"Wind" of change shakes Irish film
Yet Ken Loach's IRA drama "The Wind that Shakes the Barley" has overcome both of those handicaps to become his highest grossing movie ever in Blighty.
But the overwhelming majority -- 68% -- of the $2.1 million taken in its first 10 days was not earned in the U.K. at all, but in the Republic of Ireland. Irish share of the U.K. gross usually averages 15%.
That's a triumph for Irish cinema (and indeed for Anglo-Irish co-operation, since Loach and his team are Brits), but also exposes the fault-line that undermines the efforts of the Irish film community to build a stable, independent industry of its own.
Ireland, apart from the six northern counties, won its political freedom from the U.K. in 1922, when Loach's movie is set. But the film biz still hasn't caught up.
The republic is submerged within the much larger U.K. as a single box office territory. And while the Irish pack the multiplexes in Dublin, Cork and Galway for their own movies -- whether shlocky horror, goofy comedies or heavy dramas like "Barley" -- British auds are allergic to anything with an Irish accent.
Many are the hopeful Irish contenders such as "Intermission," "Adam and Paul," "Breakfast on Pluto" or "Mickeybo and Me," which sunk without trace on the journey across the Irish Sea.
As Irish Film Board topper Simon Perry puts it, profits from Ireland simply end up paying for P&A losses in Blighty.
And in the eyes of potential buyers in the rest of the world, local Irish hits end up looking like flops by the time the British box office figures are tallied.
It's no wonder that Perry, himself a British expat, has made it his mission since taking charge at the IFB in January to encourage Irish filmmakers to widen their horizons and grow out of their dependence upon the U.K.
In fact, with the change in British tax rules this April, they haven't got much choice. In recent years, every Irish movie was made as a British co-production, and many British films came to shoot in Ireland, in order to access tax breaks on either side of the Irish Sea.
But with the new U.K. tax credit targeted exclusively at expenditure in Britain, such double-dipping no longer makes financial sense.
Irish producers will have to look elsewhere for co-financing, and Ireland's Section 481 will now have to compete head-on with the U.K.'s more apparently lucrative tax credit to attract foreign productions.
But after the initial shock has worn off, there's a glimmer of optimism in the air as the Irish film community heads for its annual gathering July 11-16 at the Galway Film Fleadh. (That's festival, pronounced flah, for you non-Gaelic speakers.)
There will be a day of seminars about co-producing across the rest of Europe. "Barley" will be dissected as a case-study of collaboration with six countries. And Perry will present a paper detailing the competitive advantages for foreign co-producers of Ireland's S481 over the U.K.'s less flexible tax credit.
The only area where he concedes defeat, at least temporarily, is in the deal for big-budget Hollywood movies. "With Hollywood production, we've been trumped, at least for now," he admits. "But our government is looking very positively at responding to that."
The success of "Barley" at Cannes and local hardtops has certainly lightened the mood. Perhaps the Irish film community is finally starting to discover the confidence to cut the apron strings with Blighty and make its own way in the wider world.
