Don’t Let Our Film Industry Go Down The Pan

Forty-five Scottish filmmakers, who between them have made 134 feature films have declared dissent at the plan to merge Scottish Screen - originally set up as a one-stop film agency - with Scottish Arts into a single body to be known as Creative Scotland. The filmmakers include the cream of Scotland's screen creatives. They say if Scotland wants to participate in film production - increasingly international, with co-productions becoming the norm - overseas producers must have a film agency to turn to, or they will turn instead to London, as once they used to, and Scotland will miss out.

Signatories include: Peter Mullan (Magdalene Sisters) Catherine Aitken (Afterlife), Gillian Berrie (Dear Frankie) Douglas Rae (Mrs Brown) Scoptt Meek (Velvet Goldmine) Andrew Macdonald (Trainspotting) Paddy Higson ( Silent Scream) Kevin Macdonald (Touching the Void) Gillies MacKinnon (Regeneration) Tilda Swinton (Thumbsucker) May Miles Thomas (Solid Air) and Owen Thomas (One Life Stand)

The filmmakers are also critical of published ideas that have come from the agency's recently appointed CEO who has suggested the agency must switch resources away from filmmaking to help develop content for new delivery systems like mobile phones. Finally, they condemn the idea of being reliant on broadcasters as a funding source for features, pointing out that broadcasters have their own agenda in the co-production of films and these do not always serve the interests of the film's producer, who developed the film. The filmmakers have today published their concerns in The Herald, one of Scotland's quality dailies, published from Glasgow.

What follows is an extract from the filmmakers' very carefully observed collective plea for a serious  re-think on the cultural arts merger strategy.

"The Scottish Screen board seem intent on a kind of pre-emptive institutional suicide: the new structure of Scottish Screen prepares it to slide smoothly into the imagined future represented by Creative Scotland. There is no clear sense of Scottish Screen's desire to defend itself, or the industry it is supposed to represent and support. The current chief executive inherited an organisation which required a thorough managerial re-assessment and a detailed restructuring to make it fit for purpose. The consultation with the film community during that process has been woefully inadequate and, not surprisingly, the results are flawed.

We need an agency whose structures and personnel make sense to the international film community

The recent pronouncements from Scottish Screen are obituary notices masquerading as blogs for a bright new future. A facade of (managerialist) modernity is accompanied by a misguided over-concern for delivery systems - mobile phones, for example - instead of content and form. Content-providers, ie the film producers, are alert to and welcome technological change, especially when it expands the potential audience for films. However, the real and continuous concern of culture is content and form: in the case of film, the stories we have to tell and how it is that we set about telling them. It is in the making and telling of these stories that our real film culture is made and constantly renewed; the delivery systems for these stories are not the central issue. First, we have to have something to say and know how to say it.

A key concern for Scottish film-makers is how international film- makers will be able to engage with Scotland in the demise of Scottish Screen and its replacement with Creative Scotland. A film agency is a clear and internationally accessible means of foreign producers finding Scottish partners. In a country which is crucially dependent on co-productions, we need an agency whose structures and personnel make sense to the international film community.

Calls to Dublin, Belfast or Cardiff get a clear and knowledgeable response from the Irish or Welsh film agencies. The same is true throughout the small nations of western Europe. Calls to Scotland will not find their way to a film production agency but to "talent and creativity". This "category" isn't a credible department - it's an administrative convenience intended to be applied across all cultural forms. It won't work, and the fear is that co-production will move into its default mode - everything will gravitate towards London.

Broadcasters will do what they have always done, which is principally to serve their own interests

Scottish Screen's role in supporting the development of film ideas (ie scripts to make into films) is crucial. In its newly published guidelines, Scottish Screen has allocated only 2.5% (£150,000) of its resources to the development of film scripts. £150,000 was the sum available to film development in 1989 - and even at that time it was acknowledged as being pitifully inadequate.

Development will become more difficult because the financial support available will be dependent on the judgment of other self-interested third parties, such as broadcasters. Broadcasters will do what they have always done, which is principally to serve their own interests; any benefits to the film industry will be secondary, indirect and uncertain. If development funding from the public purse is tied into dependence on matching funding from broadcasters or distributors, it means that the rights to projects are going to continue to be taken from the independent production company. This makes the film company dependent rather than independent, culturally as well as financially.

it is vital that Scottish Screen support the developing infrastructure of indigenous, independent film companies

The new cultural test has resulted in the inclusion of Scottish film-makers who live and work outside Scotland. Their ability to access support is to be welcomed.

However, Scottish Screen no longer recognises the importance of supporting Scottish film production companies. It is understood that we have to avoid the "brass plate" syndrome of shell-companies pretending to operate from Scotland, but it is vital that Scottish Screen support the developing infrastructure of indigenous, independent film companies. Public intervention in development and production should be designed to enhance, rather than damage, the independence of Scottish companies."

The full text and the list of signatories appended to it is published in THE HERALD newspaper.

 WEBLINK: SCOTTISH SCREEN

Previous Netribution coverage on Scottish Screen:

Scottish Screen Swallowed Creatively

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