The British film industry's hopes for 2012

The British film industry's hopes for the year ahead

• 

  Charles Gant

  Film editor of Heat magazine and box-office analyst for The Guardian

  ‘I’m hoping for a steady decline of audience appetite for movies based on “existing material” and a growing appreciation of original stories. If we want Hollywood to stop sucking on the teat of sequels and established characters, we’re going to have to demonstrate different preferences at the box-office tills. The studios are by nature risk-averse, but we have the power to add an incentive to innovation, reminding them that there’s always a sell-by date on even the most seemingly resilient winning formula.’
• 

  Kate Muir

  Chief film critic, The Times

  ‘I’m hoping that audiences will enjoy a new Greek film, “Alps”, as much as I did. Economically, the Greeks may be flatlining, but artistically they’re hanging with the big dogs. One of the weirdest sensations at the Venice Film Festival last year was “Alps”, the latest drama from Yorgos Lathimos of “Dogtooth” fame. Artificial Eye will release the film here in May, and it’s like nothing else – a surreal, dark, tragi-comedy about a group codenamed “Alps” who are paid to imitate the dead relatives of the recently bereaved. Compellingly bizarre and grubbily shot, with unforgettable themes, the film won Lanthimos the Best Screenwriter prize at Venice, and he and producer-director Athina Rachel Tsangari of “Attenberg” are now being hailed as the “Greek New Wave”. I can’t wait to see what they do next.’
• 

  Lynne Ramsay

  Director of 'Ratcatcher', 'Morvern Callar' and 'We Need to Talk About Kevin'

  What are your hopes for 2012? ‘As well as peace, music and laughter: becoming an activist and jazz drummer. Never being asked ever again what it feels like to be a female director! I'm taking a leaf out of Lionel Shriver’s book and changing my name to George.’
  
  A technology that should take off? ‘Hail the new Canon 5D! Out soon and so fast (40,000 ASA) you can shoot in the dark.’
  
  Or die? ‘The Red camera. Producers who lazily make budgets based on the Red camera with no understanding of the technicality and on the assumption it's cheaper.’
  
  Trends you'd like to see disappear? ‘Apathy.’
  
  Or you'd like to become current? ‘Going unplugged. Mobile phones and e-mails, I'm secretive and don't want everyone to know what I'm doing. How about just talking in person? Dissent. We ain't just gonna let you (b)ankers get away with this! Reading books. Walking. Looking at trees instead of trees on a screensaver.’
  
  Films you’re looking forward to? ‘My next one.’
• 

  Clare Stewart

  Head of exhibition at BFI and new boss of the London Film Festival

  ‘My hope for 2012 is that smart cinemas with a commitment to diversity and archival content will not discard their 35mm projectors too quickly, like cranky old lovers, but sustain a relationship with the old while embarking on a grand affair with the new. The UK is leading the world in the transition to digital screens, and cinema chains are rapidly moving to digital-only fit-outs. While film festivals everywhere are experiencing a massive increase in films being delivered on DCP [Digital Cinema Package] formats, there are still countries whose industries are not yet geared to screen films in this way and filmmakers who choose to work on film.’
• 

  Mark Cousins

  Film critic and director of ‘The Story of Film’

  ‘In 2012 I’d like politicians everywhere to see Mohammad-Ali Talebi’s film “The Boot” (a 1992 film about a young girl who loses one of her boots on a bus), which might make them understand Iran a bit better. I’d also like to drink a bottle of wine and then go dancing with Terrence Malick (pigs will fly). And I’d like big film retrospectives to come back to television.’
• 

  Nick James

  Editor, Sight & Sound

  ‘I have several hopes.
  1) That the organisation I work for, the British Film Institute, will begin to achieve its full potential as the central cultural body for film in the UK and will encourage the best of British cinema.
  2) That “Citizen Kane” will not win Sight & Sound’s ten-year poll of the greatest films of all time when we publish it in August (though I suspect it might).
  3) That the gap between the decline of DVD and the boom in downloads be not too damaging to the art form I love.
  4) Finally, that my partner in life, the producer Kate Ogborn, makes another superb film to match or even better "The Deep Blue Sea".’
• 

  Edgar Wright

  Director of ‘Shaun of the Dead’and ‘Scott Pilgrim vs the World’

  ‘I’d like to make a wish that celluloid doesn’t completely disappear in 2012. I just curated a festival in Los Angeles showing all 35mm prints because I, for one, miss the flicker and whir of the projector in the modern multiplex. Digital is fine, but it literally lacks the inner life of a strip of film. I don’t understand why the two cannot co-exist, but there seems to be a drive to wipe out celluloid as a format completely. Put it this way, if the studios have their way and all photography and exhibition is 100 per cent digital, can you still call the medium “film”? So my resolution is to shoot my next film on film. Fingers crossed.’
• 

  Mike Goodridge

  Editor of the film industry journal Screen

  ‘In 2012, I am excited that we will see new films from Michael Haneke (“Hidden”), Wong Kar-wai (“In the Mood for Love”), Ang Lee (“Brokeback Mountain”), Park Chan-wook (“Oldboy”), Jacques Audiard (“A Prophet”), Matteo Garrone (“Gomorrah”), Olivier Assayas (“Clean”), Paul Thomas Anderson (“There Will Be Blood”) and Carlos Reygadas (“Silent Light”). These are some of the world’s great filmmakers and have each made transcendent films that push the boundaries of what film can do. I hope each and every one of them delivers a masterpiece.’
• 

  Carol Morley

  Director of ‘Dreams of a Life’ and ‘The Alcohol Years’

  ‘My dream scenario(s) for 2012… That all struggling filmmakers who are trying to make a great film get to make it. That more female film critics rise to the top. That more films offer leading roles for women. And that many more women get to be involved in filmmaking and are supported in this activity by a film fund established in the name of the great pioneering early British director, Muriel Box. I also hope that British cinema starts to become as diverse as all our wildest dreams.’
• 

  Clare Binns

  Director of programming of City Screen/Picturehouse cinemas

  ‘There are so many cinema dreams I have for 2012, so picking just one is difficult, but here goes… I’d ask cinemagoers to give documentaries a chance. I see such great documentaries at film festivals that never get on to cinema screens in the UK. Sure, documentaries are out there, but they need to be seen by audiences in greater numbers to give distributors the confidence to buy them. “Being Elmo” (about the puppeteer behind the Muppets character) and “Pink Ribbons, Inc” (about the reality of fundraising to combat breast cancer) were just two great documentaries that never made it to the UK in 2011. So, make it your new year’s resolution to get to your local cinema, and watch a documentary!’
• 

  Edward Fletcher

  Managing director of London-based film distributors Soda Pictures

  ‘In 2012 Soda Pictures will be 10 years old and we intend to celebrate with some good times including a romantic renaissance with Peter Doherty in his first acting role (“Confession of a Child of the Century”), partying in Cuba (“Seven Days in Havana”) and some frolics in the strawberry fields of Kent (“Strawberry Fields”). Personal lives aside, I’d like to see the death of alternative content, “event” cinema and Virtual Print Fees as part of a re-discovery of the art of curated cinema! Finally, may our New British Cinema Quarterly programme continue flying the flag for British films worthy of the Olympic year.’
• 

  Dennis Laws

  Technical and general manager, BFI IMAX

  ‘I hope that more directors will make movies that really keep the big-screen experience in mind. I would love to see them expand their horizons to discover the magic of what the new Imax cameras can capture and then see how showing them in traditional Imax cinemas can bring sheer delight to audiences. We were all blown away by the Imax footage in “The Dark Knight”, Brad Bird has brilliantly used the format in “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol”, and I’m looking forward to Christopher Nolan taking us to even greater heights with "The Dark Knight Rises" in 2012.’
• 

  Joanna Hogg

  Director of ‘Archipelago’ and ‘Unrelated’

  ‘In 2012, my resolution is to put something back into the city’s film culture. Having noticed the sad loss of repertory cinema that we enjoyed a decade or more ago and that cinemas are now expensive, narrowly programmed and aiming for luxury, myself and filmmaker Adam Roberts have launched the “A Nos Amours” film collective, with screenings of Peter Watkins’s “Edvard Munch” and Maurice Pialat’s “A Nos Amours” (where we got our name). The aim is: to show films that are overlooked, underappreciated or underplayed; to show films at a low cost to encourage exploration and chance encounters; to show the best copies we can, but not get hung up on that; and to find ways of encouraging the crossing of boundaries – artistically, professionally, commercially. To join our mailing list, email to anosamours2011@gmail.com.’
• 

  Adrian Wootton

  Chief executive of Film London and the British Film Commission

  ‘It is set to be a momentous year and in the context of the Olympics, I hope we can have a terrifically successful Games, which can help us to promote London and the UK’s film industry, allowing us to sustain the great success we have had in attracting international filmmakers to shoot their movies here. In the coming year, I also look forward to helping start the careers of new exciting London filmmaking talent. I hope that the Film Policy Review helps provide some fresh inspiration to aid independent producers and emerging creative talent and some endorsement of the importance of things like inward investment in film. On a cultural front, I want Film London to do everything we can to ensure that the film and television elements of the Charles Dickens 200th birthday celebrations we are responsible for are really successful, emphasising his influence over the medium and his continuing legacy to contemporary creative talent.’
• 

  Nick Wrigley

  Co-founder of the Masters of Cinema DVD label

  ‘Randomly, my hopes are…
  1) That the British Board of Film Classification realises its laughable redundancy in the face of the internet, its crushing irrelevance in a global marketplace and goes off to bake cakes.
  2) That the Coalition government grants elderly cinephiles free multi-region Blu-ray players and 46" 1080p displays as a “swapsie” for the increasingly worthless TV Licence.
  3) That filmmakers start using the Louis CK (a comedian who releases his material online) model of creator-owned region-free global distribution – to cut out the many middlemen.
  4) That – while middlemen remain – enormous film rental companies actually give some revenue back to the licensor and licensee for each rental, instead of just pocketing the lot.
  5) That the BBC sacks whole layers of management and overpaid presenters to instead invest in definitive HD masters of all their film archives.
  6) That a great documentary is made about the Occupy movement.
  7) That selfless saints are elected to govern and create many thriving artistic sectors across the UK rather than one culturally worthless, morally bankrupt financial sector.’
• 

  Catherine Bray

  Editor, Film4.com

  ‘Equality now! Over the last few years, we’ve seen Kevin James paired with Rosario Dawson, Seth Rogen paired with Anna Faris, Jack Black paired with Amanda Peet, Vince Vaughn paired with Malin Akerman… and so the list goes on. In the interests of balance, I’d like to see a lithe, stunningly attractive man paired with an averagely schlubby, heavy-set funny woman in a mainstream comedy. I think what I’m saying is that my wish for 2012 is to see Melissa McCarthy from “Bridesmaids” get it on with Ryan Gosling in a knockabout romcom.’
• 

  Stuart Comer

  Curator of film, Tate Modern

  ‘This year we lost filmmakers George Kuchar, Ken Russell, Raúl Ruiz, Robert Breer and Owen Land, not to mention the 16mm facilities at Deluxe film lab in Soho. As Chrissie Iles states in the catalogue for Tacita Dean’s celluloid manifesto at Tate Modern, “Where film goes the body will follow.” Luckily, this proved to be a double entendre as cinemas in London were packed for grassroots and DIY initiatives like Scala Forever and Fringe!, and upstart magazines like Little Joe helped galvanise a new, young audience. I suspect next year the stakes will be even higher, as cinema’s digital possibilities become ever more exciting, its alternative histories become ever more at risk and a new generation raised on the internet proves that cinema is here to stay.’
• 

  Matthew Justice

  Managing Director of Big Talk and executive producer of ‘Attack the Block’

  ‘Following a great 2011 for British film, one of my hopes is that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s film policy review, which launches in January 2012, will be embraced by the industry.  We've begun to see the real potential for British film in the past few years, and let's hope that the review, which has looked into all areas of the government’s film policy, can help us to build on that.’
• 

  Andrew Haigh

  Writer and director of ‘Greek Pete’ and ‘Weekend’

  ‘It’s such a battle to get small films shown in the cinema and I would love for that to change. I don’t know if it’s the fault of the cinemas for thinking all we want to see is “Twilight” or it’s the fault of the audiences for only wanting to see “Twilight”, but either way it’s depressing. I’d also like the internet to break down so I can get some work done.’
• 

  Evrim Ersoy

  Co-programmer of monthly London-based alternative cinema night, The Duke Mitchell Film Club

  ‘The Duke Mitchell Film Club looks forward to finally achieving our dream of bringing Duke Mitchell’s long lost 1976 film, “Gone with the Pope” [about four ex-convicts who journey to Rome to attempt to kidnap the Pope, planning to charge a ransom of “a dollar from every Catholic in the world”], to the UK with the help of industry legend Bob Murawski, who was one of the executive producers on the film. Oh, and for the London film scene to keep growing more and more diverse with each passing month!’