The UK Film Council is to be axed as part of a cost-cutting drive by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), it has been announced.

 

The organisation, founded in 2000, had an annual budget of £15m to invest in British films and employed 75 people.

 

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he wanted to establish a "direct and less bureaucratic relationship with the British Film Institute".

 

UK Film Council chairman Tim Bevan called it "a bad decision".

 

He said the announcement was "imposed without any consultation or evaluation".

 

"People will rightly look back on today's announcement and say it was a big mistake, driven by short-term thinking and political expediency," he said.

Digital screens

 

The Film Council was set up by the Labour government to develop and promote the British film industry.

 

Funded by the National Lottery, it channelled about £160m into more than 900 films over the last 10 years, including Bend It Like Beckham, The Last King of Scotland and Streetdance 3D.

 

Other initiatives included the Digital Screen Network, which invested in 240 digital cinema screens across the UK - meaning the UK now has more digital cinemas than any other European country.

 

Mr Hunt said fifty-five public bodies including the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) were facing closure as the government committed to "increasing the transparency and accountability of its public bodies, while at the same time reducing their number and cost".

 

"Many of these bodies were set up a considerable length of time ago, and times and demands have changed," he added.

 

"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."

 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-10761225

Tories make me sick.

I'm still trying to understand how somone can be so stupid :mellow: It just doesnt make any sense... :banghead:

it makes 400% back from the investments it makes in films, so you know it make sense to get rid of a successful scheme that makes the government money. i swear this government are just f***ing morons.

What the actual f***?

 

If it's mainly funded by the national lottery why are the Government scrapping it? Especially if it makes them money? Surely logic suggests if it makes money you put more money in to get even more out?????

This doesn't make any sense whatsoever. :| Will stop some great movies being made ...

absolute TRAVESTY

 

They were very helpful when I was doing some film research. Some of the films they've helped funded have either been extrememly commercially successful, or have been critically acclaimed. I can't understand the reasoning. Of course we're never going to be able to compete with Hollywood for gross earnings, but the UK Film Council have been brilliant with producing films, and spurring on British actors on to bigger films. Absolute madness.

Im glad to see the response of negativity towards this, there is a facebook group (obvs): http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Save-...42975080?ref=ts and petition here: http://www.gopetition.co.uk/petitions/save...lm-council.html

 

Its an absolute JOKE to be honest that they would shut down a service that not only extremely helps the UK film industry, BUT MAKES BACK 400% OF WHAT THEY INVEST BACK TO THE UK ECONOMY despite these hard times. As many people have said today, there is a complete lack of logic to this, theres an extreme amount of money in the uk film industry and the uk film council makes it so not only do we have a uk film industry, but that the uk film industry brings a f***ing lot back to the uk economy. Is Jeremy CHunt a f***ing idiot? yes. If anything they are axing it because it was set up by the Labour government, knowing tories thats probaly the true reason why they are doing this.

 

This is bad news in general for the UK economy as well as the artistic and creative talents of Britains film makers.

 

 

 

I am really confused why anyone would vote tory, mistake after mistake at the momment, they are probaly worse than nu labour already and havent even been in parliment long.

what an utter $h!t decision. I hope the Lib Dem and the Torys split soon so we can have another election and get Labour back in. Stupid idiots who voted tory.

Interesting response article from The Guardian:

 

Whichever way you look at it, the announcement by the culture secretary Jeremy Hunt that the UK Film Council is to be abolished makes for uncomfortable (reading). The organisation, which employs 75 people, has funded over 900 productions since its formation in 2000. Andrew Pulver, over at the Guardian's film blog, rightly describes the announcement as a "hammer blow" to the country's film industry, one that seems particularly bizarre as it was one of the few areas of the arts that actually saw a return on its investment. While the government has said it will continue to make lottery money available for films, it is not clear who will distribute this money, or how it will be distributed.

 

We should not, though, let the shock of this announcement stop us seeing the shortcomings as well as the successes of the movie-making culture fostered by the UKFC in its 10 years of existence. A key element of Labour's arts programme, the organisation took its structural cue from the City, with executive salaries well above the industry norm. Using a mix of lottery money and direct government subsidy, the UKFC has spent more than £300m – and the tax credit system it promoted has indeed enabled a commercial renaissance.

 

Yet, as Ryan Gilbey argued in the New Statesman last year, the industry has become hooked on recreating hit films modelled on the likes of Four Weddings and a Funeral or The Full Monty. From Bend it Like Beckham to Calendar Girls to Slumdog Millionaire, the tendency has been towards feelgood, aspirational stories (not unlike the sentiments expressed in New Labour's theme tune Things Can Only Get Better, in fact) aimed at a primarily American audience.

 

This is where an enlightened funding body should step in to promote riskier projects, but the box-office successes have arguably come at the expense of more innovative film-making. According to the critic and producer Colin MacCabe, the UKFC's "aggressive commercial strategy" has frequently stifled creativity. Organisations like the British Film Institute Production Board, which funded experimental films, were abolished to make way for it, and the UKFC has often insisted on having the final cut on films it funds.

 

The past decade has not been a creative desert – Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank and Steve McQueen's Hunger are wonderful examples of daring British films with political bite and potential mass appeal. But the praise deservedly showered on their directors also serves as a reminder that others have been allowed to fall by the wayside.

 

Take Andrew Kötting, a unique British talent whose latest film, Ivul, is receiving positive reviews. The project, which was almost abandoned when Kötting failed to find the money to film it on the Scottish island of Jura, is a French production, filmed in France and featuring French actors. No bad thing in itself, but Kötting is an established director. How many promising young film-makers have seen their dreams stifled by the same lack of foresight?

 

In the long run, this week's announcement could be good news for British film. Money is likely to be tighter, but there is an opportunity at least to rethink what kind of films we want to emerge from Britain in the years to come. It is encouraging that the government is now looking to work directly with the BFI, whose chair, Greg Dyke, has already (invited) private donors to take a much greater role in funding the arts, which suggests that the commercial imperative for film-makers could become even stronger. Seeing one of the UK's major arts bodies abolished at the stroke of a pen is scary indeed – but so is the thought that we might come to look back on the past decade as some sort of golden era for British cinema.

I'm still trying to understand how somone can be so stupid :mellow: It just doesnt make any sense... :banghead:

 

It makes sense to the Tories/Lib Dems though. Culture and probably sport too should be the preserve of the rich. If you can't pay for it ... you shouldn't be taking part in it.

 

What are you complaining about? We of the cloth-cap and coal-in-our-baths brigade still have our ferrets and whippets to keep us amused. We'll just have to tighten our belts ... or twine ... as that tory tw&t from Cumbria said.

 

Norma

Edited July 27, 201015 yr by Norma_Snockers

So, the Tories are messing with a profitable area of the arts... What utter fukkin' morons.... While there may be some truth in what The Guardian says, the facts are over the past decade or so, British cinema has seen an upturn in its fortunes, lots of films being made, lots of profitable films being made, lots of first-time film-makers getting a foot in the door.. Okay, a fair few of the films we're coming up with might not be as good as a lot of stuff made in Continental Europe (For example, I've yet to see a British horror film that can compare with the Rec films, The Orphanage, or indeed stuff like Martyrs, L'interior, Let The Right One In or La Calvaire, or a British crime thriller that can top the absolutely brilliant Girl With the Dragon Tattoo...), but it still seems foolish to me to mess with something that's doing a good enough job..

 

Here are some more films the UKFC has supported or funded

 

This Is Britain (BAFTA winner)

Dorian Grey

Adulthood(BAFTA winner)

Touching The Void(BAFTA winner)

Franklyn

Triangle

Man on Wire(Oscar winner)

The Wind That Shakes the Barley(Palme d'Or winner

In The Loop

 

So, on balance, this decision seems utterly barmy tbh.....