed unquestioningly by most of the British media - is to cry protectionism against any other film industries that dare stick up for their products (like the French) while applying draconian protectionist measures itself both at home and abroad.
The US market doesn't allow in the bulk of foreign films and certainly foreign language films (The Artist is an exception; it doesn't have a lot of language in it and it's set in the US). British books like High Fidelity are transposed to a US setting; US producers and others buy up the rights to successful French films and remake them.
US distributors sell their films to Europe in packages, refusing to allow local cinemas to put on the latest blockbuster unless they take several other, lesser films as well. And, as Indigo pointed out, many of the multiplexes are US-owned.
And the hypocrisy. In dastardly, subsidy-addicted France, films from all over the world get wide distribution; in the US they do not. Paris has some 300 screens showing some 200 films - the vast majority foreign - at any given time. Compare and contrast with Manhattan. (Mind you, there is growing pressure on the small, independent cinemas - the only two in the Champs Elysees area are complaining that they're being frozen out of the distribution circuit.)
More general point on picking winners. Difficult one. The smash box office hit here in France is Intouchables - relatively low budget and disdained by many Parisian film critics but up to 18 million entries and counting. The film it may dethrone as the most popular in French cinema history - Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis - fell into the same category. Cameroon wouldn't have put money into them.
12 January 2012 10:37AM
Absolute crap.
This year has seen Brighton Rock, Kill List and a whole host of others.
12 January 2012 10:51AM
As utopian as it sounds I would rather we had schools of British film rather than any form of 'British Film Industry'. The latter's purpose seems to be to perpetuate an ossified British cultural stereotype which, if it ever existed, is surely long past its sell-by date. That's the BBC's job!
Nonetheless they do toss out the odd gem. I can't wait for The Queen's Speech in which we discover that - before receiving elocution lessons - Queen Victoria used to talk just like Ray Winstone.
12 January 2012 10:58AM
I'm all for commercial cinema if we can make it classy and interesting at the same time. We shouldn't be embarrassed to mine our past for entertaining plot lines. U-571, for instance, should have been made by a British producer.
The upcoming Woman in Black looks quite promising. Historical thrillers are a much more attractive proposition than a comedy vehicle for someone known only to Brits or two hours of "serious" actors doing constantly-arguing-peasant-improv for Ken Loach.
12 January 2012 11:02AM
What Cameron wants is lots of pro-royal, pro-establishment, pro-Tory, pro-toffs, pro-Oxbridge, pro-male, pro-hero tosh.
Obviously Cameron is in the last-chance-saloon. He knows this sham, unmandated coalition government is the Tories last chance of political power.
He will not only be remembered as the worst PM this country has ever had, but also as the last Tory PM.
12 January 2012 11:06AM
I don't follow.
What is the "Purpose" of the film industry?
The same "Purpose" of any industry, Mr Cameron.
To PROVIDE a good or a service (in this case films).
Making MONEY is a measure of how SUCCESSFUL that industry is at PROVIDING a good or a service.
Why is it neo-classical economists and conservatives can't tell the difference?
If film makers wanted to make lots of money they'd be working as lawyers or merchant bankers. And the truth of the matter is the arts are one of Britain's most successful exports. A disproportionate number of costume designers, production designers, conceptual artists, post-production talent (from compositors to VFX designers), writers, editors, composers, actors and distributors are British. Nearly all the world's musicals originate from Britain, the finest playwrights, car designers, print designers, photographers and artists.
Why? Because we have some of the best arts institutions, theatres and the museums and galleries that inspire them in the world; St Martin's, Bournemouth, the RCA, the RSC, Guildhall, RADA, the National Gallery, the National Theatre, the Victoria & Albert...
Films may not appear to make the stonking profits Hollywood's economies of scale can pull off - but do bear in mind WHO is working in Hollywood and how many of them are British. And that subsidies for the arts - film, theatre, galleries, universities, colleges - we breed, nurture and produce some of the finest craftsmen and women on the face of the planet.
Not everything can be measured by box office profits, and that an educated, culturally literate man like Cameron doesn't get it beggars belief.
12 January 2012 11:10AM
Whats needed is a new Eady Levy include it on streaming and 20% of distribution to be UK films and the quotas of British produced film and TV to be set at 80% for the main broadcasters.
12 January 2012 11:50AM
hmm.. british films generally seem to be quite poor - yes there are exceptions - but the long lost days of classic british films of the 40s/50s wont be returning any time soon.
as ever, in one way or another, its only about money really isnt it?
i think this Island needs to "downsize" its ambitions in general (in everything from empire building/colonialism to football and films)
and start to be more realistic, humble and start thinking long-term instead of the quick money-grab.
obviously, that'll never happen.
Are there actually any british-owned businesses in these island anymore?
12 January 2012 11:52AM
oh, and cameron can fuck right off.
12 January 2012 12:18PM
Class warriors at war. Yawn.
Not everything has to be judged in terms of finance.
The profit motive will kill this planet as surely as any meteorite just more slowly.
12 January 2012 12:20PM
Not eloquent, but definately a succint pice of art.
12 January 2012 2:12PM
Will the taxpayers get their proportionate share of the profits under Mr Cameron's new vision - or is it just another case of tax payers money subsidising private sector industry and then private sector industry keeps all the rewards
It would appear under Mr Cameron that he is reforming Britain to ensure taxes are no longer for services but to cover the costs of private sector companies while their shareholders keep all the profits
12 January 2012 2:43PM
"Will the taxpayers get their proportionate share of the profits under Mr Cameron's new vision..."
er... yes. Companies pay taxes, as a proportionof their profits. Surely, surely even a grauniadista knows that?
12 January 2012 3:21PM
That may be the case, but these multiplexes are still businesses and their sole purpose is to make money. They make money by screening films that people want to see. If British filmmakers want their films shown, then all they have to do is make films that people want to see. The multiplexes aren't going to pass up the opportunity to sell an obvious box office hit just because it's British. The likes of Ken Loach might not like it, but that's what happens when you make films that people don't want to watch.
12 January 2012 3:30PM
Actually our multiplexes aren't American owned, at least not in the way you mean. Vue, Odeon and Cineworld are all British companies owned by venture capitalists and/or institutional investors. They have no cultural bias towards one nationality of cinema or another, just a moneyman's bias towards profit.