NOTHING LIKE A DANE

The news that more European money is being funneled into film ought to be welcome. But not chez Smith. Now I may be dead wrong – or just sceptical - but seems to me if you’re unlucky enough to be a Scottish filmmaker the numbers just don’t stack up.

The 755 million euros announced for the 2007 Media Programme is a lot of dough. According to the Film Council, over the last six years, 70 million euros of Media money was ‘spent’ in the UK, with 22.3 million going to filmmakers. This is just for development, mind, so you might wonder, just how many duff scripts are out there? Too bad the UK Media Desk website doesn’t say how this figure breaks down or how much of the pot found its way north of the border.

European film funding is marginally less complicated than Enron’s accounting practices. To make a film anywhere in Europe depends on finding accomplices, otherwise known as co-producers, which is why we’ve got a bunch of red tape and things called treaties that even people with degrees in international law can’t get their heads round.

As if making movies isn’t hard enough.

But not for some. Take a country like Denmark. For years Scottish filmmakers have been told by ‘those in the know’ to look to Denmark if they want to learn how to make films. Why not, you might think. We’ve got roughly the same population.

But that’s where the similarity ends. There’s nothing about Danish film that Scotland can learn from, not when Danes have their own language, their own film institute, their own national broadcasters and more subsidy than filmmakers here can dream of. They also have national distributors and sales companies. All the things we don't.

Looking at the Glasgow Film Festival programme, trying to decide what to see, I couldn’t help but notice a strand called Danish Focus, featuring 11 features and a PA with Anders Thomas Jensen. Great, I think, give us Scots a showing-up. But then I thought, hang on, if the Danes are so great at making movies then how come their filmmakers need so much subsidy from the UK - and Scotland in particular?

Over the last few years, a fair amount of UK - and Scottish - public money has boosted the careers of several Danish filmmakers, including -

Anders Thomas Jensen
Lars von Trier
Susanne Bier
Thomas Vinterberg
Lone Scherfig
Per Fly
Søren Kragh-Jacobsen

What links all bar one of the above to Scotland is the Glasgow-based company, Sigma, whose website claims credits on no less than six Danish films, an astonishing number. And all the more astonishing because as co-producers, Sigma has backed more Danish movies than UK or even Scottish movies. Good for them. At least they’re getting films made.

Now even I know that film’s a global business. But what I’d like to know is exactly how much UK – and Scottish - Lottery funding has gone to bolstering Danish films? What I’d like to know even more is how many UK filmmakers have benefited from Denmark’s film pot? Does it work both ways or do the canny Danes, via Sigma, have the pin number to Scottish Screen and the Film Council’s bank accounts?

It’s a good question. I guess Sigma can lay claim to so many Danish films because it was a co-producer. But how, I wonder, does that work when Gordon Brown is clamping down on pillaging foreign filmmakers? Surely they only come over here if they can claim tax breaks on the whole budget? Why else would they bother? And with a lot of these films being shot in Denmark (or elsewhere) in what way do they qualify as a British film?

Can I be bothered to look it up?

Well, being a nosey kind of person, I dug up a copy of the treaty. It says to qualify for tax breaks here, a Danish film needs to spend 40% of its budget in the UK if it’s on a bi-lateral basis, ie. between a UK company and a Danish company. This drops to 30% UK spend on a multi-party co-production.

Now I’m not a producer and I’m certainly not a lawyer, but even I know that a film shot in Denmark, edited in Denmark and starring Danes, won’t have much left in the kitty to spend in the UK. So 40%? They’d be hard-pushed to claim a 20% spend.

A couple of years back, Scottish Screen’s Roughcuts ran a piece on Lars von Trier’s Manderlay, claiming it as a ‘Scottish’ film when it was nominated for a gong at the European Film Awards. Sigma lists the film on its website, so it’s fair to assume it was a co-producer. And since Roughcuts mentioned the fact, it’s likely Sigma got funding from SS.

My point being?

If you want to be small-minded about it, you could argue that a big grown-up director like Lars didn’t need backing from a very small Scottish film fund. That doesn’t make Sigma wrong, but as a public body, did SS think it made a good investment? Take a look at the IMDB’s list of production companies for the film –

Zentropa Entertainments
Edith Film Oy (in association with)
Film i Väst
Invicta Capital Ltd.
Isabella Films B.V.
Manderlay Ltd.
Memfis Film & Television
Ognon Pictures
Pain Unlimited GmbH Filmproduktion
Sigmalll (sic) Films Ltd.

Last on this long list is UK company, Sigmalll – is it a typo or a smokescreen? Either way, with so many partners involved, you’d need your head examined to buy into Manderlay and expect to see your money back, never mind a profit.

When a public funder invests in established foreign filmmakers, if it can’t claim a share of profits, it can still usually claim things like ‘cultural’ or ‘economic’ benefit - even in the most suspect cases. Still, I don’t remember Manderlay shooting in Scotland, hiring local crew or staying in local B&Bs. When you don’t see a slice of the profits and if nobody here gets hired, what other reason could there be for giving Lars von Trier local public funds?

How about vanity? The illusion of status that comes with lining up with the well-known, as if to say, ‘we’re players too’. Maybe it's a way of helping local film companies, who knows? Is SS aware of the UK tax law for film or does it think the rules don't apply here?

When Anders Thomas Jensen appears at the GFT, I can't help but think - am I looking at a man in danger of replacing Ken Loach as most-funded guy out of the film pot here? So much for his ‘incredibly prolific career’. Maybe I ought to up sticks to Copenhagen and steal their money, see how they like it.