Transcript

ALEX HAMILTON

Inward investment we always just should assume it's something of a double-edged sword. It's great that you can encourage inward investment into the UK from the studios, and that there a means in which to do that, but you have to accept it the indigenous industry, as it were, is only a thing of a certain size. If it takes a lot of inward investment from the studios, it inevitably constricts the space within which the indigenous industry can promote and produce homegrown films. It's a perennial debate. The notion that Gravity is a British film and it qualified as a British film. Now it's a very high end top quality studio product, which benefited from the welcoming context for inward investment.

It actually should be indigenous, homegrown, film industry be supported and made wider. Is that something that- is film greater than the sum of its economic parts? I think you'd get a lot of people would say, that yes any industry, and film is no different from any other, is greater than the sum of its economic parts because it has a cultural impact, a social impact. It's not simply about the primacy of the economic narrative. I think that's the double-edged sword of inward investment. It's great that we're making Star Wars and Marvel and other big, big movies in the UK.

It keeps a lot of people in work, generates real jobs, but we also want to be creating the Billy Elliots, the Full Monty, the Trainspottings. I'm trying to think of more recent examples, actually and just suddenly struggling, but very successful British films.