Focus on the future as Britain's movie makers still wait for a brighter picture

Sir Richard Attenborough's bold attempt to revive interest in the waning fortunes of our indigenous industry drew support from a variety of luminaries. Bradford got 25-year-old starlet du jour Greta Scacchi, all lustrous hair, toothy smile and cleavage, to inject glamour into a crusade that simultaneously championed contemporary home-grown talent while casting a reverential glance back to the glory days of the recent past.

British Film Year as a concept was a direct, gung-ho response to dramatically declining cinema attendances, which hit an all-time low in 1984. And it worked. Admissions leapt to 72 million and kept going up. But it took a figurehead like Attenborough, the ingnu turned character star turned Oscar-winning director, to take the reins of a fight back that was as openly desperate as it was fiercely patriotic.

Twenty-five years later, the time may be right for the UK to resurrect the modus operandi of British Film Year, and once again persuade domestic audiences of the value, validity and verve of the films being produced within these isles.

The British film industry is in the grip of an eternal crisis. Like our politicians' "special" – or rather "one-sided" – relationship with the United States, many of our filmmakers appear to be restricted by Hollywood's seeming monopoly of our cinema circuit and, by association, our national audience.

Many are unemployed, unable to raise finance for projects that are perceived to be too localised in their outlook. In other words, they won't translate to Stateside cinemagoers.

What's more, as British audiences become increasingly anticipatory of the next $100m behemoth, low-budget independent projects are being frozen out of multiplexes. What price a decent script and fine acting if audiences accept being force-fed a diet of high-concept special effects?

The catalyst for much wailing and hand-wringing was the July 24 announcement by Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt that the new Con-Lib coalition government was to axe the UK Film Council, the quango tasked with annually distributing millions of pounds of taxpayers' money to aid film distribution, exhibition and skills and training.

There were howls of outrage. After all, the Film Council was widely credited with helping UK gross box office receipts to climb to 944m in 2009 – up 11 per cent on the previous year. That equates to 803m after VAT.

And while it was guilty of funding some dubious fare – the decision to inject 900,000 of lottery money into the 2004 comedy Sex Lives of the Potato Men was roundly criticised – the Film Council also backed the likes of Atonement and Ken Loach's The Wind that Shakes the Barley, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2006.

Among the filmmakers queuing up to lambast Mr Hunt was veteran Clint Eastwood. The octogenarian actor-turned-director had just shot Hereafter in London. The project received assistance with crews and information on tax credits from the Film Council. In a protest letter to the Chancellor, George Osborne, Eastwood described the decision to kill it off as "of great concern" and spoke of its "vigorous support" for his film.

Eastwood's words followed on from a letter to the Daily Telegraph, signed by 55 actors including Bill Nighy and Emily Blunt, calling for a reprieve. Hunt was unrepentant, citing the high salaries of the Film Council's senior management as a core reason for its abolition.

"Stopping money being spent on a film quango is not the same as stopping money being spent on film," he wrote. "We should not accept the relative size of the British film industry as a fait accompli. Rather, we must step up our ambitions and make the UK the best country for nurturing and promoting its home-grown creative talent."

The fall-out from the death of the Film Council will affect the regional screen agencies and the distribution of millions of pounds to fund film production and exhibition. It is only coincidental that Melvin Welton, the finance manager of Screen East, was arrested earlier this month for alleged internal financial mismanagement. Insolvency practitioners have now been appointed to take the company into administration. The scandal could not have come at a worse time.

Culture Minister Ed Vaizey has stated that the government will retain the Screen Agency model – good news for Screen Yorkshire which has increased the level of film production in the region since the creation of the nine self-governing regional screen agencies in 2000. From 2012 the Film Council will, however, be history.

Not everyone is lamenting its loss. The Yorkshire-born writer/director Mark Herman, famed as the talent behind Brassed Off, Little Voice and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, believes the time may be right to prise British cinema from America's stranglehold.

Speaking from his office in York, the Bridlington-born filmmaker said the time was right to revive the British film industry and resurrect its identity.

"I wonder if it was due a change anyway. In the last 10 years, it has all become a bit Americanised. The British film industry as a genre has somehow rather died. Maybe this is a chance to reignite a British film industry – a sense of British film like (it was] back in Ealing Studios' times.

"When I first set out it felt very British. Now everything seems to lean towards making your films more Americanised, more multiplex. We've lost a bit of identity there.

"What I'm talking about is sort of an impossible dream – a return to a British film industry where British audiences watch British films. It's an impossibility because of the power of Hollywood within our cinemas.

"Our industry is almost constantly in crisis. Part of the problem is that for filmmakers like myself there doesn't seem to be fair access to cinemas and distribution. You go to any multiplex and Avatar is showing in so many screens. There isn't the availability to see British films and so British filmmakers have to go down that route of American finance and American distribution."

Herman is not necessarily looking through rose-tinted spectacles. Like other contemporaries he recalls a time when high-quality British films were being made on limited budgets. While the British film industry was in a state of flux in the 1970s and early '80s it still managed to produce Chariots of Fire, Local Hero, Letter to Brezhnev, The Draughtsman's Contract, My Beautiful Laundrette, Bhaji on the Beach, Distant Voices, Still Lives and 1984.

History may provide the answer to some of the industry's woes. Prior to that brief pre-Brassed Off golden age, UK filmmakers could benefit from the Eady Levy, a tax on box office receipts proposed by then president of the Board of Trade, Harold Wilson, in 1949 and eventually introduced in 1957. Administered by the British Film Fund Agency, it assisted production and reduced tax on film exhibition.

The competitive rates afforded to filmmakers in the UK in the 1950s and 1960s via the Eady Levy attracted the likes of Stanley Kubrick, Roman Polanski and Franois Truffaut to Britain. It was terminated in 1985 when it was said to be no longer fulfilling its original purpose. To reinstate it today, perhaps by allocating one per cent of net box office profit to a similar fund, would easily raise 8m annually. It would not necessarily need a UK Film Council to disseminate the loot. Various bodies, from the BBC and Channel 4 to Film London and the British Film Institute, have been hinted at as the way forward.

In an age of confusion and turmoil, Mark Herman is cautiously optimistic for the future. "The Film Council put money into Harry Potter, for example. It's those kinds of decisions that I find a little bit odd. It's taxpayers' money. The film industry should be able to sustain itself. On top of that I keep on coming back to the same old thing of being able to exhibit our work.

"Hollywood makes some great films, there's no doubt about that, but it also fills our cinemas with some mediocrity. There was a period when the cinema-going public felt British film meant 'bad' but that changed in the '90s. We need to educate the British public that British film is good."