The Rise and Fall of the UK Film Council

Drawing on interviews with leading film executives, politicians and industry stakeholders, including Alan Parker, Stewart Till and Tim Bevan, this book provides an empirically grounded analysis of the rise and unexpected fall of the UK Film Council, the key strategic body responsible for supporting film in the UK for over a decade. As well as offering a critical overview of the political, policy and technological contexts which framed the organisation’s creation, existence and eventual demise, the book provides a probing analysis of the tensions between national and global interests in an increasingly transnational film industry, not least underlining how both US and EU interests and pressures have played themselves out. It therefore provides a timely and significant investigation into the contemporary policy environment for film in the 21stcentury.

Gillian Doyle is Professor of Media Economics and Director of the Centre for Cultural Policy Research (CCPR) at the University of Glasgow where she directs Glasgow’s MSc in Media Management. She has led a number of RCUK funded projects on media economics and policy and conducted studies for the Council of Europe, the European Commission and the OECD and her research has been translated and published in several languages. Gillian is former President of the Association for Cultural Economics International (ACEI).
Philip Schlesinger is Professor in Cultural Policy at the University of Glasgow and Deputy Director of CREATe, the Research Councils UK’s Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy. His books include Putting ’Reality’ Together, Media, State and Nation, Reporting Crime and Open Scotland? His next book will be Curators of Cultural Enterprise. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the UK’s Academy of Social Sciences and an editor of Media, Culture & Society. He is presently engaged in research on European identities.
Raymond Boyle is Professor of Communications based within the Centre for Cultural Policy Research at the University of Glasgow. He has published widely on media and sports issues. His most recent books include The Television Entrepreneurs (2012) with Lisa Kelly and PowerPlay: Sport the Media and Popular Culture (2009) with Richard Haynes. He also sits on the editorial board of Media, Culture and Society.
Lisa Kelly graduated in Communication and Mass Media (BA Hons) from Glasgow Caledonian University and completed an MPhil and PhD in Theatre, Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow before joining the Centre for Cultural Policy Research as a Research Associate from 2009-2013. Lisa worked on two AHRC-funded projects in CCPR, including a major study of the history of the UK Film Council, and her research interests include film policy and television genres and formats.