The Independent Film Parliament: an Introduction

Abstract

Vertigo magazine, which, for ten years, has promoted independence, innovation and diversity across the whole moving image culture in Britain, recently initiated a dynamic new forum for consultation on UK film policy, namely the Independent Film Parliament. Its inaugural session was presented jointly with the Cambridge Film Festival. And so it was on 12 July 2003 that Vertigo and the Cambridge Film Festival summoned both commoners and barons to the first Independent Film Parliament in Cambridge, to debate the state of British Cinema – both what we see and what we produce, whether in fiction, documentary or artists’ film. It was independent not only in its execution, but also in the sense of the films which it sought to represent – films of risk, of surprise, films which interrogate the communities of which we are part, visionary films which take us beyond the strictures of repetition, format and commodification. The timing was opportune for Parliamentary scrutiny. Locally, Sir Alan Parker’s mission statement for UK film policy, delivered to BAFTA on bonfire night 2002, had passed almost without comment in spite of its provocative bid to redefine British film-making as we know it. Nationally, the new Communications Act further deregulated broadcasting – in particular opening up ITV and Channel 5 to foreign ownership – and the DCMS Select Committee led by Gerald Kaufman was about to report on the UK film industry. At a European level, the Television Without Frontiers directive was up for review in the European Parliament in October, but UK participation in this and other pan-European initiatives for audio-visual culture, is patchy, apathetic and directionless. World-wide, there are moves to put forward an International Convention on Cultural Diversity to be sponsored by UNESCO, which is intended to safeguard the cultural sovereignty of nations facing the encroachment of the World Trade Organisation, and