Seated in a cold red-brick room, on the outskirts of Beaconsfield, a cheery
young Scotsman with tired red eyes and pale skin has been staring at a
monitor for two months, for seven days a week, for 16 hours a day. Paul
Wright is a 28-year old film-maker from Fife and a graduating student at the
National Film and Television School, located here in rural Buckinghamshire.
On screen before him, in the final stages of an epic eight-week edit, a
terrified girl is getting the sign of the cross smeared, it seems, in ash
across her forehead. She is the star of Wright’s new short film, a dreamy,
trippy kidnap parable called Until the River Runs Red. Wright is a
prolific, wildly talented director whose signature style is a hallucinatory
mix of film stocks and speaker sounds and a quasi-religious subject matter,
who is already developing his debut feature with Zentropa Films, the Danish
studio that bankrolls the art-house iconoclast Lars Von Trier.
Wright is bashful about his talents. “So far, I’ve got this far by just doing
stuff that I like,” he says, haltingly, while the business of school life
whirs around him (fellow students are mocking-up council flats in the studio
below, others slowly animating in nearby blocks, others urgently thumbing
BlackBerrys in the college canteen). Nonetheless, his award-winning short
film about bereavement, Believe, which is screening in The Times
BFI London Film Festival, is 20 minutes of pure ache and pleasure that
contains one of the most astounding and gracefully realised closing twists
in modern film history (at least since the 1979 Peter Sellers movie Being
There). Wright, in short, is the future of the British Film Industry.
But what industry exactly is that? How is it coping with the recession? And
how is it evolving in the face of an uncertain future?
I speak to 20 people within the industry. I could speak to 100, but after 20 a
pattern becomes obvious. The first two things that they mostly agree upon is
that there is no money and, well, there is no money. Paul King, for
instance, a veteran of The Mighty Boosh on TV, and the director of
the gleefully eccentric road movie Bunny and the Bull, watched his
idealised production budget dwindle from £3 million to £1.8 million to an
actual £750,000. The resulting six-week shoot on a shoestring, he says, was
agony. “We shot seven days a week, and through the night on a quarter of
those. It was awful. One crew would go home, and another would arrive for
another seven hours. We had 30 art department volunteers who did six weeks’
work and we couldn’t even afford to get them lunch!”
Similarly, the actor David Morrissey (Red Riding), whose Liverpool-set
directorial debut Don’t Worry About Me screens at the London
Film Festival, describes the development process as “endlessly frustrating.
There was never anybody who was prepared to green-light my project, so in
the end I had to step outside the film industry and approach the business
community.” Morrissey’s brother, a producer, raised £100,000 from private
investors.
The film industry described here is one of profoundly depleted resources —
television stations no longer have the budgets to invest generously in
feature films, foreign distributors are no longer keen to purchase the
rights to risky British films, while city equity has vanished. “All that
investment from bankers who thought it would be fun to have lunch with Cate
Blanchett? It’s all gone now,” says Julian Fellowes, the Oscarwinning
screenwriter and director of the family ghost story From Time to Time
(also at the festival).
And yet, even if the prospective filmmaker manages to complete a now
“micro-budgeted” movie (see this week’s Le Donk &
Scor-zay-zee, which cost £48,000), they will struggle to find an
audience in a marketplace overcrowded with similar micro-budgeted product,
ie, cheap digital cameras + wannabe film-makers = many rubbish movies. There
were, for example, 75 British films made during the first half of this year.
“When I made Shallow Grave there were only 30 British films
made over the entire year,” says the producer Andrew Macdonald. “There have
definitely been too many local films made, making it harder for the better
films to get noticed.”
On top of all this we’ve got the recession. Which surely spells the end for
the industry as we know it? Well, apparently, not quite.
Repeatedly, and remarkably, the strongest commonality among all interviewees
was the sense that the recession will have a purifying effect on the
industry. The actor Chiwetel Ejiofor (Dirty Pretty Things) describes
how the recession is “shifting the order of things around, and only people
with a strong concept of something to say will find a way”. The director
Penny Woolcock (her rap musical 1 Day is also playing at the
festival) calls it an “exciting time for passionate voices”, while the
director Richard Jobson (New Town Killers), contemplating the
expected career cull among London’s many film-making creatives, thrills at
the prospect. “It’s a wonderful thing,” he says. “Get rid of them all! Bunch
of f***ing useless s***s!”
Similarly the recession has forced the producer Mark Herbert (This is
England) to be “more selective about the films we choose to make” and
encouraged companies such as Rupert Preston’s Vertigo Films (Bronson)
to innovate and produce the country’s first digital 3-D movie, StreetDance.
This new streamlined industry, we imagine, will emerge into a post-recession
world, ready to compete on a global stage.
The British film industry has always been a boom-and-bust kind of place. From
Ealing Studios in the 1940s to Hammer Films in the 1950s and the British New
Wave of the early 1960s, movements and production companies swell and pop in
the absence of a large-scale industrial base, such as Hollywood, to support
them. And yet still, today, thanks to the occasional commercial and critical
success, such as Slumdog Millionaire, the industry thinks itself to
be a plucky competitor to Hollywood. This is, simply, wrong.
An illustrative statistic: according to the UK Film Council, the combined
production value of those previously mentioned 75 films (half this year’s
home-grown output) was £204 million. That is, in Hollywood terms, less than
the production budget of James Cameron’s forthcoming sci-fi flick Avatar.
Or, when the film-making year is done, the entire output of the British film
industry for 2009 will have cost less than a handful of Hollywood
blockbusters.
Instead of forever trying to out-Hollywood Hollywood, most pundits agree that
the future for the industry lies in the continued support of talent
combined, crucially, with innovative ways of getting British films to
British audiences. Here, in particular, film-makers need to fully embrace
the digital age. Herbert, for instance, has used YouTube clips, viral videos
and online music spots to promote Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee, while
Macdonald acknowledges that the payments his company receives from iTunes
purchases, though still relatively insignificant, are increasing daily. “We
know that the changes in film production and distribution are being driven
by the digital world,” admits John Woodward, CEO of the UK Film Council.
“But we are struggling with how that change is going to pan out. What we do
know is that content remains king, now more than ever.”
In a spacious digital editing suite in Kentish Town, North London, two
editors, Alex and Florian, stare purposefully at a bank of black monitors
while the producer James Richardson skips through the newly shot sequences
from StreetDance 3D. The scenes feature panoramic chopper shots of
early-morning London and slow pans along the South Bank that, when viewed
through 3-D glasses, are genuinely breathtaking. The most startling aspect
of this £5 million-budgeted, family-friendly movie is that it seems to be,
unlike its American studio counterparts, grappling with the use of 3-D as an
artistic expression rather than a gimmicky device. Perhaps only a British
film, free from Hollywood pressures, could experiment in this way. “If
Tarkovsky was alive,” Richardson declares, “he’d be shooting in 3-D. We feel
3-D is the future.”
Thus, ironically, as I sit there watching bodies drift in and out of focal
planes, it is clearly time to acknowledge that this is, perhaps, the true
future of the British industry — innovative, commercially minded, and
digital. And yet, as high-energy dancers freeze and hover apparently inches
away, I start to wonder about pale Paul Wright and his beguiling
hallucinogenic films. What would he do with this technology? How would he
embrace 3-D? And for a moment the possibilities seem limitless, the
prospects exciting, and the future of the British film industry seems very
bright indeed.
AN EDUCATION Dir: Lone Scherfig
Remember the film. Remember the title. Remember An Education as the
moment when British cinema found its most vivacious screen presence since
Julie Christie’s star turn in Darling. In this movie
24-year-old Carey Mulligan, is Jenny, a disaffected 1960s teen who embarks
on an unsuitable affair with the raffish David (Peter Sarsgaard). The
script, adapted from Lynn Barber’s memoir by Nick Hornby, is finely judged,
while the direction from the Dane Lone Scherfig is sensitive and unfussy.
But it is Mulligan who dominates every frame, vacillating between confidence
and self-doubt,innocence and awareness. She has, in short, arrived. Released
October 30 (at the LFF on October 20-22)
NOWHERE BOY Dir: Sam Taylor-Wood
The visual artist Sam Taylor-Wood makes her feature debut with this risqué
account of John Lennon’s pre-Beatles life. Adapted from Julia Baird’s memoir
by the Control screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh, the movie stars the
19-year-old newcomer (and Wood’s current squeeze) Aaron Johnson, below, as a
cheeky, yet angry, Lennon, raised by his disciplinarian aunt Mimi (Kristin
Scott Thomas) but torn by the reappearance of his rebellious
rock’n’roll-loving mother Julia (Anne-Marie Duff). There are songs here, but
not the staples, and the film ends before the Cavern Club. Beatlemaniacs,
you have been warned. Released Dec 25 (LFF on Oct 29)
BUNNY AND THE BULL Dir: Paul King
Heath Robinson meets German Expressionism in this typically demented debut
from Paul King, director of The Mighty Boosh.
Surreal touches such as newspaper rain and cardboard horses recall wild
experiments of early cinema (especially The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
from 1920) rather than anything in the medium since. But the visual gags and
one-liners gradually give way to a slyly tragic story about a flat-bound
Londoner (Edward Hogg) forced to live within his own imagination and
memories by the harrowing reality of life. The Mighty Boosh-ers Noel
Fielding, right, and Julian Barratt boast, naturally, scene-stealing cameos. Released
November 27 (at the LFF on October 23, 24 and 27)
FOUR LIONS Dir: Chris Morris
Still synonymous with the cause de scandale that was the Brass Eye
paedophilia special in 2001, the satirical heavyweight Chris Morris remains
in controversial terrain with his new project. Four Lions is the
story of four British Muslim teenagers who become jihadis. The film,
co-funded by Film Four and Warp Films (the team behind Shane Meadows’ This
Is England), promises to show, ahem, “the Dad’s Army
side of terrorism”. Morris has proved that he has a thick neck. Let’s hope
he has tight security, too. Released 2010
UNTITLED Dir: Mike Leigh
National treasure and industry stalwart Leigh gathers a troupe of old
faithfuls (Jim Broadbent, Imelda Staunton, Lesley Manville) to follow up his
2008 award winner, Happy-Go-Lucky. That film proved to be the Marmite
of the movie release schedule, with a gooey centre and guileless protagonist
(Sally Hawkins) that made audiences reach for superlatives and sick bags in
equal measure. Typically, there is no word as to the “plot” of the new
project (it is currently a closed set), but one suspects that a less
frivolous take on modern life will be applied. Released 2010
WE WANT SEX Dir: Nigel Cole
The new Full Monty, but without the stripping. We Want Sex is a
solid and stellar British production from the director of Calendar Girls
(Nigel Cole) and the producer of The Crying Game (Stephen Woolley).
It features a perfectly pitched balance of established and rising screen
talent (Rosamund Pike, below, and Jaime Winstone for the latter, Miranda
Richardson and Bob Hoskins for the former). The real-life story of
triumphant female strikers at Ford’s Dagenham plant in 1968 has all the
rousing ingredients for a heart-stirring weepie. Released 2010
NEVER LET ME GO Dir: Mark Romanek
A battle of superstarlets ensues as established pop icon Keira Knightley
trades screen space with precocious newcomer Carey Mulligan (see An
Education and Brighton Rock) in this high-profile adaptation of
Kazuo Ishiguro’s science-fiction novel. Dystopian Britain is the setting,
and Knightley and Mulligan play beautiful clones grown especially for organ
donation. Alex Garland (28 Days Later) provides the script. The promo
veteran Mark Romanek directs. And the Trainspotting producer Andrew
MacDonald pulls the strings. This is as big, and prestigious, as home-grown
film-making gets. Released 2010
4.3.2.1 Dir: Noel Clarke
Noel Clarke, 34-year-old former Bafta Rising Star winner, and the creator of Kidulthood
and Adulthood, puts aside the macho theatrics of the latter films for
a twisty distaff take on the heist thriller. Emma Roberts (niece of Julia,
and star of Hotel For Dogs), Tamsin Egerton (St Trinian’s)
and Michelle Ryan lead a female-friendly cast in the tale of four women,
from four cities around the UK, all connected to the same robbery. We are,
officially, intrigued. Released 2010
BRIGHTON ROCK Dir: Rowan Joffé
In short, this is simply the most anticipated movie of the next 12 months. A
rebooting of the 1947 Richard Attenborough classic, it is written and
directed by Rowan Joffé (son of Roland Joffé, director of The
Mission and The Killing Fields), and features Helen Mirren, Pete
Postlethwaite, Carey Mulligan and Sam Riley (who played the rock star Ian
Curtis in Control) in the pivotal role of the unhinged yet
charismatic knife-wielding bad boy Pinkie. Word is that the script alone is
swoon-inducingly good. Next year’s Slumdog? Released 2010
STREETDANCE Dir: Max Giwa, Dania Pasquini
You have to admire the confidence of the StreetDance 3D team. Britain’s
first home-produced 3-D movie is already booked for a May release next year,
happy to face down competition from Hollywood’s priciest blockbusters (in
this case, Sex and the City 2 and the action epic Prince of Persia).
And yet the film, about a group of London street dancers forced to mingle
with the snooty world of ballet, is its own landmark. Gorgeously shot and
mostly gimmick free, it offers the tiniest hint of a viable film-making
future. Released May 21, 2010
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