Neil Calloway tackles the supposed North/South divide in the funding of the British film industry…
People – usually those from the south of England – talk about a North/South divide in Britain when it comes to politics and the economy. The received wisdom is that the South is rich and votes Tory, the North is poor and votes Labour. Of course, it’s not as simple as that; there are rich places with Conservative MPs in the North, and plenty of poor places with Labour MPs in the South.
There does seem, however, to be a North/South divide in the British film industry. Let’s take a look at two British films released this year that both deal with young people – specifically young men – as they leave school and enter the adult world for the first time, and both directed by women.
For the South we have The Riot Club, which has good breeding; set at Oxford, based on a hit play, directed by an acclaimed film-maker, which aims right at the heart of our establishment.
For the North you have Northern Soul –a coming of age story set in Lancashire in 1974, the debut film by its director.
The films had radically different productions. The Riot Club got not far short of a million – £920,207– to be exact, according to the BFI’s own website – in public funding. Northern Soul took years to bring to the screen, and got exactly zero funding from the BFI.
Now, not all films are going to get money from the BFI, and The Riot Club was always going to get some funding because it ticks the right boxes– based on tried and tested material, it attempts to say something about the British elite and with a director with a proven tack record. Northern Soul is none of those things – though it’s director is an award winning photographer, this is her first film. It doesn’t try to say something about the people running the country. It’s just a decent film. Film reviewing isn’t baseball or cricket; something you can distil down into statistics, but look at Rotten Tomatoes – Northern Soul has a (slightly) better rating than The Riot Club. Don’t trust critics? Fair enough, let’s look at the all important opening weekend box office. The Riot Club took £496,647, easily beating Northern Soul, which took £278,829. However, The Riot Club opened on 378 screens, more than four times the number Northern Soul did, which was shown on 83. Per screen, Northern Soul earned £3,359, The Riot Club £1,314. On that alone, surely, Northern Soul proves it was a commercial project that deserved some help to get it going.
What annoys me is not that The Riot Club got funding, but that Northen Soul got none. For a second, forget comparing it to The Riot Club, but compare it to What Maisie Knew. The only similarity these two films have is that they both feature Steve Coogan. What Maisie Knew was a nice, independent film from last year that got decent reviews but didn’t do much business. If you haven’t seen it, check it out. It got £150,000 of BFI money for its distribution. Fair enough, until you realise it’s an American film. Nothing, apart from the appearance of Coogan, is British about it at all. Why give the US film industry a subsidy to show its films over here when you could be helping a British film? Do we also subsidise the German car industry? The Saudi Arabian oil industry? (If we do, I don’t want to know).
The success of Northern Soul should lead to serious questions for those at the heart of the British film industry. They need to look beyond what they want to see, and find out what the people of Britain want to watch. They might be surprised, and we might not have to wait ten years for a film like Northern Soul to be made.
Neil Calloway is a pub quiz extraordinaire and Top Gun obsessive. Check back here every Sunday for future installments.
Originally published November 2, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
