More than 13 years after government minister Jeremy Hunt stood up in Parliament to announce the abolition of the UK Film Council (UKFC), the body held its first reunion.
Around 80 former staff members – who worked for the organisation at some point over its existence from creation by Tony Blair’s Labour government in 2000 to final unwinding in 2011 – came together at London’s Century Club on Wednesday evening (January 31).
A speech from John Woodward – who served as UKFC chief executive throughout its existence – gave the event its focal point. While wishing to avoid “nostalgia”, which he defined as a classical Greek word meaning sorrow or despair (“I did my sorrow and despair back in 2010”), Woodward also prefaced his remarks with the suggestion that “maybe it’s not so strange that it would take 13 years to come together”, since one thing UKFC team members had in common was being “people who by and large like to look forwards rather than backwards”.
Woodward took a swipe at the Conservative-led government that “killed off the most effective organisation that British film ever had, just so Jeremy Hunt could boast that he’d done his bit to promote Austerity. And having done that they effectively turned their back on independent British filmmakers who want to tell their own stories.”
He added that “the BFI is doing a really good job with a very different remit and much less money than we had to play with”.
Woodward then listed some of the Film Council’s achievements, including having “invested millions and millions of pounds in script development and writer training, that formed the bedrock of what followed in the boom and renaissance of British writing for the screen”.
He told his audience, “You supported an unprecedented stream of popular medium-budget and low-budget British films. We started with Bend It Like Beckham and Gosford Park, and we ended with The King’s Speech, and in between everything from 28 Days Later to Sex Lives Of The Potato Men” – the latter, little-loved title being infamous as one of the UKFC’s biggest departures from the more highbrow strategy of UK cultural film funding bodies that preceded it.
The UKFC’s strategy around distribution and exhibition of independent cinema; support for conversion of cinemas to digital; regional film agencies; investment in skills and training; and the focus on diversity as “a central concern for the film industry for the first time” were all likewise mentioned.
“And somewhere at the centre of all of that,” he added, “we rescued from oblivion a horribly abused tax regime and you helped create that film tax credit which subsequently became the cookie-cutter for tax support for the theatre industry, games industry and TV industry.”
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The event came about after UKFC alumnus Kate Hide suggested a meet-up to the UKFC LinkedIn group of 45 in early January, and she and fellow group member Sarah McKenzie then took the lead on organising a reunion. Within a week word had spread, resulting in 100 responses, and all attendees co-contributed to cover the room cost and modest initial bar tab – a contrast to the days of the UKFC’s relatively pampered existence when the words “pay bar” were not often heard.
Attendees included Woodward and his partner Tanya Seghatchian, who ran the UKFC Development Fund and then the newly created Film Fund after development and production were merged in 2009.
Other guests included: Dan MacRae, currently SVP of global production and development at Studiocanal; Caroline Cooper Charles, chief executive at Screen Yorkshire; producer Jack Arbuthnott; and Lizzie Francke, who transitioned from UKFC to be a key member of the BFI Film Fund team until departing last year.
Attendees who held senior leadership roles at UKFC included Vince Holden, who was head of production finance; Will Evans, head of business affairs; Carol Comley, head of strategic development; Paul Trijbits, head of the New Cinema Fund; Jenny Borgars, head of the Development Fund; Pete Buckingham, head of distribution and exhibition; and Susie Ligatt, head of physical production.
Seghatchian and Francke raised a glass to absent friends – who included Alan Parker, chair of the UK Film Council, who died in 2020; and their own colleague Chris Collins, who served alongside them on the Development Fund and the Film Fund, and who died in 2014 at the age of 52.
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