Filmmaker Liz Gill questions the future of the Irish Fim Board's low/micro-budget initiatives.

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, ony 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.

Low-budget Irish films can sometimes suffer if they are sold to a distributor or a sales agent before production, as producers are then in an extremely weak bargaining position, if they can attract any market interest at all. These projects are designed to be produced without internationally-known cast or name directors, and so most reputable sales agents aren't interested at script stage. Those that are can effectively buy world rights to the film for very little and often no advance whatsoever. The effect of these prerequisites has been to practically kill off the initiative entirely.

When the initiatives were launched, there was a thrilling sensation that we were at the beginning of an Irish New Wave. Audiences were responding positively to Irish films and there was a real sense of momentum and possibility. Now in the film community there is widespread frustration and despair.

It seems strange that the Board insists that the initiative is still functioning, yet in over 14 months there have been only one project deemed worthy of investment. If there are so few viable projects, then it raises a question about the Board's own development strategies. If the marketplace is to be the sole decider on whether a project is worth financing, then why have an Irish Film Board at all?

Between February 2002 and August 2003, a new Irish film went into production every two months. We need only look to Denmark to see how a country the same size as ours and without the advantage of the English language has turned their low-budget project into a global brand.

We are now further from that possibility than we were a year ago, and filmmakers are looking for some answers. Better yet, to see some films. This is a real crisis. But many filmmakers are afraid to raise these matters, in case it affects their relationship with the Board and the Board's potential future financing of their films. I respectfully ask the Board to either officially cease the initiative, or to restore it immediately, not with press releases but with production.

This article was printed in Film Ireland 103 (Mar/Apr 2005).