As Brexit threatens the model for exporting British cinema to Europe, a small French festival offers a "springboard for success", writes Neil Archer.
'The French seaside town of Dinard, which sits on the Brittany coast in north-western France, is known as the “most British” of French resorts. Over the years it has attracted the likes of Winston Churchill, who holidayed there several times, as well as Oscar Wilde, who wrote of the town in De Profundis, his prison lament. Lawrence of Arabia lived there as a child. But, for the past 30 years, the town has also hosted an annual film festival devoted exclusively to British movies.
The remit of the Dinard Film Festival is simple: to celebrate British cinema past and present – and to provide a shop window for new films.
Recently, these have tended to be independent British films rarely seen in their country of origin. Even the most critically lauded of recent Dinard winners, 2017’s God’s Own Country, took no more than a million pounds at the UK box-office – and many films arrive in Dinard with no distribution deal at all. Dinard has therefore become a unique space of British cultural visibility and exchange – even if you have to go to the French coast to find it.' ... Keep reading on The Conversation
'The French seaside town of Dinard, which sits on the Brittany coast in north-western France, is known as the “most British” of French resorts. Over the years it has attracted the likes of Winston Churchill, who holidayed there several times, as well as Oscar Wilde, who wrote of the town in De Profundis, his prison lament. Lawrence of Arabia lived there as a child. But, for the past 30 years, the town has also hosted an annual film festival devoted exclusively to British movies.
The remit of the Dinard Film Festival is simple: to celebrate British cinema past and present – and to provide a shop window for new films.
Recently, these have tended to be independent British films rarely seen in their country of origin. Even the most critically lauded of recent Dinard winners, 2017’s God’s Own Country, took no more than a million pounds at the UK box-office – and many films arrive in Dinard with no distribution deal at all. Dinard has therefore become a unique space of British cultural visibility and exchange – even if you have to go to the French coast to find it.' ... Keep reading on The Conversation