In a smoky second-floor boardroom in London a gaggle of movie executives and cine-pundits are celebrating. Tonight we are witnessing nothing less than the rebirth of the British film industry. Here in the hidden chambers of the National Film Theatre, the BBC’s revolutionary new Film Network is about to be launched. All around us the Film Network, a BBC-sponsored website devoted to the online exhibition of independent home-grown short films, is being described and praised in the most rhapsodic of terms. For those nascent film-makers without distribution deals this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reach international audiences; for the more experienced it’s a chance to be part of a creative online community; and for the small cabal of executives who dictate the shape of the nation’s movie industry this will provide access to a near-limitless film-making talent pool.

“The air will become oxygenated with film because of this!” beams the screenwriter Joe Penhall (Enduring Love and The Long Firm), whose directorial debut, the short film The Undertaker, starring Rhys Ifans and Nathalie Press, has been championed by the network. “Film-makers can reach a wider audience and cultivate an environment of real enthusiasm for the industry, and it won’t be seen as this crackpot sideline arty thing any more.”

And yet, when removed from the rarefied atmosphere of a launch party, the Film Network (bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork) raises some potentially problematic issues for the corporation’s dreams of a future film-making utopia. For a start there’s the short-film format itself. Irrespective of technical quality or creative ingenuity, the short film is mostly a one-trick pony, rarely having room for more than one strong idea. They can be dazzling, often ingenious, but ultimately unrewarding to all but the most obsessional film fan and the most hardened industry exec.

And even the Film Network’s capacity to blow open the doors of the industry will be sorely tested by the rampant democratisation of the internet. Already, only a week after the network’s launch, plenty of the online shorts have a selfconscious Fame Academy/X-Factor solicitousness about them, especially the comedy shorts, many of which could be Fast Show cast-offs or Smack the Pony misfires.

Furthermore, could the championing of short films actually be the BBC’s way of gaining a firmer foothold in the online exhibition sector? With the impending arrival of the corporation’s iMP (integrated Media Player — allowing online viewers to select from a week’s worth of BBC content) and announcements from Sky, Film Four and BT about their own imminent online film platforms, is the Film Network just a ploy to make sure that the BBC is in the trenches when the digital war starts for real?

“We are in the trenches already,” says Alan Yentob, the BBC’s creative director. “But we are starting this new journey from the right place, which is actually about trying to generate interest in new kinds of film-making and new talent.” The sentiments are echoed by Film Network’s senior producer, Matt Walton, who also acknowledges the initiative’s unapologetic online ambitions. “We are trying to get in there with short films. But we ’re not doing it cynically. We’re doing it in a way that says: ‘We support film-making!’ ”

As for the quality of the output, Yentob, a self-declared fan of shorts who famously commissioned Nick Park’s The Wrong Trousers after seeing the animator’s student film, has faith in the talent pool. In fact, he’s so convinced of Film Network’s creative prospects that he’s willing to commit the resources of BBC Films to prove it. “We might spot some talent and think, yeah, they could work on EastEnders or a drama series. And if the work is good and word spreads, well, somebody could very easily jump the queue.”

Short-film-maker to big-time hobnobbing movie director in the click of a computer mouse? Now that would be worth celebrating.

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