Paradise, out of reach

It took seven years for Charles Harris to get his movie made - and it was all the fault of the British film industry, he says

While the British film industry sips overpriced drinks on the Carlton Terrace in Cannes, my award-winning, critically acclaimed, audience-acclaimed UK Jewish black comedy Paradise Grove is opening in London, after seven years of struggle and not a penny from the industry. Am I bitter? You bet. How can it possibly take seven years to get a movie to the screen? Easy, if you work in the dull, risk-averse, unimaginative industry we have in the UK. Let me take you through the years.

While the British film industry sips overpriced drinks on the Carlton Terrace in Cannes, my award-winning, critically acclaimed, audience-acclaimed UK Jewish black comedy Paradise Grove is opening in London, after seven years of struggle and not a penny from the industry. Am I bitter? You bet. How can it possibly take seven years to get a movie to the screen? Easy, if you work in the dull, risk-averse, unimaginative industry we have in the UK. Let me take you through the years.

In January 1998, after making documentaries and docudramas for BBC, ITV and international television, I returned to my Jewish roots and started writing Paradise Grove. A black comedy set in a fictional North London Jewish old age home, it centres on the relationship between Keith Perry, a half-black, half Jewish teenager, and Izzie Goldberg, his Jewish grandfather, who can't come to terms with having a grandson who is black.

We approached Ron Moody for the bravura part of Izzie, the ex-lingerie salesman who refuses to go quietly. He accepted, saying it was the best script he'd read in years, and was soon joined by Rula Lenska as Izzie's daughter, the owner of the home.

We knew we were doing something different. Our movie did not concern drugs or gangsters. It dealt with today's Jews in Britain, who are not often seen, and with relationships between young and old, which are also surprisingly rare on UK screens.

Film-makers don't need very much to create interesting, rich and rewarding cinema: relatively small amounts of money, pledged early to seed interest; some words of assistance; warnings of pitfalls; a few doors opened by friendly hands. Often the money is less important than the verbal help. In our case, we got neither.

With no industry support at all we raised our finance through a share offer, using a tax break for investors, the Enterprise Investment Scheme, with more than 100 private investors. From July to October 1999 we shot and started to edit the film. In October, we were able to screen a rough cut to the industry in order to raise what we needed to complete the film.

Silence. A few companies, Miramax included, told us they'd be very interested... when we finished. But the necessary help we needed to finish could not be found. This is the perennial catch-22 of the British film industry. Nobody wants to commit. Everyone wants to wait.

However, in 2000 it seemed as though help might be at hand. After refusing for many years to fund the completion of partially finished movies, the National Lottery allowed applications for completion funding. It took months to fill a dossier of more than 30 pages with budgets, outlines and details of how we would improve the rough-cut. We also stated that we were open to further advice. The Lottery sent a dragon-lady, a highly experienced Scottish producer who interrogated us with the finesse of a KGB officer, and returned a glowing recommendation to the panel.

What happened next I only heard a year later, from a Lottery insider. Allegedly, the panel, made up of industry experts, approved funding - on condition that we made changes. We, of course, had already said we wanted to make changes. But despite the fact that both sides had asked for the same thing, the application was turned down.

This, by the way, was around the time that the Lottery funded a film with the BBC called The Life of Stuff, about drug-taking teenagers in Glasgow. Original, eh? According to Alexander Walker, writing at the time, it cost £3m, was directed by the writer, who had never shot a frame of film before, and took a box office total of £550.

In 2001, we raised the funds to finish through a City tax fund, which wrote off the costs of the film and gave us a tiny proportion as a thank you. Lackeys of capitalism they may be, but that tiny proportion was enough.

To convince distributors, you need three things: awards, critical acclaim and proof that people will buy tickets. In October 2002, Paradise Grove screened to the public at the Raindance Film Festival in London, and sold out. Three times over. It went on to festivals all round the world, winning Best First Film and Best Jewish Film at the Palm Springs Festival of Festivals in California, along with a Top Five Audience Award. It was acclaimed by reviewers as "a jewel" and "moving and hilarious".

And nobody bought it.

Our sales agent, Gavin Films, set up four screenings for distributors in London and Cannes. Not a single UK distributor turned up. One told me, pricelessly, that "Jews don't go to see Jewish films any more". What made him think that? "Because nobody went to the re-release of Fiddler on the Roof..."

We applied to the UK Film Council for help in distribution. Twice we asked for a four-figure sum out of their £1m distribution fund. Twice we were rejected.

It was now six years since I started the film, and I went for the direct approach, nagging the poor person who programmes the Hampstead Everyman, at the heart of Jewish London, until finally she agreed to try the film. I raised the money independently to pay for advertising and publicity, supervising and paying for everything from the posters to the red carpet at the world premiere.

This film, which has won awards, sold out performances and been acclaimed by critics, has still not had a penny or word of assistance from the film industry. We've raised the money and made all the mistakes ourselves; fallen on our faces, got up and kept on going.

The very honourable exceptions are one distributor and three producers, members of the indispensable New Producers Alliance, who have always been on the end of a phone if I had a question or needed moral support.

One of the problems in this industry is no one wants to step out of line. So they invest in "safe" films, which, of course, almost always fail. These are copies of previous hits, which themselves were rarely financed by the industry, such as Trainspotting (which was funded by television), The Full Monty (the US) and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (non-industry finance).

Distributors fight shy of taking a risk and foreign distributors are wary of buying films that have not been shown at home. Now that we have a release date, overseas buyers are interested and we've just made our first foreign deal, with Canada.

It is now - as it always should be - up to the audience to make or break my film. But is this unequal struggle in getting it there the way to create a successful industry? If you are outside the clique, not making predictable films about kids on drugs, or romcoms or slapstick comedies, there is no guiding hand. And certainly no money.

It is as if they want you to fail, to prove them right in the first place. But that, as ever, is the British film industry.

'Paradise Grove' opens at the Everyman Cinema, London NW3 (08700 664777; www.everymancinema.com) today