Is the UK gov­ern­ment doing enough to save inde­pen­dent cinema?

Michael Shon and Joe Johnsey are actors and room­mates. Dur­ing the first UK lock­down in March 2020, they worked at home on the short film Shal­low. Paul Ash­ton came on board as direc­tor, and pro­duc­tion got under­way in August.

The cast and crew lugged a day’s worth of equip­ment and sup­plies out to Shep­per­ton Stu­dios and, while observ­ing social dis­tanc­ing guide­lines, filmed an atmos­pher­ic two-man thriller. There’s a pho­to of all of them, stand­ing two metres apart, almost defiantly.

None of the cast or crew has received a pen­ny from the government’s Cul­ture Recov­ery Fund (CRF). A lack of sup­port for free­lance work­ers like them across the coun­try could lead to 400,000 job loss­es, com­pound­ing the sit­u­a­tion for an indus­try ​“on the brink of dev­as­ta­tion”.

Here at LWLies, we’re not pre­pared to sit back and watch as the inde­pen­dent film indus­try, and the liveli­hoods of peo­ple like the Shal­low crew, are left to ruin. We want to start ask­ing tough ques­tions – and uncov­er the answers.

The CRF is a £1.57 bil­lion hand­out that Chan­cel­lor Rishi Sunak has described as a ​“one-off invest­ment into UK cul­ture”. It is being dis­trib­uted by the Arts Coun­cil Eng­land, the British Film Insti­tute, His­toric Eng­land and Nation­al Lot­tery Her­itage Fund. It was offi­cial­ly cit­ed to ​“save these sec­tors, main­tain­ing jobs and keep­ing busi­ness­es afloat”.

Since the CRF was announced in July 2020, the hash­tag #Here­For­Cul­ture has been ever-present on social media feeds; a manda­to­ry con­di­tion for busi­ness­es to post in the event of them being grant­ed fund­ing. But ques­tions remain as to whether the gov­ern­ment has done enough.

At least one third of appli­cants were reject­ed as oth­ers were hand­ed mil­lions. Rev­e­la­tions that dor­mant com­pa­nies were suc­cess­ful while venues like The Wind­mill in Brix­ton were reject­ed based on their com­pa­ny sta­tus have fuelled spec­u­la­tion that CRF is, at least in part, decid­ed by an algo­rithm. Is this fair? And is it the solu­tion to pro­tect­ing work­ing-class cre­atives, and avoid­ing cul­tur­al elitism?

Despite the sector’s £115.9 bil­lion con­tri­bu­tion to the econ­o­my in 2019, the CRF is the only fund­ing that over two mil­lion peo­ple work­ing in the cre­ative indus­tries in the UK have seen since the pan­dem­ic began.

In response to the bud­get announce­ment on 3 March, the Shad­ow Min­is­ter for Cul­ture and Sport, Ali­son McGov­ern, said the Chan­cel­lor ​“hasn’t cre­at­ed employ­ment sup­port schemes that are remote­ly suit­able to the cre­ative indus­tries,” and that the post-Brex­it agree­ment ​“real­ly screws cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als and their abil­i­ty to get work.”

We have heard accu­sa­tions of nepo­tism, Lon­don-cen­trism, clas­sism and elit­ism from indi­vid­u­als across the indus­try. The CRF has been crit­i­cised by every­one from block­buster direc­tors to inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma own­ers and front of house staff.

“None of that fund was giv­en to indi­vid­u­als or free­lancers in the indus­try,” says Michael Shon. ​“None of us were eli­gi­ble for the self-employed sup­port, as we don’t make more than 50 per cent of our income from film or act­ing.” The lit­tle mon­ey they had to make Shal­low was raised on Kick­starter, but none of the cast or crew were paid. Michael and Joe even put their own sav­ings into it.

“Noth­ing sur­pris­es me about how this gov­ern­ment does things,” vet­er­an film­mak­er Ken Loach told us. ​“When they give Test and Trace to their City pals, how can you be sur­prised?” Hav­ing ded­i­cat­ed his life to direct­ing films cen­tred on the plight of ordi­nary work­ing folk, Loach believes not enough is being done.

“Cin­e­mas tend to be exclud­ed from the Arts. This gov­ern­ment sees the Arts as putting on a black tie and going to Covent Gar­den; they think in terms of mul­ti­plex­es. But inde­pen­dent cin­e­mas, the ones run on good­will and vol­un­teers, a lot of those will get for­got­ten because they don’t reg­is­ter on the BFI’s list.” (The BFI is respon­si­ble for dis­trib­ut­ing the £44m allo­cat­ed to inde­pen­dent cin­e­mas, which equates to 2.8 per cent of the total fund.)

“I’ve been to quite a few [inde­pen­dent cin­e­mas],” Loach adds, ​“and they are work­ing real­ly hard. They real­ly love cin­e­ma. And they will strug­gle.” Loach wor­ries that small­er cin­e­mas, espe­cial­ly those out­side of Lon­don which may not meet the cri­te­ria for fund­ing, will fall through the cracks in what he describes as ​“an emer­gency” for the Arts. ​“We need to make sure it isn’t just a Lon­don-cen­tric exer­cise,” he says. ​“Every town should have its venue.”

Accord­ing to the lat­est fig­ures from the Office for Nation­al Sta­tis­tics, the Arts is the fifth most severe­ly hit ser­vices sec­tor in the UK, shrink­ing by 60 per cent in Decem­ber 2020. In Step 3 of the Prime Minister’s roadmap for reopen­ing the coun­try, cin­e­mas can begin oper­at­ing again from 17 May, but capac­i­ty lim­its are still unclear at the time of writing.

Com­pound­ing the lack of sup­port for the Arts is the state of the hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor. There is a dou­ble wham­my in terms of loss of income for thou­sands of pro­fes­sion­als across the coun­try who have tak­en on ser­vice indus­try jobs to sup­ple­ment their work in the Arts.

In one of the worst instances, 400 plus employ­ees were made redun­dant from the Nation­al The­atre, includ­ing Front of House and Bar staff, the major­i­ty of whom were actors, writ­ers, direc­tors and cre­atives. This has been an issue for decades – the pan­dem­ic has sim­ply mag­ni­fied the problem.

So what will become of films like Shal­low? With­out cin­e­mas, inde­pen­dent and small­er-bud­get films strug­gle to find audi­ences. If it’s not on Net­flix or anoth­er stream­ing plat­form, a film relies on real-world patrons buy­ing tick­ets to fes­ti­val and cin­e­ma screen­ings. Any expo­sure or com­mer­cial suc­cess gen­er­at­ed by that mod­el is essen­tial in enabling film­mak­ers to con­tin­ue creating.

Over the course of this inves­tiga­tive series, we hope to find some answers and bring you a vision of a future that could allow film­mak­ers, actors, crews and audi­ences to not only sus­tain inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma in the UK, but remake it anew, for the better.

If you have any infor­ma­tion about the CRF or would like to share your expe­ri­ence, please get in touch with either @BataDaisy or @AWLies