In the aftermath of the UK's vote to leave the EU Channel 4 toured the northern English town of Barnsley, 68 percent of which voted for Brexit, in search of explanations. "The sheer waste of the European Union spending taxpayers' money," one man barked. "They've just spent £13 million on art. That says it all."
It says plenty. For portions of the British electorate the EU’s support of cultural industries was a reason to vote to leave. That Yorkshire man will be appalled to hear that the EU’s Media programme has directed €130 million to the UK film industry in the past six years. Fears abound that British cinema may be about to sink back into the abyss it occupied during the 1970s.
The shock comes as the film and TV business in Northern Ireland is unprecedentedly vibrant. Such was the immediate concern that HBO, which brought Game of Thrones to the North in 2009, felt the need to comment. "We do not anticipate that the result of the EU referendum will have any material effect on HBO producing Game of Thrones," it said. Northern Ireland Screen, the area's national agency, pointed out that "production funding comes from the Northern Ireland Executive through Invest NI and does not use monies provided from European funded programmes".
Despite the chaos and uncertainty there is no sense of schadenfreude in the Irish film industry. On the contrary: a collective shiver seems to have passed through the domestic cinematic body.
"The many relations we have with the United Kingdom were strengthened and deepened by our mutual relationship with the European Union," James Hickey, chief executive of the Irish Film Board, says. "There was a sense of being part of something that is a strong reflection of European culture."
The recent successes in the Irish film industry have profited from cunningly managed coproduction with the UK. John Crowley's Brooklyn was, for example, nominated for both a Bafta for best British film (which it won) and an Ifta for best Irish film. Some will fear that such productions could become more complex and less financially attractive.
Hickey points out a distinction that many commentators have missed. “The coproduction treaty that Ireland has with Europe involves the Council of Europe: the European convention on cinematographic coproduction,” he says. “The referendum concerned membership of the EU, not membership of the Council of Europe.”
Even if the UK does remain within the Council of Europe, numerous potential complications loom for Irish producers eager to work with British partners.
Ed Guiney, a founder of Element Pictures, has produced such Lenny Abrahamson films as Adam & Paul, Garage and Frank. This year both men received Oscar nominations for Room, a coproduction with the UK's Film4. Guiney is now scouting locations for The Killing of a Secret Deer, Yorgos Lanthimos's follow-up to The Lobster, in Cincinnati.
Nobody knows anything. But there is every possibility that, when the Brexit negotiations are complete, film professionals visiting the UK from Ireland may require work visas.
"I do worry about that. I really do," Guiney says. "I am working in the States now, and we have to go through a lot of hassle to get a visa to work here. The same with Canada, where we shot Room. You can do it. But it's more red tape, and anything that puts up red tape is bad. It will put up barriers to trade to us, just as it will put up barriers to trade to everyone else. Will it make life impossible? I doubt it. But it will make life more difficult."
Although angrier EU states are pressing the UK to trigger article 50, the statutory ejection seat from the union, and let everybody else get on with their business, most sane analysts believe that it will take at least two years for Britain to extricate itself. Nobody in Ireland is therefore expecting any immediate windfall as US studios, wary of lower EU subsidies, move production from the UK to Ireland. Indeed, in the short term a plummeting pound could encourage overseas investment in the UK and discourage UK investment in Ireland (and everywhere else).
“The challenge with currency fluctuation is that it’s impossible to predict where it will go,” James Hickey says. “Assuming sterling weakens against the dollar, that has an effect on competitiveness. The section 481 tax incentive, at 32 per cent of expenditure, still represents a very strong offering by Ireland. But continuing to be competitive is still vitally important.”
In decades past a hoary cliche was dragged out each time our near neighbours suffered a financial crisis: when the UK sneezes Ireland catches a cold. The new global nature of the film business – of all businesses, indeed – surely makes that maxim less relevant.
Morgan O'Sullivan, the veteran producer of Vikings, King Arthur and Penny Dreadful, has been in this world for nearly four decades. He should know.
“It is a bit different now,” he says. “I think we can survive. We are now prosperous enough as individual industries to get by. We have the raw talent, and that’s what people look for. Money is just one aspect.”
Could these disturbances encourage Irish producers to deal less frequently with the UK? “I think we have to find a better way to operate in Europe,” he says. “Maybe Britain is no longer going to be our partner. Maybe somebody else is going to be our partner: the Italians, the French. Our culture does have a resonance with those nations.”
There are truths here, but geographical proximity and bonds of language have always entwined the Irish film industry with its busier British counterpart. “The UK broadcasters have always had a very open view of what constitutes local talent,” Guiney says. “Lenny owed so much to Film4 as a film-maker. In a way that’s partly because they could include him, as we were all parts of the EU. I don’t know if those things are going to change. Will they have to be more about funding just British film-makers? We share a language. So it’s obvious Irish film-makers will want to work in the UK to grow and develop.”
The real enemy at present is uncertainty. In an unconvincingly emollient column in the Daily Telegraph this week Boris Johnson, then still King Over the Water, seemed to suggest that he favoured free trade and movement of labour (otherwise known as "being in the EU"). He also promised "partnership" in "the arts". Johnson subsequently announced that he would not be standing for prime minister, but his column gives us some insight into the Tories' post-Brexit strategy. The EU may give the UK what Johnson wants. Then again, the new PM may be told to tow Great Britain closer to Greenland. The Irish film industry cannot devise firm strategies until these questions are answered.
“The overall feeling we have is one of uncertainty,” Hickey says. “It’s difficult to comment on uncertainty other than, well, to say it’s uncertain. We just don’t know what will be negotiated between the UK and the European Union.”
Nor do we know how the overall atmosphere will change. This week the media has been alive with reports of racial tension and of disharmony in both of Britain’s main political parties. Such things matter in business as in everyday life.
“My main concern is that we may be moving towards a Europe that is polarised and where extremist views are allowed to flourish,” Ed Guiney says. “Will the cultural exchange and the comfortableness of moving through Europe be compromised? That’s a horrible prospect and one that makes for a more dangerous world.”
