No one I’ve spoken to is encouraged by the line in culture secretary Jeremy Hunt‘s statement that reads: “The changes I have proposed today would help us deliver fantastic culture, media and sport, while ensuring value for money for the public and transparency about where taxpayers’ money is spent.”
Do they take us for fools? This is doublespeak. Obviously I have personal reason to be grateful to the Film Council – indeed, I have a second project with it – but I am not alone. 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, like Granny, to be outside the mainstream.
It was staffed not by bureaucrats but by people who had made films, who loved film, who knew film-makers and understood their struggles. And they were good at what they did, as any rollcall of Film Council-supported movies demonstrates: Vera Drake, The Last King of Scotland, My Summer of Love, Bend it Like Beckham, Fish Tank, to name but a few. For everyone £1 of lottery money invested, British films are reckoned to generate £5 at the box office.
One criticism of the coalition’s proposed spending cuts is that their severity will cause a double-dip recession. With the axing of the Film Council, the rug is being pulled out from underneath the industry. Economically, everyone from writers to caterers, actors to electricians, producers to taxi drivers will feel the impact. Culturally, this crass, narrow, bigoted move impoverishes us all.
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