Component 1 : SECTION C

'British' film

What makes a film British?

To be eligible for the category, Bafta rules say that, unless there are exceptional circumstances, a film must "have significant British creative involvement" and be certified as British by the British Film Institute (BFI).

The BFI gives a film official British status for the purposes of receiving tax relief if it passes a "cultural test" or is a co-production between the UK and another approved country.

The cultural test contains 15 criteria, from having the dialogue in the English language and being set in the UK to using British locations, director, cast, writer, composer and producer.

12 Years A Slave

Nik Powell, chair of Bafta's film committee, explains: "12 Years a Slave was not considered by the committee because it didn't list itself as a British film.“

When a film is submitted to Bafta for consideration, its producers can tick a box to say it is British, Mr Powell says. The producers of 12 Years a Slave did not tick that box.

After all, despite the involvement of McQueen and Ejiofor, an American book was adapted by an American writer, filmed in the US with a largely non-British cast and crew and produced by US production companies.

Gravity

So what about Gravity? Although it stars Hollywood A-listers Sandra Bullock and George Clooney and is not set in Britain (or any country for that matter), it was filmed in the UK and its groundbreaking visual effects were made in Britain.

"We're proud that films like Gravity are British and we're proud to have them made here by British people," Mr Powell says.

"The prime objective is to show the huge range of British films, and to show the audience that some films they might not initially think of as British are actually incredibly British." 

                                    

 - Documentaries are the cheapest to make, and therefore are the most successful genre in British Film.

Social Realism

      

HISTORY:

-Early British cinema picked up on the revelation of everyday social interaction to be found in Dickens and Thomas Hardy.

-In the years following World War I, it was widely felt that the key to a national cinema lay in 'realism and restraint'.

-Britain's contribution to cinema in the 1930s lay in a state-sponsored documentary tradition that would feed into the 1940s mainstream.

-The British industry has had a longstanding rivalry with Hollywood in terms of 'realism and tinsel'.

-The 'quality film' mirrored a transforming wartime society. Women now worked in munitions factories and the services, mixing with men and challenging pre-assigned gender roles.

-In the postwar period, tensions grew between the camaraderie of the war years and the individualism of a burgeoning consumer society.