The
stinging criticism of the system of support for
Scotland’s film industry has continued in
the Scottish press, with writer George Kerevan
suggesting that despite six years of lottery subsidy
to build a local film industry, no Scottish feature
films are ready - or good enough - to show at
this year’s Cannes.
Now he points out, new evidence of the box office
failure of many of the Scottish films given lottery
money has come from the European Union’s
Lumiere project, which tracks the actual ticket
sales of all of European-made movies.
Kerevan says this shows that one film, Life
of Stuff, sold only 304 tickets at the UK
box office despite a lottery grant of £1 million.
That worked out at a subsidy of £3,289.47 per
ticket sold. Other films include Bill Forsyth’s
Gregory’s 2 Girls, which sold 29,518
tickets for a seat subsidy of £33.88.
Peter Mullan’s Orphans sold 76,092
tickets for a lower lottery grant of £11.83 per
ticket bought.
Some films did achieve bigger audiences, Kerevan
admits. House of Mirth, staring Gillian
Anderson from the X-Files, sold 154,777
tickets in Britain, so cost only 3p in funding
a head.
According to Kerevan, coupled with the inability
to get new Scottish films to international showcase
events like Cannes, these figures "call into
question the strategy of using lottery cash to
subsidise films which cannot find commercial backing."
Kerevan then goes on to question the screen agency’s
decision to set up an office on the Croisette,
the central focus of the festival, pointing out
that in 1997, Scottish Screen was criticised in
parliament for sending nine staff to the festival.
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The
stinging criticism of the system of support for
Scotland’s film industry has continued in
the Scottish press, with writer George Kerevan
suggesting that despite six years of lottery subsidy
to build a local film industry, no Scottish feature
films are ready - or good enough - to show at
this year’s Cannes. 