Film on Four

3.4.1 Film on Four

Film on Four is often represented as providing the springboard for the renaissance of the British film industry. In policy terms, it represents an important development in funding. Part public finance and part private, it was based on the German PSB model of film finance in the late 1970s/early 1980s, through which WDR and ZDF, in particular, created the financial environment for New German Cinema. Although financially limited, 20 feature films were made in the first year for approximately £5.5 million;

Channel 4 partially funded 170 films between 1981 and 1990 4 . This was a far higher number than the National Film Finance Corporation had been able to support in the 1970s.

Managing in the Media

David Puttnam, talking about the first batch of films, represented a widely held view 5 :

. . . the like of which many of us had lost hope of seeing in our own language, arriving like a gift of the gods in a parched land.

Mike Leigh may exaggerate slightly when he claims that, ‘During the 1970s and 1980s all serious film-making was done for television’ 6 , but for a while in the early 1980s it seemed that any serious work was carried out for Film on Four. Where protectionist policies had failed, and were in any case repealed in the 1980s, Channel 4 succeeded. Admittedly there were limits to film budgets but, as Mike Leigh’s quote suggests, ‘serious’ filmmaking was possible. Importantly, Channel 4 films enabled television drama directors such as Stephen Frears to broaden out into features, and experimental directors such as Peter Greenaway and Derek Jarman to work on feature films.

The films represented a wide diversity of form, content and to some extent intended audience. Many were given a cinema release first (particularly successful during the early 1980s were The Ploughman’s Lunch, The Draughtsman’s Contract , Another Time, Another Place and, later, My Beautiful Laundrette ). However, as James Park points out in his book, Learning to

Dream, The New British Cinema 5 , even these successes rarely made a profit on theatrical release, although they did boost audiences for the television screening and built up PR for sales abroad – both to television and for theatrical release.

Paul Giles also made criticisms of content 4 ; Derek Jarman described them as ‘Films to complement the ads’. Director and critic Chris Petit saw them as ‘television hardback’ 6 . Lindsay Anderson’s comments on the financial and the

subject restrictions are more illuminating 6 :

I think the real difference is the kind of subject liable to be financed by Channel 4, which leads to some of the new British films being a bit lacking with the ambition one associates with a cinema film. There is a certain restriction of imagination or idea, rather than the feeling that if you make a film financed by television you have to restrict it in terms of technique or style.

Whether restricted or not, the films clearly carried out Channel 4’s remit to serve minority audiences and to allow new voices to be heard. As part of

a PSB system, though co-funded by a variety of commercial and public institutions (principally the BFI), Film on Four could be seen as ‘public service cinema’. Thus, it fulfilled the cultural component of film policy – the need for

a national cinema to produce and circulate images of the nation. Clearly the

British film policy

films were also produced in an economic context, but they have less value as earners of foreign currency or as a method of providing employment and subsidising regional economies. Paradoxically, some of the UK’s most successful exports to the USA were Channel 4 films (e.g. Trainspotting and Four Weddings and a Funeral ), thus suggesting a degree of overlap between the economic and cultural approaches to film policy and indeed film-making. However, one would have to consider how far these two films would contribute to a British film culture and a sense of identity.