Cinema Levy Call To Save Film Industry

[DB7]

Cinema levy call to save film industry



Owen Gibson, media correspondent

Tuesday May 10, 2005

The Guardian



The respected film producer Michael Kuhn last night warned that the "hour is dark" for the British film industry, accusing the lottery-funded Film Council of treating producers like "ralcalcitrant schoolboys".

He said that unless urgent action was taken by the government, the BBC and others, indigenous British film-making could die out.



The former president of Polygram Films, which revolutionised Hollywood in the 1990s and enjoyed a string of hits including Four Weddings and a Funeral, Fargo and Notting Hill, said that the situation had appreciably worsened in the past five years despite £323m of lottery money investment by the Film Council.



Mr Kuhn, who now runs Qwerty Films, warned that indigenous British films costing under £10m were being squeezed by a number of factors.

"As many of these sources of funding are expiring or are themselves dependent on tax regimes, there is less equity about. So the hour is dark. Darker I think than most years in my lifetime," said Mr Kuhn, delivering the inaugural Pact Film Lecture in London last night.



He calculated that even hit films like Shaun of the Dead failed to bring in any money at the cinema, and without extra investment would be left to rely on domestic television rights and video sales just to claw back production costs.



The film industry is lobbying against proposed changes to the tax regime that will cut investment in British movies, and is attempting to persuade the government to force the BBC to invest more in British films as part of the charter renewal process. Another solution, Mr Kuhn suggested, would be a levy on those who "benefit directly and indirectly from the UK film industry", especially cinema owners.



Pointing to the level of current interest in acquiring cinema chains among venture capital companies, he said that such a levy would "offend no one and benefit many" and generate £70m to £80m a year. Mr Kuhn's speech, which he said was "born out of rage", also hit out at the Film Council, the quango established in 2000 to boost the British film industry.



"To many of us it seems that this Janus-like body, representing us to the government but not representing us; representing government to the industry but helpless in light of, and blindsided by, recent tax changes, not hearing criticism, is in need of reform itself," he said.



Setting out an action plan to save the industry, Mr Kuhn said that the Film Council should take a more strategic approach to its investments.



It should immediately launch a new fund dedicated to lending the "last £1m that a film needs to get into production", underwrite a borrowing facility against foreign sales and start a central fund to pre-buy digital rights.



In the medium term, the government should look at his levy idea and force the BBC and other broadcasters to invest more in British films. Research commissioned by Pact last year showed that the BBC spent 84% of its £73.2m acquisition budget on US films.



In the long term the industry should face up to the opportunities and challenges offered by digital distribution and video on demand over the internet.



"It can happen if they [the Film Council] will change and see the production community as partners in this great endeavour and not ralcalcitrant schoolboys to be whipped into shape," he said.

[Wetherby Pond]

Michael Kuhn is a man well worth listening to, as he's one of the very few British producers to make a serious (and mostly successful) attempt at tackling the structural problems bedevilling the British film industry - when he was at PolyGram, pretty much the first thing he did was to establish a viable US distribution arm, and only then did he put serious money into production.



I thoroughly recommend his book One Hundred Films and a Funeral - it's an even sadder read in many ways than the Goldcrest saga My Indecision is Final because for the most part Kuhn genuinely did get it right, and was brought down by corporate manoeuvring on the verge of what would probably have been a massive box-office breakthrough - given that Notting Hill would have been PolyGram's flagship release in 1999 had it not been wound up the previous year.

[Pseudo]

I was actually there last night at the PACT lecture - part of the 'packed audience' reported in the Independent and elsewhere.



I thought Michael Kuhn was a bit harsh on the Film Council and a bit kind on the industry itself. After all, the Eady Levy - at least when it was first introduced - was entirely voluntary - so why can't the industry just introduce another levy without being prompted by Government?