UK director Gurinder Chadha has revealed how she has struggled to set up her own take on Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol, as part of the oral evidence she has given during the first session of the UK Parliament’s cross-party Culture, Media and Sport (CMS) Committee today, January 23.
“Right now I’m putting together an independent Christmas film, set in London, very diverse, and it’s been a real struggle for me to get off the ground, partly because the lead character is Indian,” said the Kenyan born, British-Indian filmmaker Chadha, whose credits include Bend It Like Beckham and Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging,
The film has been set up with Zygi Kamasa’s nascent UK theatrical distribution outfit, True Brit Entertainment.
On trying to finance independent UK projects with Indian cast, Chadha said: “I get rejections from people who should know better. The pattern is – ‘I don’t know if it’s commercial, with the race element’.”
She later continued: “We’re [Indian talent] not commercial, unless we’ve got Dev Patel in it.”
The CMS is seeking to explore what can be done to maintain the UK’s status as a global hub for international production and how independent producers and the struggling exhibition sector can best be supported.
A total of 130 written submissions have already been published.
“A lot of my colleagues haven’t survived as independent filmmakers”
Chadha’s take on A Christmas Carol will see Scrooge as an “Indian Tory who hates refugees”. She revealed, “I told [UK Prime Minister] Rishi [Sunaq] about it – he said ‘Don’t make me look bad’.”
Chadha is also working with Disney on its first film about an Indian princess:“Disney approached me a year ago, the head of Disney, and said it’s time for us to look at making an Indian Disney princess film, and you’re the person to make it.”
Despite Chadha’s success with the likes of Bruce Springsteen inspired comedy drama Blinded By The Light – made for £6.5m (around $8m) and sold at Sundance for $17m – plus Bend It Like Beckham being the only film in history to be released in every country in the world (including North Korea), setting up financing for films is still a struggle. Chadha also gave evidence back in 2003, the last time such sessions have been held by government.
“If I say I’m struggling to make a film with people of colour – that’s a terrible thing to say to young filmmakers,” she noted.
“A lot of my colleagues haven’t survived as independent filmmakers,” said Chadha of what’s changed between when she first gave evidence 20 years ago and now. “The gap comes down to casting at the moment,” she said. “Whatever film you’ve made, you need a star in the cast for financiers.”
She notes that Keira Knightley was a relative unknown when she was cast in Bend It…, and was just “one of 40 girls we saw that day”.
Chadha wants to see a tiered tax relief to help support independent filmmakers. “If you’re an independent film under a budget you get a greater tax credit than studio films,” she said of how she would like to see it work. She would also like to see exhibition and distribution play a role in bolstering UK indie cinema.
“Earmark in our cinemas space for independent British films,” she said, pointing towards the possibility of having a cinema screen at venues dedicated just to programming independent UK film.
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