This week a new bilateral co-production deal was sealed between the UK and China, brokered by the BFI and the Film Bureau (China) as well as the China Film Co-production Corporation, that brought us such epics as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, dir. Ang Lee) and Hero (2002, dir. Yimou Zhang). Its another step towards the goal of internationalising the UK film business, strengthening ties with emerging film markets and attracting more inward investment into the British film industry and can be seen as hard evidence for the change that politicians have been calling for over the past three years and which has been outlined in the BFI’s Wide Angle strategy.
British Culture Secretary Sajid Javid has welcomed the agreement, saying “It will pave the way for UK producers and their Chinese counterparts to share their creative expertise and make incredible films that will be enjoyed around the world.”
China now falls in line with Australia, Canada, France, India, Israel, Jamaica, Morocco, New Zealand, the Occupied Palestinian Territories and South Africa, all of which already have similar co-production treaties with the UK.
But what does this mean for producers from either the UK or China? Firstly they will be able to access public funding from the other country should they qualify. In the case of Chinese productions coming to the UK, this would mean passing the cultural test in order to access BFI Film Fund money for example. Another incentive now available to Chinese producers that pair up with a British co-producer is the possibility of benefitting from the British tax relief scheme, should their UK spendings make them eligible. In return, UK productions going to China will be eligible to profit from Chinese funding opportunities and, importantly, will be able to circumvent the limitations in place that allow no more than 34 foreign films to be shown in China each year. Seeing that China is the fastest growing film market in the world, this certainly is good news for some British producers looking to expand their audience.
There has been strong support for the new treaty coming from the President of the China Film Co-Production Corporation, Mial Xiaotian: “The signing of the Sino-UK Film Co-Production Treaty heralds the start of a new era in collaborative film production between the UK and China. I have reason to believe that it will open the way for broader cooperation between our respective film industries.”
One potential shadow side of this new agreement is that it will be more likely to benefit only films that appeal to Chinese as well as UK audiences. And we only need to look at the majority of Hollywood’s output to guess how that will be achieved. The finer cultural nuances of both China and the UK would most likely be lost to the audience from the other country and would have to be (excuse the pun) Iron(Man)ed out, leaving the film with only the most basic common denominators. That means more films about fast things, smashing up other things with a generic love story jammed somewhere in between – and all of that ideally somewhere in space. Culturally more intricate and local films already have a hard time getting the funding they need. If they have to increasingly compete with international co-productions that are trying to be the next Transformers francize, that isn’t going to get any easier.
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