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Academy First Person
UNITEDWE NOWSTAND
FILMS MINISTER JANET ANDERSON ON AN ‘OBJECTIVE AND PRAGMATIC’ PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND THE FILM INDUSTRY
In his article for last month’s ACADEMY, Alan Parker, summed up the challenges fac- ing the British film industry. “There are those who provide content and those who deliver it, and whenever the twain doesn’t meet, you get the cardboard city we presently inhabit.” How right he is, and how right we were to appoint Alan as Chair of the new Film Council. And, so far as the public funding of film is concerned, he got it right too. “Public funding for films should be judiciously used to develop films to be made that can consequently deserve and encourage private funding for production - hence reversing the present process of bureaucratic box-ticking that has allowed Lottery funds to be a soft touch.”
From the beginning of April, the Film Council was able to deliver a coherent strategy for the UK film industry, with around £150m of grant in aid and Lottery funding to spend over three years. One of its main tasks is to assist the development of a sustainable UK film industry. We may never be able to compete fully with Hollywood, but I firmly believe we can become a pretty good No 2. Never before has there been such a united front between Government and industry in this country, a partnership that has taken a serious, objective and pragmatic view of the challenges facing our industry today.
And the Government’s decision to bring together all the bodies concerned with film under one roof has come at exactly the right time. Cinema audiences have increased steadily over the past ten years, from 97.37m in 1990 to 139.50m last year. The forecast for 2004 is even more at 165.7m and the age group which is showing the fastest increase is the over 35’s. Everyone likes the movies.
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