29/11/2002

Remember just five years ago when London was a booming centre for independent filmmakers from both sides of the Atlantic? A place where you could knock on any number of sales company doors and get your project off the ground. Regardless of the budget. You could choose between the “big boys” like PolyGram, Capitol Film, MGM’s specialist arm United Artists, Icon Entertainment International, Intermedia and J&M Entertainment who also offered studio-level products, but also places like Film Four, The Sales Company and a dozen other entities selling more modest quality art-house films. Trainspotting, Secrets & Lies, The Full Monty and Mr Bean were seducing critics and audiences the world over, and reinforcing the perception of the UK as a dynamic creative centre where relatively cheap films could also become highly lucrative cross-over titles, right up there with commercial bigger-budgeted films.
New London players entered the international financing and sales arena: Jeremy Thomas’ Hanway Films; Renaissance Films, co-chaired by producer Stephen Evans and ex-journalist Angus Finney, with Bill Stephens as head of sales; and Alibi Films launched by former Handmade Films duo, Gareth Jones and Hilary Davis. Foreign companies like Spanish producer Andres Vicente Gomez’s Lola Films and French giant, Pathé, also set up London-based sales outfits to sell their English-language projects.
Just a couple of years later, in 1999-2000, the euphoria associated with the German Neuer Market equity craze, the production boom in the UK that took off on the back of tax breaks and Lottery cash, but also the international success of titles like Lock Stock And Two Barrels, Shakespeare In Love, Notting Hill, Billy Elliot and Chicken Run were still giving sales agents a false sense of security despite the reality of a fast-approaching economic downturn.