The Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has announced that the UK Film Council is to be abolished. It is the highest profile name in a list of 55 public bodies that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport wants to cut, merge or “streamline”. (The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council will also be abolished.)
The Film Council issues grants and lottery money to develop new films and claims to have supported over 900 films since it was set up in 2000. But the body, which formed a key element of New Labour’s cultural project, has not been without its detractors. Notably, the writer Colin MacCabe has accused the council of pursuing the “fantasy” of a Hollywood-style industry at the expense of real innovation. In a piece for Prospect in January, MacCabe wrote:
In preparing this article, I have talked to many producers and have been startled by the level of venom I have encountered. For the UKFC’s aggressive commercial strategy, completely at odds with comparable European bodies, has gone hand in hand with the frequent contractual request that they have final cut on a film, overriding both the producer and director. Moreover, as a senior executive of one the most established production companies told me, “it uses the tactics of a Hollywood studio and its monopoly position to bully producers out of decent equity positions.
And others, including the New Statesman‘s film critic Ryan Gilbey, have decried a lack of risk-taking in British film over the past decade. Last year, in a survey of film under New Labour, Gilbey wrote:
Labour’s supportive approach to arts funding has translated at ground level into a happy-clappy positivity: it is chiefly those projects that reproduce the contours of proven hits, or push British life as an inspiring brand rather than a complex reality, that tend to get made and promoted. If you adored Notting Hill, if you can’t live without Bend It Like Beckham, you will love this, and this, and this . . .
Hunt suggests that the government will now work directly with the British Film Institute, the body that oversaw film funding prior to 2000. Could this be an opportunity to reform the way films are made in this country? Any optimism might be tempered by the wider context: the Film Council is being abolished as part of a wider attack on public spending. Hunt insists that “government and lottery support for the film industry will continue” — but how much support, and in what form, remains to be seen.