Actors attack Tory plans to scrap UK Film Council

Leading actors, such as Emily Blunt and Bill Nighy, have attacked Tory plans to scrap the UK Film Council as part of budget cuts across the government.

 

Leading actors, such as Emily Blunt and Bill Nighy, have attacked Tory plans to scrap the UK Film Council as part of budget cuts across the government. The Con-Dem coalition government announced in July that it was scrapping the council – which hands out money to British films – and that it would disappear by 2012. The announcement was met with wide-spread criticism and anger with Noel Clarke and Liam Neeson amongst those who spoke out against the axing. Now over 50 leading actors, including Ian Holm, James McAvoy, Emily Blunt and Bill Nighy, have signed a letter to The Daily Telegraph attacking the closure.

 

 

“We all owe any success we have had in our acting careers, to varying degrees, to films supported by the UK Film Council. But it is not out of personal gratitude that we are dismayed that the UKFC is facing the axe; it is because we fear the impact on the British film industry as a whole…….We should think long and hard about getting rid of one of the major factors behind a great British success story. The council was set up in 2000 and has put more than £160m of Lottery funding into about 900 films.” Part of the letter published in The Daily Telegraph

 

The UK Film Council has helped films such as Gosford Park, This Is England, In The Loop, Bend It Like Beckham and Vera Drake. The scrapping of the council is part of the coalition’s aim of reducing the UK’s spending by six billion pounds this year.