French connection UK: the Dinard film festival and the politics of culture

Abstract

This article looks at the thirty-year history of the Dinard Film Festival (until 2018, the Dinard Festival of British Film), with a particular focus on the financial support provided by bodies with industrial and/or cultural remits: specifically, the UK Film Council, the British Council and the British Film Institute. As I discuss, Dinard is a significant case study for understanding the British film-industrial relationship with France, but also for analysing the interrelationship between economic and cultural policy-making in the British film industry. As I also argue, looking at the history of the Dinard festival offers a significant example of the ways such showcases for ‘national cinema’ are bound up with the shifting contexts of film-industry policymaking. As I conclude, the changing economic fortunes in British film, and the economic contexts informing UK film policy, have not only impacted on Dinard, but also given the festival a renewed outlook – as well as a more political one in the recent contexts of the UK’s EU referendum and ‘Brexit’.