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DAVID PUTTNAM - PUTTNAM URGES FILMMAKERS TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN BRITISH NATIONAL PARTY BATTLE
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PUTTNAM URGES FILMMAKERS TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN BRITISH NATIONAL PARTY BATTLE
DAVID PUTTNAM has urged British moviemakers to find ways of making positive films about integrity and life lessons in an effort to thwart growing film propaganda funded by hardline members of the British National Party.
As part of his keynote address at the Edinburgh Film Festival in Scotland on Sunday (21Jun09), the revered film producer, aka Lord Puttnam of Queensgate, CBE, insisted more arts cash and private funding had to be made available for stirring message-laden films like his acclaimed projects The Killing Fields, The Mission and Chariots of Fire.
He said, "I’m not naive enough to pretend that on its own cinema can cut through, let alone solve significant social or cultural problems; but through illuminating the sometimes very different lives and experiences of others... it can help create that vital context of understanding within which the type of change that sometimes looks impossible begins to look at least possible.
"If we ever cease to believe that we will also cease to make movies. In a tiny way it’s what I was trying to do in the films I produced that dealt with factual or historical events; most obviously in The Killing Fields, The Mission and Cal, but also in their own ways, Chariots of Fire, The Duellists and even Local Hero.
"In every case I tried to produce films that adhered to some definable concept of cultural integrity.
"We desperately need some of our most talented filmmakers to find ways of helping to ensure that the insidious propaganda of (BNP leader) Nick Griffin and his gang of thugs fails in its attempt to capture impressionable young minds in some of our more vulnerable communities.
"If the BNP are allowed to get away with exploiting complex issues to their own God knows what ends, then we have stepped on to a very slippery slope indeed."
24 June 2009 01:30
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View all comments (8) - Comment on this story
Yeah, let's have more left wing films. Just what the world needs! I mean there
are soooo few of them these days.
In fact, just the other day I was panicking about the extent to which the film
industry appears to have been taken over by traditionalists and British
nationalists.
I mean, just look at all the films coming out about the need to keep out all
the immigrants, the need to expose bogus asylum seekers, look at all the films
which show the crimes committed by illegal immigrants, look at all the
pro-death penalty films, all the films which esteem authority and order. All
the films which stress the importance of marriage and the family, discipline in
schools and the reverence of our traditions and institutions, all the films
about policemen who are not corrupt. Gosh, I don't know what one to watch
tonight.
Really, we must stop this rash of right wingism and get back to some good old
fashioned films about the heroes of the Spanish Civil War (that's the left wing
heroes, of course), the heroes of the Irish Struggle (that's the IRA heroes of
course) the injustice of the death penalty, and how homosexuality is better
than heterosexuality, and how all police offers are corrupt, and lets not
forget films about how much illegal immigrants have got to contribute to our
society, or why marriage is always bound to end in divorce and acrimony.
Please, we need these left wing films so much! Our society needs these films.
Our children need these films. But who is making them? Oh, this dearth of left
wing films is a tragedy for us all.
Seriously, left wing film makers are just so self-righteous it is beyond
belief. After all, who is to say their world view is the correct one or that we
want to watch it - oh, I forgot, they say it themselves coz they know best.
That's why Puttnam can stand up and think it proper to attack a political party
that almost a million people voted for this month.
Yes, let's have more films about the joys of ethnic diversity, muggings, gang
rapes, interacial sex, mass immigration, social dislocation, family breakdown,
islamification of Britain, the wholesomeness of homosexuality and the
destruction of Christianity and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous white
people. That should go down well with the morons who still go to cinemas.

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