The Cinematograph Films Act of 1927 was an act of the United Kingdom Parliament designed to stimulate the declining British film industry. This is a list of Acts of Parliament of the English Parliament during that bodys existence prior to the Act of Union of 1707. ... This is a list of Acts of Parliament of the English Parliament during that bodys existence prior to the Act of Union of 1707. ... This is a list of Acts of Parliament of the Scottish Parliament. ... This is an incomplete list of Acts of the Parliament of Ireland for the years up to its dissolution in 1800. ... This is an incomplete list of Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain for the years 1707-1719. ... This is an incomplete list of Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain for the years 1720-1739. ... This is an incomplete list of Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain for the years 1740-1759. ... This is an incomplete list of Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain for the years 1760-1779. ... This is an incomplete list of Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain for the years 1780-1799. ... This is an incomplete list of Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for the years 1800-1819. ... This is an incomplete list of Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for the years 1820-1839. ... This is an incomplete list of Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for the years 1840-1859. ... This is an incomplete list of Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for the years 1860-1879. ... This is an incomplete list of Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for the years 1880-1899. ... This is an incomplete list of Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for the years 1900-1919. ... This is an incomplete list of Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for the years 1920-1939. ... This is an incomplete list of Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for the years 1940-1959. ... This is an incomplete list of Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for the years 1960-1979. ... This is an incomplete list of Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for the years 1980-1999. ... This is an list of Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for the years 2000 to the present. ... This is a list of Acts of the Scottish Parliament. ... This is a list of Acts passed by the Parliament of Northern Ireland. ... This is a list of Acts of the Northern Ireland Assembly passed by that body during its existence between 2000 and 2002 when it was suspended. ... The is a list of Orders in Council for Northern Ireland which are primary legislation for the province when the it is being directly ruled from London and also for those powers not devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly. ... Statutory Instruments (SIs) are parts of United Kingdom law separate from Acts of Parliament which do not require full Parliamentary approval before becoming law. ... The is a list of Church of England Measures which are church legislation Church of England. ... In Westminster System parliaments, an Act of Parliament is a part of the law passed by the Parliament. ... The Houses of Parliament, seen over Westminster Bridge The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative institution in the United Kingdom and British overseas territories (it alone has parliamentary sovereignty). ... Michael Caine in Get Carter (1971) The United Kingdom has been influential in the technological, commercial, and artistic development of cinema. ...

It introduced a requirement for British cinemas to show a quota of British films, for a duration of 10 years. The Act's supporters believed that this would promote the emergence of a 'vertically integrated' film industry, in which production, distribution and exhibition infrastructure are controlled by the same companies. This was widely believed to have been the principal reason for the American film industry's rapid growth in the years immediately following the end of the First World War. The idea, therefore, was to try and counter Hollywood's perceived economic and cultural dominance by promoting similar business practices among British studios, distributors and cinema chains. By creating an artificial market for British films, it was hoped that the increased economic activity in the production sector would eventually lead to the growth of a self-sustaining industry. The quota was initially set at 7.5% for exhibitors, which was raised to 20% in 1935. 1935 (MCMXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ...

The Act is generally not considered a success. On the one hand, it was held responsible for a wave of speculative investment in lavishly budgeted features which could never hope to recoup their production costs on the domestic market (e.g. the output of Alexander Korda's London Films), a boom-and-bust which was famously satirised in the film Shooting Stars (UK, 1927, dir. Anthony Asquith), in which a small British studio tries to emulate the genres and star system of a Hollywood major, and in Jeffrey Dell's 1939 novel Nobody Ordered Wolves. At the other end of the spectrum, it was blamed for the emergence of the 'quota quickie'—a low cost, poor quality film commissioned by American distributors operating in the UK, purely to satisfy the quota requirements. In recent years, revisionist film historians such as Lawrence Napper have argued that the 'quota quickies' have been too casually dismissed, and are of particular cultural and historical value because they recorded performances unique to British popular culture (e.g. Music Hall and Variety acts) which under normal economic circumstances would not have been filmed.

The Act was modified by the Cinematograph Films Act 1938 and further acts, and eventually repealed by the Films Act 1960.

References

• Nobody Ordered Wolves, Jeffrey Dell, London & Toronto, William Heinemann, 1939.
• Michael Chanan, 'State Protection of a Beleagured Industry' in British Cinema History, James Curran & Vincent Porter (eds.), London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983, pp. 59-73.
• The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society in Britain, 1930-39, Jeffrey Richards, London, Routledge, 1984.
• Cinema and State: The Film Industry and the Government, 1927-1984, Margaret Dickinson & Sarah Street, London, British Film Institute, 1985.
• Dissolving Views: Key Writings on British Cinema, Andrew Higson (ed.), London, Cassell, 1996.
• 'The British Film Industry's Production Sector Difficulties in the Late 1930s', John Sedgwick, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, vol. 17, no. 1 (1997), pp. 49-66.
• The Unknown 1930s: An Alternative History of the British Cinema 1929-1939, Jeffrey Richards, Manchester, I.B. Tauris (2001).
• Lawrence Napper, 'A Despicable Tradition? Quota Quickies in the 1930s' in The British Cinema Book (2nd edition), Robert Murphy (ed.), London, BFI Publishing, 2001, pp. 37-47.

External links

• Cinematograph Films Act 1927 at BOPCRIS
• In Praise of the Quota