LONDON – 27 November 2009: Nowhere Boy, the film that sheds light on the formative years of John Lennon, and 44 Inch Chest, the new British gangster movie from the writers of Sexy Beast, are two of the latest titles that will reach more audiences thanks to Lottery funding from the UK Film Council.
Icon Film Distribution has received £150,000 to boost the distribution of Nowhere Boy, the highly anticipated debut feature from renowned British artist/director Sam Taylor Wood, written by BAFTA-winner Matthew Greenhalgh (Control). Set in Liverpool in 1955, 15-year-old Lennon (Aaron Johnson) is hungry for experience. Since the age of five he has been raised by his controlling Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas), but when he learns that his mother Julia (Anne-Marie Duff) lives only a mile away, he meets her and is instantly bewitched by her vitality and love of rock'n'roll. Nowhere Boy received development and production funding from the UK Film Council, and the additional distribution funding will widen the film's release on Boxing Day from 100 to 175 sites, as well as contributing to publicity and advertising costs.
Momentum Pictures has been awarded £110,000 to boost publicity and more than double the distribution of 44 Inch Chest from 25 to 60-plus sites when it is released on 22 January 2010. 44 Inch Chest is a bold and original British gangster drama from debut director Malcolm Venville. Ray Winstone stars as Colin Diamond, a London gangster who enlists the help of his friends to kidnap his wife's young French lover (Melvil Poupaud) in the hope of restoring his damaged ego. 44 Inch Chest is written by David Scinto and Louis Mellis (Sexy Beast) and stars an ensemble cast including John Hurt, Ian McShane, Joanne Whalley and Tom Wilkinson.
A number of smaller awards of £5,000 were also made to widen the distribution of the following films:
- Park Circus for the beautiful restoration of Powell and Pressburger's1948 masterpiece The Red Shoes, widely considered to be one of the most visually spectacular films ever made. Under the near-obsessive guidance of the impresario Boris Lermontov, young ballerina Victoria Page is poised for superstardom, but earns Lermontov's scorn when she falls in love with the composer of the ballet 'The Red Shoes'.
- Park Circus also received £5,000 for Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno, Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea's documentary about the unfinished 1964 shoot of French auteur Clouzot's Inferno, which was set to be an exploration of jealousy and madness, but turned out to mirror Clouzot's own deteriorating state of mind as the production disintegrated around him.
- 104 Films for The Magic Hour, a portmanteau feature film garnered from the first year of the UK Film Council-funded Magic Hour scheme for disabled filmmakers. Featuring segments directed by Katherine Arianello, Andrew Gibbs, Charlie Swinburne and John Williams.
- Dogwoof for Joe Berlinger'sdocumentary Crude, the story of the legal battle between Ecuadorian residents living in the Amazon jungle and the oil giant Chevron (now Texaco), following Chevron's hazardous practices while drilling for oil which led to widespread contamination.
- Hazeldine Films for Stuart Hazeldine's Exam. Eight candidates reach the final stage of selection to join a mysterious and powerful corporation. In a windowless room, an invigilator gives them eighty minutes to answer one question - but first they need to work together to find out what that question is...
- Manga Entertainment Ltd for Mamoru Oshii's Sky Crawlers, a Japanese animé film about a group of eternally young fighter pilots known as Kildren, who battle the enemy in astonishing dogfights above the clouds.
- Soda Pictures for Alexis Dos Santos's Unmade Beds, also backed by the UK Film Council for production. Two young foreigners living in a vibrant squat in London's East End embark on separate quests. Axl is searching for his long-lost father, and Vera seeks to mend a broken heart as she begins a sexy, playful relationship with a charismatic stranger.
- Arrow Film Distributors for Yojiro Takita's Departures, a Japanese black comedy which won the 2009 Oscar® for Best Foreign Language Film. A cellist loses his job with a symphony in Tokyo and returns to his small mountain village with his wife. Answering an ambiguously worded advert, he finds himself employed by a quirky funeral professional who prepares bodies for burial and entry into the next life.
- ICA Films for Steve Jacobs's Disgrace, based on the Booker Prize winning novel by JM Coetzee. After having an affair with a student, a Cape Town professor moves to the Eastern Cape, where he gets embroiled in post-apartheid politics. The film won the 2008 International Critics' Award at Toronto.
- High Fliers Films for Lu Chuan's historical drama City of Life and Death, based on the invasion of Nanking (the then-capital of the Republic of China) by the Japanese army in 1936, which saw the torture, rape and murder of tens of thousands of Chinese civilians and soldiers.
- Yume Pictures for Uberto Pasolini's Machan, the first feature directed by the producer of The Full Monty, based on the true story of the Sri Lankan National Handball Team who made the headlines in 2004 when they fooled the German Embassy in Colombo into issuing them visas for a month-long tour in Bavaria.
- Cinefile Ltd for Philippe Lioret's Welcome, about an Iraqi boy who travels through Europe to join his girlfriend in England, but whose journey comes to an abrupt end when he is stopped on the French side of the Channel. Befriended by a swimming instructor, he prepares a perilous swim for England, buoyed by love.
- Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment for Colin, the unconventional horror zombie film which was written, directed and produced by debut filmmaker Marc Price for just £45. A young man deteriorates into a feral, confused and ultimately lonely creature during a plague of the undead.
- Mugshots (Soho Casting Studios) received £4,900 for Mr Right, a gay romantic comedy directed by sibling directorial team Jacqui and David Morris, which interweaves the lives of three London couples as they navigate their way through commitment issues.
- Warp Films received £4,745 for All Tomorrow's Parties, the UK Film Council-funded documentary about the unique cult music festival which features some of the biggest names in the international underground indie scene, including Belle and Sebastian, Nick Cave, Sonic Youth and Portishead. Directed by the 'All Tomorrow's People' collective, with creative guidance from Jonathan Caouette.
- The BFI also received an award of £775 to produce soft subtitling and audio description for two films to be screened at the Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival: Tom Ford's A Single Man and J Blakeson's The Disappearance of Alice Creed.
Nowhere Boy £150,000 44 Inch Chest £110,000 City of Life and Death £5,000 Colin £5,000 Crude £5,000 Departures £5,000 Disgrace £5,000 Exam £5,000 Henri-George Clouzot's Inferno £5,000 Machan £5,000 Sky Crawlers £5,000 The Magic Hour £5,000 The Red Shoes £5,000 Unmade Beds £5,000 Welcome £5,000 Mr Right £4,900 All Tomorrow's Parties £4,745 The Disappearance of Alice Creed / A Single Man £775
For details of where to see any of these films, visit www.findanyfilm.com. A list of the UK Film Council's National Lottery awards can be found on our website at www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk
For more information contact:
Tara Milne
UK Film Council press office
020 7861 7901 / tara.milne@ukfilmcouncil.org.uk
Notes to Editors
UK FILM COUNCIL
www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk
The UK Film Council is the Government-backed lead agency for film in the UK, supporting the UK film industry, celebrating UK film culture and nurturing UK film talent at home and abroad. Since its creation in 2000 the UK Film Council has backed more than 900 films, shorts and features, which have won over 300 awards and entertained more than 200 million people around the world. Its support develops new filmmakers, funds exciting new British films and gets a wider choice of films to audiences throughout the UK. It also invests in training British talent, promoting Britain as an international filmmaking location and raising the profile of British films abroad. In addition, it funds the British Film Institute.
The Prints & Advertising Fund
The UK is one of the most expensive countries in the world in which to release films, and this can lead to limited choice for cinema-goers. While blockbusters such as Harry Potter are often released in the UK with more than 1,000 film prints, the average number of prints for a foreign language specialist film is under ten.
The UK Film Council has created a single fund, the UK Film Council's Prints and Advertising Support Fund, also known as the P&A Fund, with an annual budget of £4 million. This fund also offers support to more commercially focused 'British' films that nevertheless remain difficult to market.
This fund is not intended to substitute pre-existing investment but rather is seeking to add value to the investment already being made by distributors in each film.
The fund aims to benefit audiences by:
- widening access in terms of the range of films available;
- widening opportunities to view such films across the UK; and
- widening audience awareness of the range of films potentially available.
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