The real issue for those starting out in the moving image? The path from business to central government is a well-trodden, visible though grubby one, and the step onto funding agencies, in the case of the moving image, is only a couple of paces further on. Government is in thrall to big business, and the policies handed down to quangos make sure that business gets its rewards — which means, at the bottom of this slagheap, that it’s all about ‘digital filmmaking’ now, and in order to get funded, artists are forced to work with technology in a way which is artistically unhelpful and financially disastrous.

First, let us be clear: this is no digital-versus-film argument. That conversation is irrelevant, dull, unhelpful. It is about the way in which the introduction of new technology has been appropriated as a political means to an end, and seeks to interfere with artistic judgement and influence artists where it has no business to do so. Digital filmmaking, the clumsiness of the term aside, is really less about ensuring that artists are acquainted with the latest tools (after all, the ‘digital revolution’ really is old news now; and would artists really learn anything new from government ministers and their appointees?) and more about transferring their allegiance to a way of working which, far from stable and durable, is predicated on the notions of upgrade, expansion… on commodity, bluntly, and on product.

The battle for unilateral technology in filmmaking centres, like most battles, on language, and specifically the abuse of language. Forget your fucks and cunts – good, honest, passionate old words. The really bad language results from the prostitution of words to prop up hollow ideas. The government’s ‘digital agenda’ for moving image has till now been delivered by the UK Film Council, who rely heavily – as do their Regional Screen Agencies – on an emaciated, perfunctory and woodenly masculine vocabulary to make their point, repeatedly. An initiate in using the toolkit of the twenty-first century funder would need to be armed only with the words ‘innovation’, ‘creative industry’, ‘champion’, ‘digital’ and ‘talent’ in order to pass muster at a board meeting.

The absence of ‘imagination’, ‘ideas’, ‘experimentation’ is worrying enough, but what’s wrong here, at its heart, is that there is no passion: it’s like listening to a machine speaking. Of course, it’s not a phenomenon pioneered by, or restricted to, the Film Council: they’re merely following a trend. The term ‘customer service’ – manifestly about helping the customer, latently about eclipsing the customer by whatever means possible – has come to sum it up; even the fact that we are addressed as ‘customers’ in the first place. But perhaps the adoption of this disingenuous language by the people who are, to all intents and purposes, in charge of making or breaking filmmakers (or so they’d like to believe) is somehow most timely.

The UK Film Council’s Digital Shorts scheme (which is, or was, available regionally via the nine Regional Screen Agencies) baldly sums up in name what their master strategy for ‘new cinema’ is all about: Go digital! Digital is the future! Which means, buy yourself a nice new camera! Sign yourself up to a lifetime of software upgrades! But a bad film is still a bad film even if it is shot on an HD camera — which means, of course, that a good film can still be a good film even if it is shot on film. Which in turn makes you wonder, if the Film Council really want to see the very best new filmmaking, why didn’t they title their scheme, simply, ‘Shorts’.

The Film Council’s guideline document for the scheme reports that it “offers an exciting and creative platform for innovative storytelling using digital technology”. It’s fair enough to ask for ‘innovative storytelling’ (even though that term itself feels a bit awkward), but to stipulate that it must be made a certain way? It’s like a writing competition which requires that entrants use 3B pencils. More perniciously, beyond the immediate – and rather transparent – link with electronics corporations, schemes such as this will have the effect of suggesting, in years to come, that ‘innovative storytelling’ is only possible, and was ever only possible, with digital technology — which of course will be easy to prove as no other technology was allowed through the doors. Worse still, it forces true innovation underground — no bad thing in itself, you might think, as at least there it would have some credibility amongst its own community, but once it’s forced into a corner, it is all the more easy to compartmentalise and label as ‘elitist’, ‘fringe’ activity, leaving it to languish in obscurity with its potential invisible to all but a dedicated few and to play at larger festivals only in graveyard-shift ‘experimental’ programmes on Screen 12.

“The Digital Shorts scheme supports creativity, new talent and cutting-edge filmmaking. It enables new and emerging filmmakers from diverse backgrounds to make innovative short films with vision and flair using digital technology and to develop their skills and talent.”

The Regional Screen Agencies are a source of much grim hilarity along these lines. EM Media, the screen agency for the East Midlands, doesn’t appear to even mention funding on its site, stating cryptically instead that “EM Media invests in East Midlands based creative talent, supporting and developing projects and activities which meet our business aims.” It’s a business with business aims – except that it’s not, of course: it’s a quango, running on public money. And it ‘invests’ in ‘creative talent’: the language is redolent of the boardroom. You’re not an artist, or a filmmaker – how ridiculously old-world; how unmarketable – but that impersonal noun which implies a plural without giving any ground to a notion of a community, ‘talent’. You’re ‘creative talent’. You’re collateral.

The screen agencies seem to suffer from a total bankruptcy of imagination, which supposes that artists are dumb enough to take up any technology, for the sake of itself, handed down to them by a quango; by people who use words such as ‘championing’ and ‘knowledge transfer’ and the ‘creative industries’… but never ‘experimentation’, ‘independence’ or ‘advocacy’ (‘championing’, of course, without the implied winner and loser).

Worse, in a way, it perpetuates the nasty little lie that short film is the ‘calling card’ for a more illustrious feature film career, and more insidiously that it’s even about ‘career’ at all. How utterly depressing that even first-time filmmaking now has to be quantified and poked into a ‘career’… that it can’t be the artist’s ambition to aspire to the free-wheeling, life-defining, elemental passion of Stan Brakhage, Robert Breer, or any of the great artists of the last century but instead a normalised ninetilfive of workflow and budget forecasts and business plans. Short film, and the independence, spirit of experimentation and alternativism, and sense of artesian practice that it covers, is denied recognition in its own right, at least to any meaningful degree. Instead, it’s cut off, neutered before it gains any ground. The rules are clear: you can dabble in short filmmaking, but you must understand that it’s about business, not art, and a planned career, not a life experiment.

Perhaps, therefore, you should forget about the funding schemes and go it alone. It’s not ideal, and shouldn’t be the case, but away from the Digital Shorts schemes, you can make films however you want. But if people don’t apply to the Digital Shorts Schemes, then what? Far from making the UK Film Council – and therefore the DCMS – change its policies, surely it would just kill off another chance, however miserable, to make work? Perhaps it would. It’s a gamble. But at least to question it, to resist being forced down an ever-narrowing blind alley, at least it’s got to be worth trying. And if enough filmmakers who would otherwise have applied to such a funding scheme were to manage to make work, and get it seen, in the way they feel most comfortable with, perhaps the funding agencies would take notice and revise their policies. Regardless, to resist funding which comes with so many potentially limiting caveats might ultimately mean to start making work alone once again, without the funds of the RSAs… which could in turn prove cathartic, liberating; a world free of guidelines and provisos in which you are free to work in whatever way suits you. It almost seems dangerous.

About the Author: Adam Pugh is an independent curator and writer based in Norwich, UK. Until recently, he directed AURORA, an annual festival which focused on artists’ moving image. He is currently working on an exhibition for the Barbican, and on writing for Animate Projects, Artesian and others.

Adam has contributed articles to the German film magazine Schnitt, Vertigo and other publications, and to the annual AURORA publication, which he edited alongside its DVD edition. He has also delivered talks and curated programmes for various festivals and events worldwide, and served on the international jury at this year’s Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen.