Whats wrong with the BFI

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Whats wrong with the British film industry?

What is wrong with the British film industry?

It’s a big question, however very controversial due to opinions before I read up on it I thought it was perfect, however now I read of problems to do with race, gender, money, legal issues. I will be focusing on how America has “bought” most countries out of film production and issues to do with Great Britain being a small country in comparison to most others.

When you look at imdb’s top 100 films of all time, The shawshank redemption directed by Frank Darabont a Frenchman born in a refugee campand grew up as an American, The Godfather directed Francis Ford Coppola born in Detroit USA these where the highest ranked films of all time(voted by viewers)both produced by Americans, now looking at the financial side, the highest grossing film of all time was Avatar, making a whopping $2.7 BILLION worldwide then Titanic making $2.1 BILLION worldwide, what do these films have in common? Both directed and written by James Cameron a Canadian director but following this trend of America dominating the film industry, his permanent residences is in Los Angeles.

When you look at the stats of films produced in Great Britain compared to USA you can see how overwhelming America is, they made ~520 feature films last year with England limping behind them with only ~ 111 being made.  However due to the amount of films being made Americas directors are running out of ideas for films, most if not all famous comic bookhero’s from marvel and DC have been used up, Batman, superman, The avengers, The incredible hulk. I personally think that America is burning themselves out not long and the quality of films will be reduced when Marvel and DC have run outof hero’s to sell to the film industry.

Now to look at the issue of great Britain being small,looking at population you can see just how much larger USA is, their population is around 311million whereas Great Britain’s is only ~63million. This instantly increases America’s changes of having more good actors however this isnt the problem, what is, is how Hollywood has been presented to everyone, this draws actors from England, Scotland, wales all to America.

Now you could see this form of import/export the main problem is there are more British actors going to America then American actors coming to England, making Great Britain get a net loss of actors, this means that the directors might not be able to get the actors they want purely due to the logistical problems or cost. So what have we done ? I personally thing that we as media consumers haven't supported English media, but I do think we are changing and starting to support our own home grown talent , I think some cinemas do cheaper tickets for English films helping fund England's film industry,