Film Policies Of The UK Government Since 1979

British films exert great influence on world film industry and culture.Some of the films with the largest ever box office returns have been made in the United Kingdom,including the film series Harry Potter and James Bond.This thesis aims to answer two questions:why does the British government support the film industry?Why is the state aid is essential to the film industry?Most researches in the British film studies field focus on specific films,directors,or a genre,and there were few that study film industry and government policy.This thesis collected first-hand data and document from various sources:UK government official websites of HM Treasury and the Department for Culture,Media and Sport and film organization’s publications,such as British Film Institution Statistical Yearbooks and used them to analyze the long term British film policy trend in the past 40 years.From early 1930s to 2000s,the central problem for UK film industry is how to coexist with Hollywood.Many UK film productions are in some way dependent on Hollywood finance,and if they are not,they must still find a way to work within a distribution and exhibition market that is dominated by the Hollywood companies.There are two major reasons why the government aid is necessary.First,the industry has been dominated by large Hollywood enterprises.British producers had hard time finding distributors for their films.Many films were made but never exhibited Second,compared to the well-developed Hollywood film industry,the British film production remains as a "cottage industry".It is hard to raise fund from the beginning of the film making.Thus,without government intervention,it is almost impossible for low-budget domestic production to compete with the Hollywood blockbusters.Funds like Lottery money from the government and financial policy like tax incentives are crucial for the industry to survive and become sustainable.Before Thatcher government,the Quota Act(Cinematograph Films Act of 1927),the Film Finance Corporation(NFFC)and the Eady Levy were the three pillars of state support for film.Cinematograph Films Act 1927 was the first government intervention aimed at protecting the British film industry.The Act stipulated that both distributors and exhibitors should show a proportion of British films.And the Act was thus called the Quota Act.The National Film Finance Corporation(NFFC)was a specialized film bank funded by the Board of Trade with the aim to help and encourage independent producers.The Eady levy was established on a statutory basis in the Cinematograph Films Act 1957.The levy required exhibitors to retain a proportion of the ticket price and give half of this sum to fund British film production.There has been a slow and persistent process of public intervention,however,it was halted in 1985 by Thatcher government.The existing framework for supporting film as industry was dismantled.Screen quota and the Eady Levy were abolished,and the National Film Finance Corporation was replaced by a private company,British Screen.The lack of support from the government brought the film industry to a dangerous situation.In 1989 only 30 films were produced in Britain.The Major government took the first step in ending the separation of industrial and cultural policy by establishing a new ministry for culture:the Department of National Heritage.The government moved away from free market policies and took the decision to allocate lottery funding to films and initiated the Lottery Franchise Scheme.From the Quota Act in 1930s to National Lottery funding in 1990s,film policies in Britain were mostly economic.Since the New Labour government came into power,the cultural value of the film was particularly stressed and the government successfully attracted inward investment and stimulated the growth of domestic film production.Compared to the policies that were made in the past decades,more specific and diverse ways of film funding plans were made by the UK Film Council.Funding schemes ranged from the big-budget blockbuster to the low-budget drama,with productions at all levels exploiting the fiscal opportunities made possible through government policy.Both tax relief and Lottery funding brought positive impact to the domestic film production as sources of production finance.UK productions rose gradually in the early 1990s,but then experienced sharp growth in 1996 and 1997,as Lottery funding made its initial impact.For the next few years,domestic productions decreased,but co-productions increased,but it was not until 2003 that overall numbers reached and exceeded the levels of 1996 and 1997.The overall numbers of UK productions again fell off slightly from 2005,as new regulations came in regarding tax relief,which made it more difficult for co-productions to secure funding.However,the scale of British domestic films kept growing in the whole film production sector since 2006.The New Labour government made good use of globalization.National film policy was designed to encourage inward investment from global Hollywood and to encourage international cooperation.Inward investment,which is crucial for the industry,rose steadily in the 2000s.Many "British" productions relied on foreign funding,especially from Hollywood.But it has to be accepted that American investment has in fact enabled diverse representations of Englishness.American investment made possible the global blockbusters like Harry Potter series,the Austen adaptations of Sense and Sensibility(1995)and Emma(1996),and the low-budget dramas of working-class Northern life The Full Monty(1997)and Billy Elliot(2000),both of which became major box-office successes thanks to the involvement of American distributors.The Coalition government continued to support the film industry through policy made by previous Labour government,like tax relief,National Lottery funding for film,and promote exportation of independent British films.The government abolished the UK Film Council in 2010,and the British Film Institute took its responsibilities.In 2012,BFI published its five-year plan:Film Forever Supporting UK Film 2012-2017 that set three strategic priorities for the film industry,which particularly stresses the importance of expanding film education and learning opportunities and boosting audience choice across the UK.The Brexit referendum in 2016 brings uncertainty to the British film production because the rules of free movement of film talents and goods,such as filming equipment,will be changed after Britain leaving EU.