Response from Liz Gill to Mark Woods's letter published in FI 103.

I welcome Mark Woods' remarks in the last issue of Film Ireland, as it is the first time that I have seen spelt out on paper the IFB/BSÉ's new policy with regard to marketplace involvement in low-budget filmmaking. Nowhere in the published guidelines is there such an emphasis on pre-sales and pre-production marketplace investment, and I ask the members of the Board whether this is indeed policy, and if so when will it be published in the guidelines? Woods has implicitly stated (and overtly demonstrated) that sales agents or other 'end-users' are now a prerequisite to IFB/BSÉ involvement in low-budget films. If such practise had been in place previously, few, if any, of the previous films funded under the Low-Budget Initiative would have been made. When was this change in Board policy decided and why?

There are several points in Woods' piece to which I would like to respond, but in the interest of brevity I will concentrate only on this one, that is the IFB/BSÉ's emphasis on producers securing market money before the IFB/BSÉ will commit to production funding.

Woods repeatedly offers the UK and Australia as examples of indigenous film industries that we should be emulating. Yet these industries are hardly beacons of success. The UK is not awash with excellent, or even successful, independent films. As for Australia, The February 25th issue of Screen International offers an objective and damning indictment of the market-led approach:

'Australian film is off the boil and everyone seems to know it...However, things are improving now since the biggest-ever philosophical shift in October...This shift sees the FFC (Film Financing Corporation) throwing its weight behind films early in the financing process, which it has rarely done...traditionally, it has waited until later in the cycle, topping up money from the market.'

I encourage anyone interested to read the rest of the article, proof, if ever it were needed, that a body such as the IFB/BSÉ cannot wait for the market to tell it what to do. For over ten years the Australian film industry (and films of all budget sizes), has been in progressive decline. Suddenly, after abandoning this market-led approach, producers, and the media, are riding a new wave of possibility and success.

Sales agents never will be or wish to be creative visionaries. Only by committing at script stage, as the Australians are now finally doing, will the IFB/BSÉ ever hope to facilitate a self-sustaining and, yes, commercially successful industry here.

Liz Gill

This article is printed in Film Ireland 104 (May/Jun 2005)