Low Future?

Filmmaker Liz Gill questions the future of the Irish Film Board's low/micro-budget initiative; followed by a response from BSÉ/IFB CEO Mark Woods, and comments from other filmmakers.

The Irish Film Board Low-Budget and Micro-Budget Feature Film Initiatives were one of the best things to ever happen to the Irish film industry. In one year, 11 features were produced – Goldfish Memory, Dead Bodies, Headrush, Cowboys and Angels, Dead Meat, The Halo Effect, Freeze Frame, Timbuktu, Starfish, The Trouble With Sex (aka Bite) and Adam & Paul. Not only do these films demonstrate consistently high production values, but they form an eclectic group, expressing a range of Irish voices and bringing new life to indigenous Irish film. Apart from their cultural value, the films are garnering domestic and international success, both in terms of awards and foreign distribution.

Yet since August 2003, only one film – Studs – has been greenlit under either initiative. The Board has instituted preconditions so difficult as to be prohibitive, namely, having a sales agent, distributor or bond company (or all three) on board before one is even allowed to apply. Producers are either finding it impossible to meet the requirements, or are not applying at all. These preconditions effectively defeat the purpose of the initiative, which was a solution to the endless financing hell that low-budget indigenous films suffered for years before its introduction, and that had resulted in the funding of many films that satisfied only the international financing community's view of what an Irish film should be. The Board is acting like a studio rather than a government agency created to develop an Irish film industry.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 103