The BBC will briefly be distracted from the Jeremy Clarkson controversy on Wednesday as the 25th anniversary of its feature film arm, BBC Films, is celebrated with a reception at the Radio Theatre inside its New Broadcasting House building in central London.
Set up as a separate entity in 1990, with its first “official” production the Anthony Minghella-directed romance Truly Madly Deeply, starring Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman, BBC Films has had a hand in more than 250 films in a wide variety of formats and genres: from popular TV spin-offs such as Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa, Mrs Brown’s Boys D’Movie and In the Loop, to boundary-pushing art films such as Andrea Arnold’s Red Road, Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher and Derek Jarman’s Edward II.
BBC Films is currently headed by Christine Langan, who recently accepted a special Bafta award to BBC Films for outstanding British contribution to cinema. Langan has been in post since 2009, overseeing projects such as Ramsay’s adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s novel We Need to Talk About Kevin; like Tessa Ross, her former counterpart at Channel 4’s Film Four, Langan has a reputation for nurturing new talent and developing challenging work.
Langan said: “Britain has a wealth of incredible film-making talent and it’s never been more important for the BBC to support, promote and celebrate it.” BBC director-general Tony Hall commented: “BBC Films represents everything I love about the BBC. What started as just a small part of our drama department 25 years ago has grown into a creative powerhouse recognised the world over.”
For Matt Mueller, editor of film industry trade magazine Screen International, BBC Films “have a small budget compared to the BBC’s TV operation but managed to be very successsful – they may be a small cog in a bigger machine, but they are hugely important in the film industry, as one of three main sources of development funding.
“They have done a good job in marrying TV and film talent, and not been afraid to back films aimed at a broader, crossover audence, compared to Film4 and BFI. That perhaps means they are seen as slightly less edgy, but they have different service requirement than the others. You have to give them their due.”
The company also took the opportunity to confirm a number of its upcoming projects. Armando Iannucci, together with Simon Blackwell, his collaborator on Veep and In the Loop, have been commissioned to make a new adaptation of Charles Dickens’ 1850 novel David Copperfield; The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes’ Man Booker prize winning novel, is to be filmed by Indian director Ritesh Batra, with a script by playwright Nick Payne (Constellations); while Colin Firth is confirmed to play Donald Crowhurst in a film about the yachtman’s disastrous attempt to take part in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race in 1968-9, to be directed by Theory of Everything’s James Marsh.
A number of high-profile documentaries have also been announced: Sophie Fiennes, director of the Anselm Kiefer documentary Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, has been commissioned to make a film about singer Grace Jones, titled Grace Jones – The Musical of My Life; while Tiger Son will document the career of ballet dancer Sergei Polunin, who became the Royal Ballet’s youngest ever principal before quitting abruptly in 2012. A film about record-breaking jockey AP McCoy is also in preparation.
These projects join a list of already announced films, including the Ricky Gervais-directed Life on the Road, which takes up the story of The Office’s David Brent, and Florence Foster Jenkins, starring Meryl Streep and directed by Stephen Frears, about the notoriously awful opera singer.
