British films are in danger of missing the tidal wave of popularity which has swept both cinema attendance and box office receipts to record levels.
The most comprehensive survey of cinemagoing in Britain, released yesterday by the Film Council, reveals that although younger people are flocking to the cinema in ever increasing numbers they are overwhelmingly watching films made by the big US studios.
No solely British film reached the list of top 20 films released last year, nor the top 20 list for the past 10 years.
Among the chart busters are legions of British stars, British writers, British crews and British locations - but virtually all the biggest box office hits were made by American studios, with British interests limited at best to co-production.
John Woodward, the Film Council's chief executive, said Britain was already seen internationally as one of the best places in the world to make a film.
"The challenge now is to ensure that more quality UK-made films are seen on both large and small screens in the UK and abroad."
He described the overall picture - 176m visits to the cinema, the highest for 30 years, more than one in four people in the UK going at least once a week and spending a total of £755m, a 13% increase on the previous year - as encouraging.
"Film is an intensely competitive global industry, as well as a cultural activity, which when we get it right promotes the UK all over the world while making a significant contribution to the British economy," he said.
Even among the top titles billed as "UK films", which together took £187m on home ground, co-productions dominate. Only Ali G Indahouse, which made it to sixth place, and Anita & Me, and Long Time Dead, at 17th and 18th place, were exclusively British, but they did not get within popcorn chucking distance of the list of the overall top 20.
There has been bitter criticism in the past of the quality of lottery-backed films, but several did remarkably well.
Two very different and comparatively cheap films were among the year's surprise hits.
Bend it Like Beckham, which cost a paltry £2.7m and has so far taken £12.5m in UK box office alone, made it to No 5 on the top UK list, and 18 on the overall list. The film was an UK-German co-production.
An even more complicated co-production, the UK-US-German-Italian Gosford Park, which appears in fourth place on the UK list and 17th on the overall list, also had lottery cash towards its £15m cost, which is seen as cheap, since big budget American films routinely cost $100m (£60m).
The American domination is even starker on the overall top 20 list, which contains 13 US productions and a further five US co-productions.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, a US-New Zealand co-production, was the top grossing film, taking £56.7m at 501 cinemas.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - UK-US co-produced, but made entirely in Britain - took slightly less, £54.65m, but scooped the record for the biggest ever opening weekend receipts, £18.9m. More than a third of all the films released were in foreign languages, dominated by Hindi films, but together the top 20 foreign language titles only took £11.4m.
The report is stuffed with intriguing facts. Men preferred action, science fiction and horror films, while women voted for relationship dramas, romantic comedies and films with a family appeal.
Gosford Park was the only film to bridge the gender gap, being admired equally by men and women.
Comedies were the most popular genre, taking 26% of the box office. Fantasy, dominated by The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, was the second most popular, followed by action movies.
The report shows that the average cinemagoer is likely to be young and well off.
Cinemagoing is unevenly distributed across age, class and region. Almost 70% of the audience is aged under 35, and Londoners buy a quarter of all cinema tickets.
The AB social group accounts for 21% of the population but 28% of ticket sales - and half the audience for Gosford Park, Iris, and The Importance of Being Earnest.
But three British films, according to data from the Quarterly Film Monitor commissioned by the Cinema Advertising Association - My Little Eye, Long Time Dead, and Charlotte Gray - got half their audiences from the C1 group, and Dog Soldiers got a particularly successful DE audience share.
Figures on the representation of people from ethnic minorities in the film industry are regarded as imprecise, but suggest that the proportion is below the 6.1% level in the national workforce. While 10.9% work in cinema management the largest single group, 22%, is made up of cleaners.
None is recorded as working in the rapidly expanding special effects sector.
