Lottery-funded films are a flop
by ROBIN STRINGER, Evening Standard
Shortly after winning the election, the Government announced it was creating three Lottery-funded franchises to make films that it hoped would be "of benefit to the public" but also, crucially, commercially successful.
It now emerges that only one of the 14 resulting films produced by two of the companies, Pathe Productions and the Film Consortium, has made a profit. The third franchised company, DNA, has yet to even release a single film.
Yet despite the whiff of scandal around the fund, all three companies have recently had their franchises renewed by the monitoring body, the British Film Council, even though the council has refused to make public the auditors' report.
Now some expert observers, including Evening Standard film critic Alexander Walker, are calling for those reports to be published as a matter of public concern.
Today he asks the Common Select Committee which over-sees the arts to call Culture Secretary Chris Smith - who announced the franchises on a trip to the Cannes film festival in 1997 - to account for this huge expenditure of public money.
As Mr Walker says: "Lottery money is transparent when grants are announced, opaque when invested in films and invisible once the dismal box office results come in."
His demand for greater public accountability is backed by Shadow Culture Secretary Peter Ainsworth. "I think it is entirely proper that any financial reports on the franchises should be made public," he said.
"However, I think the present strategy is right. Under the Arts Council, the award of Lottery money to films was shambolic but the new Film Council is proceeding on a much more orderly basis.
"It should be given a chance. If after three years, it has not worked then the game is up."
So far, the one film to have made its public money back is Pathe Productions' starrily cast version of An Ideal Husband with Julianne Moore, Minnie Driver, Cate Blanchett, Jeremy Northam and Rupert Everett, which came out last year.
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