UK Film Network

From the blog of director Phil Hawkins

WOOO-F*****G-HOO! Sorry, I’ll restrain myself… but after over nine months of sending out screeners to every single distribution company in the UK and no-one biting is a frustrating experience!

I’ll backtrack. As you probably know, THE BUTTERFLY TATTOO was released in Los Angeles in May 2009. We’ve received a lot of love from the states with numerous awards and film festival screenings coming from across the pond as well as some lovely reviews and a DVD release. On the other hand, the UK was slow on the uptake.

Considering that I’m a British director, the film was shot in the UK with a new and upcoming British cast and some great new bands from, you guessed it, Britain, you’d think that the UK would be one of the first places for the film to be screener. So did we. The reality is very different. It seems, through my first hand experience in trying to get distribution for the film, there isn’t a lot of love for British independent films in the current system. With cinemas filled with American studio films (even some ‘independent’ cinemas are programmed by larger organizations) there isn’t a lot of room to support home grown talent. No wonder people “sell out” or “progress” to Hollywood to make films. There’s nothing more frustrating than having a film that you’ve spent well over a year making and then there isn’t any support to actually let it find an audience. Surely people seeing it and responding to it is the most important thing?

Even more frustratingly, nobody said it was a bad film. Nobody is in the business of protecting people’s feelings in this industry. If it’s bad, they’ll tell you. I received every excuse apart from them thinking the film was rubbish. The main one that stood up overall was it being “the state of the industry”. Not to get on my soap box (actually, a blog is probably the modern day equivalent!) but this really needs to change. If we’re to have a film industry (and I mean films made in this country, funded in the majority by this country) we really need to look at the message distribution is saying to new filmmakers. There are a lot of great independent films out there (okay, and a lot of awful ones) but they’ll never see the light of day because nobody has the time to watch or market Joe Blogg’s Film. It’s not as if these days everything needs to have an expensive 35mm print to screen - if anything it’s getting easier for distributors/exhibitors to show independent film due to digital projectors. With all that said, it’s a little depressing.

I got there with THE BUTTERFLY TATTOO through sheer persistence. After our American sales agent didn’t get any response from UK distributors through the normal channels and, in my eyes, giving up, I took it upon myself to contact everyone personally to try and get the film sold. With no sale from normal distribution companies, I decided to cut out the “middle men” and go straight for the exhibitors.

Then the film’s big break came from SHOWCASE CINEMAS, a large UK cinema chain who watched the film, loved it and want to screen it in as many as their cinemas as they could. Fantastic. SHOWCASE, you’re all brilliant. Why can’t every chain have this enthusiasm? Funnily, when I met the head of the chain for the first time he said - and no pun was intended that made it even funnier - that “showcase likes to give independent film a showcase”. Perfect.

So, we’re booked in seven cities as I write this with the potential to widen the release. What is stopping us are the 35mm prints. SHOWCASE only has six digital screens (we’re adding another one in to make up the seven). We’re currently waiting on an application from the UK Film Council concerning their P&A fund which pays for prints of a film to be made if the demand from the exhibitor is greater that what digital screens can provide. Fingers crossed on that one.

The date for your diary - September 25th, 2009.

More information on the cities and screenings are available on the film’s official website and regular updates are made via the Facebook Fan Page and the film’s official twitter page. (We’re all well connected these days!)

I hope that you’ll come and support the film. It’s been a long road to get to here and finally it feels like THE BUTTERFLY TATTOO is getting the support it deserves.

Now where’s that bubbly I need to dust off… :)