Paul Hoggart 

What’s the script for the future of British film?

Paul Hoggart: The London Screenwriters' festival saw differences of opinion on what impact the demise of the Film Council will have
  
  

TIM BEVAN
"Audiences don't disappear overnight" ... Tim Bevan. Photograph: Dan Chung for the Guardian Photograph: Dan Chung/Guardian

Forget double-dip recessions. With 500 delegates, the first London Screenwriters' festival, held at Regent's College last weekend, was a sell-out. But what did these assorted optimists learn about their prospects? Is the British film industry becalmed in credit-crunch doldrums? Or are fresh winds blowing in? The answer was a resounding: "Yes and no."

Contrasting perspectives came from opposite poles of the industry: keynote speaker Tim Bevan, co-founder of the ever-successful Working Title and head of the doomed UK Film Council, and festival co-organiser Chris Jones, author of The Guerilla (sic) Film Makers Handbook.

Inevitably, Bevan was asked about what might happen when the Film Council is disbanded. According to the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, there will actually be more money for development and production than there was before, and Bevan agreed that this would probably go to the arts council or the BFI. "But," he said, "I fear it's the joined-up thinking of the UKFC that is in grave danger."

One delegate, a screenwriting teacher, expressed concern for the regional screen agencies established by the Film Council and the money it directed into "incredible training, guidance, nurturing and support systems".

"Sadly, I think, a lot of that is going to go by the by," Bevan said. "In current government-speak, production is considered a frontline service. I don't think anything much else is."

Jones, by contrast, said he would not mourn the council's passing. "To many independent film-makers it's been like, 'Finally they're gone!'" he said. "The problem is that they have brought a huge amount of value in terms of understanding of what the business is in the creative industries. But the money they made available to production was never really handed out, I would say, in a healthy way."

Jones has gone public on this in the past and has been roundly attacked in return. Underlying his argument are fundamental issues about how government money should be used to support the film industry. He happily acknowledged that the council has backed some fine films, but told me that too much money has gone to uncommercial films with a certain type of political agenda, and bemoaned what he calls the "entitlement culture" among would-be film-makers.

"My argument is that many films have not demonstrated viability in the market place." They have been over-funded, he said. Government money, he argued, should be used to kick-start a commercially successful British industry. And people who really care about the industry should be willing to work with much lower budgets, even if that means taking much lower pay.

Jones sees a bright new future when internet-ready television opens new global markets to low-budget digital film-makers. Bevan is more qualified. "The democracy of everybody being able to make movies for nothing digitally is fantastic," he agreed, "but you also need to train and learn and be disciplined to make good films."

However important the fate of government subsidies, the future clearly rests on wider economic and cultural forces. Bevan rejected the idea that the current climate might make film-makers more conservative. "That's rubbish," he told the festival. "Audiences don't disappear overnight, even if films get more difficult to make."

Asked whether British film-makers needed to court the US market, he pointed out that Working Title "tend to be most successful when we get culturally specific", citing The Full Monty, Made in Dagenham and The King's Speech. So British writers can still enjoy telling British stories, apparently.

Television commissioners Ben Stephenson and Gub Neal and independent producers Tony Jordan and Nicola Shindler had suggested that the climate of cuts in broadcasting might be leading to a rethink among commissioners. They were becoming more open to fresh ideas and new ways of presenting drama. I asked Bevan if he detected a comparable shift in the film industry.

"Not really," he said. "The problem with films is that they are so damned difficult to get made. It's easier on television because there's more space to fill. Nobody has to make a movie. Things are tough now. They're tough for us, and we're at the top of the pile. And I think they will stay tough for a while." So the glass is half empty, or about to fill up. "We are in a cultural revolution/evolution," Jones told me. "There has never been a better time to be a creative person in a creative industry."

 

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