Choice Brits - Script Factory

Mike Figgis calls on British moviegoers

At our Choice Brits screening of Bodysong on Friday, Mike Figgis sang the praises of the incredible talent and diversity in the UK film industry. It’s an industry which has produced something for every film fan in the last year: from Minghella's Oscar-tipped Cold Mountain; to Richard Curtis’ feelgood Love Actually; to the first ever web-streamed feature in Bille Elltringham’s psychological thriller This is Not a Love Song.
 
This excess of talent and variety is very much apparent in Simon Pummell’s experimental, interactive documentary Bodysong, a film being favourably compared to Koyaanisqatsi. On the eve of its release, Mike Figgis wonders what it will take to get British audiences to support their own filmmakers.

MIKE FIGGIS AT BAFTA
Friday 28 November, 6pm
“Good evening. They said ‘be brief’, which was a blessing, because I wanted to say a few words about British film and maybe what’s wrong with it, or why it doesn’t quite take off globally the way we would all like it to. But that’s kind of like trying to define marsh gas in a way because it’s almost indefinable.
From my own personal perspective, I know that often I’ve sort of said that one of the greatest advantages I’ve had as an artist or a filmmaker was the complete absence of support - and recognition to an extent - in my own territory when I was trying to develop as an artist - in the Thatcher years the absence of any sponsorship. Whereas these poor bastards in France and Germany who were being smothered in money and love and adulation couldn’t seem to produce the goods in the way that I think the British art community and the British film community and the more experimental members of that community have as well. Despite the absence of that kind of support, they have always managed to come up with the most brilliant kind of work.
Having worked a lot in America and seen the range within the film industry of what can be done, and also within the music industry what can be done. Let me put it this way: I’ve just done a documentary for Martin Scorcese about the history of the blues. And he said would I make the segment on the UK blues scene and I said I would do it. And by the end of that documentary I was so touched and moved and impressed by the contribution of British blues musicians to that genre and I feel exactly the same way about the film community in this country. And I ponder long and hard: Why? What is the problem with British films not finding an audience here? Why do we give so much time to the American product - which, let’s face it, isn’t that brilliant a lot of the time; it can be very generic; very clichéd; and very often intent on just reproducing the same old turgid three act thing over and over again, whereas we produce these little gems and they seem to just disappear through lack of nourishment, through lack of appreciation, through lack of support – through lack of critical support often. And I feel, just to sum it up, that we’re so close, that literally if we as a community took the giant step - which is really just a small step - of really just embracing our own product, our own creative output, and just putting it in the right setting – because these are just little jewels, and it’s about putting things in settings – if we managed to do that it would not only give them the platform that they deserve, it would also create a much bigger awareness of something that we could take some pride in. And the minute that happens – it’s very interesting if you take a look at the history of the British music scene, and ask yourself: ‘why is it that suddenly in the sixties all this music went and completely bowled over America, the very source of its own inspiration? I think it was again a kind of indefinable thing - an energy which was suddenly let loose and was unstoppable.
There is absolutely no doubt that the talent exists and that we use that talent to make brilliant films, of a different kind - films that are British but not slavishly impersonating an American design or blueprint, and they’re very special. And I tell you, we’re just that close that if we could just close ranks and say we do support, we endorse, then we could unleash and put into a very strong direction this wonderful creativity. I think that very, very quickly the difference would be so discernable.
Anyway, that’s my speech. I’m here tonight because I want to see a film; it sounds like a really interesting film; it sounds like a very different film, and it’s with great pride that I can stand here and say I’m grateful that you have come and that we’re all going to share and enjoy this wonderful experience - the film is Bodysong by Simon Pummell.
 
Read more about Bodysong.
Find out more about Mike Figgis.