Save the UK Film Council!
Save the UK Film Council!
Yesterday, we reported that Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport Jeremy Hunt had inexplicably decided to call time on the UK Film Council, one of the most vibrant cultural organisations in the country and the true backbone of the British film industry. Today, thousands of people have joined Best For Film’s campaign to defend this extraordinary body and the superb work it does in promoting the best of contemporary UK film. You can sign our Save the UK Film Council petition or read on for our explanation of just why we can’t afford to lose the UKFC.
Art for art’s sake?
The temptation to cut arts funding in times of economic difficulty is an understandably tempting one. ‘Art for art’s sake’ is not an argument which makes financial sense, and there will always be those people for whom institutions such as the UK Film Council represent an unnecessary drain on resources which could be better used elsewhere. However, this is an attitude which is as short-sighted as it is philistinic. Without the support of the UK Film Council over the last decade, a huge number of superb films would never have been made – among them compelling portraits of contemporary British life such as This is England, Harry Brown, Brick Lane and Adulthood.
Last week in the Evening Standard, Samuel West discussed the problems inherent in withdrawing arts funding and expecting the private sector to plug the gap. “A civilisation is judged by its culture. Name me one Ancient Greek accountant” seemed like a witty throwaway remark at the time, but in the light of this attack on the Film Council it takes on a new significance. The UK has a fraction of the influence which it once enjoyed in the international community, but one field in which we still lead the world is the arts – if we stifle the creative talents of young British artists, we cannot simply expect them to labour on under impossible conditions.
What’s more, it is a mistake to assume that the only casualty of a major arts cut would be our cultural life. Despite Mr Hunt’s assertions that the UKFC must be closed in order to reassign its admin budget, there are actually few NDPBs which are as profitable as the Film Council…
Killing the cash cow
The UK film industry is one of our few sectors which has enjoyed consistent growth throughout the recession. Last year, its contribution to the economy was an extraordinary £4.3 billion – an increase of 50% on 2000, the year the UKFC was formed. UKFC-funded films have grossed in excess of £700 million worldwide, and its investments garner an average profit of 400%. Sorry, I’ll say that again – FOUR HUNDRED PER CENT. That’s £5 for every £1 you spend, and I defy any of Jeremy Hunt’s colleagues in the state-owned banks to offer us as good a rate.
Incredibly, the UKFC manages all this on a budget of only £15 million a year, much of which is money drawn from the countrywide tax on hope which is the National Lottery. This is compared to the £12 million being spent on the Pope’s controversial UK visit later this year, or the £7 billion which it’s costing us to host the Olympics – at its present budget, that’s enough money to run the UKFC for almost 467 years. Jeremy Hunt’s claims that destroying the UKFC was a cost-cutting measure are clearly specious, betraying his motives to be ideological rather than financial; for unclear reasons of its own, in attacking both the Film Council and the licence fee which funds the BBC the Conservative Party is holding a knife to the throat of contemporary British culture.
It is intuitively obvious to the Best For Film team that this absurd miscarriage of justice cannot be allowed to go ahead. That’s why we began a petition to protest the cuts and demand that Jeremy Hunt rescind his decision to attack such a vital cultural institution. Almost eight thousand people have signed after only a day, and we urge you to join them here and support our stand against the cowardly and short-sighted politics which sees the arts as an easy target. The UK Film Council has transformed the film industry in this country, and if we look the other way whilst it is dismantled then even harder and more damaging cuts will surely follow.
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I see that this page, in common with the petition page, is terribly bitter about the cost of the Olympics. I fully support the UK Film Council and hope for its survival. I cannot, however, sign a petition that acts against something else I support: The London Olympics.
Why do you feel the need to limit your support in this way? It is really frustrating for one who, as I, attends the cinema at least three times a week, not to be able to support your campaign because you seem to have, frankly rather pathetically, decided that another cause must be attacked.
If you ever decide to drop this devisive nonsense, I will happily campaign on your behalf. Until then, shove it.
Had to comment as M. Hyde’s snide comments on not being wiling to sign the petition because of the Olympics. It just make no sense. I suggest that M. Hyde reads things through again, sees that the Olympics are merely a comparison. If you care about film, M. Hyde, which you say you do – please sign the petition. Or, as you put it so eloquently yourself – shove it!
Why can’t your software handle paragraphs?
There is nothing on the petition or on the website that says we shouldn’t be funding the Olympics, and it certainly doesn’t seem that the end goal is to affect Olympic funding. It’s simply being used as a comparison, to show the relatively small amount of money that the Film Council takes to fund when looking at a much bigger picture. I don’t think this is about not funding the Olympics, and for that to be your reason for not signing is to me utterly baffling. It would be a massiveshame to let the UK Film Council die purely because of a gripe over something uttery irrelevent, but if that is your position on the matter than so be it.
in fact, the petition itself:
“We, the undersigned, believe the UK Film Council to be a vital cultural resource and call upon Jeremy Hunt to rescind his department’s decision to close it.”
If you agree with that statement, you should sign the petition. End of.
Many thanks for this excellent piece and the petition.
I have just written a lengthy piece on the same subject that incorporates part of what you say here. If you get a chance, please take a look at it:
http://filmabinitio.blogspot.com/2010/07/news-review-death-of-british-cinema-uk.html
Great article, Aman – thanks for reposting the petition as well! The more publicity we can get the better.
You say:
1) That the contribution of the UK Film Industry to the economy has increased by 50% since 2000 when the Film Council was formed. But in the five years prior to 2000, before the UKFC was formed, it increased by over 300%. So what? These figures tell us nothing at all about the UKFC’s activities.
2) That the UKFC’s “investments garner an average profit of 400%”. No they don’t. Tthey make a loss. The UKFC has never made this claim. For the facts, see the UKFC Annual Report and Accounts.
3) That the UKFC “manages all this” on a budget of £15 million a year. No they don’t. The level of income from all sources to the UKFC for 2008/2009, the most recent figures available, was £72.2 million. Their grant-in-aid from the Government alone was worth over £30 million. Again, see the UKFC Annual Report.
I make these points not because I think the UKFC should be abolished – indeed, I’ve already signed the online petition against its closure – but because we lose credibility with Government if we can’t get our facts right, and the campaign is doomed to failure.
Having lobbied hard to get rid of The UK Film Council, those of us at Save The British Film Industry have obviously been celebrating all week and congratulating the Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
For there to be a British Film Industry, there needs to be sound stages built around The UK. Ideally at least 4 in every county. Hollywood $50 million to $300 million productions can only go where sound stages are. For those who do not know, they are glorified warehouses, more normally found in The Midlands and The North YET curiously sound stages are confined to a very very small 200 acres in the area of west London, and just North and West of London. The Uk Film Industry fought tooth and nail to ensure not one penny of Lottery money was spent on building sound stages outside of this small 200 acre zone..thus guaranteeing a UK film industry could not arise. They did spend £300 000 a year on their ground rent. They did employ 75 people on £70 000 to £150 000 who often had several other jobs. But sound stages, post-production facilities, nope. If these existed across The UK, then many more entrepreneurs who invest in fast food franchaises, laundrettes, restaurants, shops, etc will take the risk and hire them to try their luck at film making for profit. It was the volume of risk taking entrepreneurs which created Hollywood, and they then built sound stages, before selling them for houses, and forever thereafter seeking to rent them elsewhere such as Pinewood, Shepperton, Elstree.
Now the MD of Elstree earns a fraction of the salary of the average UKFC employee, yet he has delivered two years of block booking of Elstree sound stages by Hollywood Studios creating lots of UK based film jobs. Why is only little Hertsmere Council, owner of Elstree, wise about sound stages ? Why did The UKFC not educate people outside West London that they are the essential infrastructure of a real industry ? Now UKFC is gone, and hopefully certain very very high paid, huge expenses Regional screen Commissions with them, the sound stages can get built and UK film making enter a true golden age.
We urge people not to sign any Petition to save UKFC fatcat jobs. It has nothing to do with The UK Film Industry, indeed it was the enemy of most people making films in Britain.
http://www.savethebritishfilmindustry.com/2010/07/ding-dong-the-witch-is-dead-save-the-british-film-industry-kill-the-uk-film-council/
You would do much better to get a Petition to Save Pinewood and Shepperton Studios. These have 34 sound stages. Each employing people in The Uk film industry, well only 80% of them.
The plc owning it has sold the right to use Pinewood brandname in the last 12 months to competitor studios in Canada, Malaysia, Germany and The Dominican Republic. The origial UK studios will not compete against them for the Hollywood productions which rent in Iver Heath and Shepperton and employ all the film workers. The two biggest shareholders in Pinewood who this week got 51% of shares for the first time have both openly said they are interested in the property values of Pinewood and Shepperton, not especially the film making business on it. The biggest shareholder made his billions buying businesses to close them and sell the land they were on at a profit. Guess what The UKFC were mute during the transfer of the real film jobs outside The UK which is about to become accelerated. It was not even protecting The London Film Industry longterm.
You are going to be left with Elstree (only about 15% of Pinewood-Shepperton capacity) unless you start campaigning, petitioning to the Government now rather than the misguided attempt to save fatcat bureaucrats while killing the industry and driving abroad its major investor.
Jonathan Stuart-Brown
http://www.savethebritishfilmindustry.com/2010/07/high-noon-in-pinewood-takeover-shoot-out/
I cannot beleive the short-sightedness of the Governement! The arts & particularly drama, have such a benfeicial effect on even wayward members of our society as proved time and time again, from drama clubs in schools to initiatives with offending adults. I whole heatedly support this campaign and urge others to do so.
Brenda Herrington,
Right sentiment, but wrong conclusion.
The Uk Film Council bureaucracy was nothing to do with promoting the arts and particularly drama in a school anywhere near you. Nor with any offending adults. The UKFC was about getting huge salaries for 75 people (when Channel 4 Films at its peak in the 80s and 90s had only 10) in a £24 000 a month rented palace of a building, with five star hotel and first class hotel and fantastic lunch expenses which kept the richest restaurants full.
The title UK Film Council confuses people. It did nothing to expand the opportunities to get involved in UK Film either as art or as a profession. Far more was done to create film making opportunities in the 80s and 90s by far less materialistic bureaucrats. Now that it is gone, what you and others hope for can arise in the UK. Genuine film making infrastructure across The UK, genuine opportunities.
Jonathan Stuart-Brown
http://www.savethebritishfilmindustry.com/
Please Mr Hunt axe The Uk Film Council now, not in 2 years time. they are spending £140 million of taxpayers money to defend their 9 live fatcat quango while cheering as real UK film jobs go to Malaysia and china, Canada and Germany. Axe them now before they spend all our money on adverts, PR events, black propaganda on saving their 6 figure jobs and fiefdom. This £140 million could build 50 sound stages around The UK magnetising Hollywood finance. It could build 10 in Nottingham.
http://www.savethebritishfilmindustry.com/uk-film-council/
and this man Vic Armstrong has done more to build the reputation of The UK film industry than all of UKFC
http://www.savethebritishfilmindustry.com/2010/07/vic-armstrong-should-now-direct-the-next-007-james-bond-movie/
Jonathan,
I really think we’ve endured your ill-structured rants on this thread long enough.
There are evidently two sides to every debate, even the decision to attack the UK Film Council, and you are of course at liberty to cheer Jeremy Hunt’s absurd decision if you must. However, any validity your arguments have is rather diluted by your tiresome trolling and refusal to let anyone else’s opinions lie. It is not gentlemanly, nor is it adult. Furthermore, your repeated insistence on using your comments as a platform for advertising your full-length diatribes is more than a little transparent.
You will note that I have not made any attempt to force my opinions or those of Best For Film on the users of your website. I suggest you spend a little more time there in future and desist from vandalising this article or any other with your petulant scribblings.
Thanks.
John, there is a battle place for ideas and you have certainly put yourself about on the web to put your case across. The UK Film council are using public money and press officers and staff to stress their case. The report they co-commissioned with Pinewood Shepperton plc was designed to help the plc shareholders get planning permission (against local will) for 1400 houses on greenbelt land. It looks like they will fail, but you never seem to cover the UK sound stages (the thing Clint Eastwood used earlier this year to make a film in the UK) are leaving this nation and moving to Malaysia, China, Germany, Canada. You never seem to get that the UKFC was the only body which should have been sounding the alarm, but did not. It may now be too late.
Your baseless accusation of trolling seems the wounded cry of one losing the argument, the battle, the war.
Unlike yourself I have to account to over 300 people who can axe me if they do not agree with what I write and how I write it. They all work in the film industry, most did pre UKFC, all will after.
The lie repeated over and over is the propaganda of £1 spent making £5. It does not because the £5 goes outside The UK. If £1 made £5 every investor in the UK would invest in it. UKFC helped ensure that whether we invested in hits, or more usually misses, that we in this land could not keep the profits.
With or without UKFC, with or without tax credits, without sound stages, the whole show is moving to Malaysia by 2012. The shareholders who now own over 50% of Pinewood Shepperton plc now want high share growth, big dividends, and to release the property values. Now if you write about that, I will applaud and urge people to cheer you.
UK Film Council Caught Red-Handed
Lobbying Against Government
Yesterday the luvvies at the UK Film Council quango were summoned by Ed Vaizey to answer claims they had misused resources to promote their own survival rather than the interests of the British movie industry. The suspicion at the DCMS is that they were running a scaremongering spin operation drawing in the likes of Clint Eastwood and billionaire film producer Steven Spielberg to write publicly demanding the British taxpayer subsidises their movies.
A UK Film Council spin-doctor yesterday denied the allegations, piously intoning that: “The future of the UK film industry is the only thing the UK Film Council is interested in.” Unfortunately PR Week had already gone to press before Vaizey had voiced his suspicion that the luvvies were using public resources to promote their own interests, rather than those of the film industry. In PR Week Oliver Rawlins, the film quango’s head spinner boasted that he had
“been handling a comms strategy relying on third-party advocacy… We’ve ensured that the message has been simple, clear and consistent: this is a terrible decision that disregards the commercial benefits of the UK Film Council…”
Which rather undermines the quango’s subsequent claim that they weren’t spinning to save their own necks…
John,
First may I say that very many people sincerely admire your zeal in your campaign. Although people have clearly stated it is in their view backing the wrong horse, there is nontheless tremendous respect for the gusto you brought to your cause. Now that the UKFC has been repeatedly busted including by The Guardian and Michael Grade, and the list of the Matthew Vaughns and Julian Fellowes is set to grow, many people hope you will transfer your energy to really helping The UK Film Industry grow into its destiny. Hollywood finance is linked entirely to sound stage capacity. The UK has fallen from clear market leader to possible also ran in 2012. Moreover, the other usp The UK can offer Hollywood and its own indie producers and investors is state of the art sets: ancient Rome, Biblical Jerusalem, sci-fi, spaceships, pyramids, Paris, New York, Venice, Mumbai, beijing, Moscow, Tokyo, Berlin, etc which can double as tourist sites and revenue to subsidise film making. Alton Towers, Shakespeare’s Stratford-on-Avon, Warwick castle get 4 million paying visitors a year. If you were to write on and campaign for this, it could come about in the next few years. Outside the south-east land is at giveaway prices with councils in every region keen to get film/tv infrastructure and provide EU and regeneration funds. The conditions are perfect to turn the UK into a glorious film and Tv set and tourist park with inward investment pouring in. Anyway regardless of whether you do or do not join in the fight, many people sincerely wish you well in any career you choose to pursue.
Jonathan Stuart-Brown
http://www.savethebritishfilmindustry.com