Should we protect home-grown production?
The fiscal incentives offered in the UK to film
production are generous. In order to qualify for such tax relief a film
is scored in a test designed to see whether it qualifies as being a
British film.
You might think that it is obvious what is meant by
a ‘British film’, but it’s not as simple as that. The term encompasses a
much wider range of films than you might imagine.
A film such as Gravity qualifies as
British, despite its global, US studio credentials, because UK
post-production played a significant part in its production. In addition
to UK specific criteria the test is heavily influenced by European
Union (EU) regulation and therefore, in certain aspects, is not just
about the UK.
There is a broader cultural measure: subject matter
and lead characters can be British or any country from the EU.
Similarly a film can qualify on the basis of its language. Any EU
indigenous language including English qualifies.
Alex Hamilton is Managing Director of a film
distribution company He argues that there is a natural limit on the growth of
British film-making that is purely home grown. There are only so many
resources and so much money available:
ALEX HAMILTON: Inward investment: we always
just should assume it's something of a double-edged sword. It's great
that you can encourage inward investment into the UK from the studios,
and that there a means in which to do that, but you have to accept it
the indigenous industry, as it were, is only a thing of a certain size.
If it takes a lot of inward investment from the studios, it inevitably
constricts the space within which the indigenous industry can promote
and produce homegrown films. It's a perennial debate. The notion is that
Gravity is a British film and it qualified as a British film. Now it's a
very high end top quality studio product, which benefited from the
welcoming context for inward investment.
It actually should be that our indigenous, homegrown, film industry is supported
and made wider. Is film greater than the sum
of its economic parts? I think you'd get a lot of people would say, that
yes any industry, and film is no different from any other, is greater
than the sum of its economic parts because film has a cultural impact, a
social impact. It's not simply about the primacy of the economic
narrative. I think that's the double-edged sword of inward investment.
It's great that we're making Star Wars and Marvel and other big, big
movies in the UK.
It keeps a lot of people in work, generates real jobs, but we also want
to be creating the Billy Elliots, The Full Monty, the Trainspottings.
I'm trying to think of more recent examples, actually and just suddenly
struggling, but very successful British films.
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