WE WILL NOT WAIT

There are a lot of angry people in the land today. UK filmmakers who believe not only that they can make great films to redefine cinema but great films to change the world.

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Two of the angry folk are young director Liam Andrew Wright, currently promoting his provocation first feature Ex Cathedra (main photo), and producer veteran Michael Lionello Boscardi Cowan, head of Spice Factory, putting the finishing touches to his fortieth picture, including Guy X, starring Jeremy Northam (left).

They are both dreamers who do not like the fact that for the next year a vapid tale about a loser blowing out people’s brains with a cattle prod will be regarded globally as the past year's best picture, despite their appreciation for the Coen brothers’ filmmaking expertise.

Best Picture. Oh, please. Get real.

It is not Ghandi. It is not A Man For all Seasons. Not The Bridge on the River Kwai. Not Lawrence of Arabia. Not The English Patient. Not Shakespeare in Love. Not The Last Emperor. Not Chariots of Fire. All British winners.

Wright and Cowan obviously represent opposite ends of the fimmaking business in Britain yet they are both hampered by the same ongoing challenge: how to get some money to make the great movies they have in mind.

No one is saying it is impossible to have great films with lots of violence. There have been a few. But it often seems that the best films do better without a reliance on blood letting.

Britain undoubtedly has the talent to produce these films to rock world cinema and to rock the world as well but for now the country remains unheard.

Why is that? Why is the money not there?

Actually, the answer is simple. Ask anyone in the know and they will easily fill you in on the obvious and serious challenges facing British filmmakers in the face of the Hollywood behemoth.

Indeed, you will find them so fluent on problem/s that it may be hard to get them to stop telling you the problem/s.

For the most commonly heard catch phrase in the British film world is not some inspiring motto but the depressing phrase: "The problem is …".

It is much more difficult is to get anyone to offer you a few solutions.

But they can be found and the angry filmmakers at large in the country today, hundreds, even thousands of them, from Wright to Cowan, give hope that some solutions will be sooner rather than later, for everyone’s benefit.

Filed March 6, 2008.