All these people keep on coming on to the radio from the London film Festivcal and demanding that the government gives more money to the British film indistry. They say the industry is failing they say it is too small they say it is a "cottage industry" (as if that was an insult), they say it can't compete.
But there isn't a British film indistry. There isn't a US film induistry either. No nation state has a film industry. There is a worldwide English language film industry, amd there are dispersed parts of it in cities and city regions. Cities have film industries, no countries - inevitably because only in a city can you get the concentration of skills you need to make a film.
Films aren't made by countries but by skilled workers - people like actors, accountants, agents, acrobats, animators, ambulance drivers, animators, arrangers, artists (commercial, fine, piss, and make-up), auditors, authors, barmen, bookkeepers, bouncers, bricklayers, cartoonists, casting directors, charicarurists, cleaners, carpenters, cabinet-makers, cleaners, clerks, caterers, chemists, cinematographers, cooks, computer operators, conductors, copyists, copywriters, crane-drivers, cameramen dancers, dealers (card, drug, and stock), dialect coaches, directors, drivers, doormen, electricians, editors, engineers, film processors, fitters, fire-fighters, glaziers, gophers, heating engineers, illustrators, interpreters, joiners, journalists, lawyers, lighting engineers, make-up artists, motorcycle messengers, musicians, mcguffins (like the one about the lottery), model-makers, models, producers, plumbers, plasterers, photographers, pharmacists, painters, programmers (both computer and network), piano-tuners, printers, producers, prostitutes, PR-clones, poets, pilots, polystyrene tree sculptors, road menders, receptionists, runners, researchers, scaffolders, sewing machinists, sculptors, security guards, sound engineers, system administrators, system programmers, singers, songwriters, script consultants, steel erectors, sign-writers, script supervisors, stuntmen, sailors, swimmers, secretaries, tailors, tilers, typists, tax consultants, telephone engineers, typographers, translators, teachers, vets, voice coaches waiters, writers, wranglers, window-cleaners, and zoo-keepers; any one of whom could be had within a morning in London or New York and all within a half-hour cycle ride.
There isn't a US film indistry, there is an English language film industry. And it has 3 main centres: the big one in LA & the region around it (mostly not actualy Hollywood these days or for the last 30 years), a middle-sized one in New York, and a little one in London (actually mostly the tediously boring motorway-ridden affluent suburbs somewhere out west of London beyond the Tube - but it is London).
After New York and LA the next three biggest cities in the US are Washington, Houston and Chicago (probably not in that order). When was the last time you saw a film made in Houston? I bet there have been more films made in Brighton.
The film industry isn't short of money, despite all this bleating. If we want to give away tax money to a good cause, supporting films comes way down the list.