In June this year, 23-year old filmmaker Shane Meadows approached the British Film Institute's Production Board looking for completion funding on his debut feature, Small Time, which he had made for just £5000 (US$8,000). The BFI's Production Board chipped in some cash, while BFI head of sales Dee Emerson, seeing just 10 minutes of footage, snapped up the rights for both Small Time and an accompanying short, also made by Meadows, Where's the Money Ronnie. 'I thought, 'I'll have that,'' she recalls.
Only two months later, the film, now with a budget of £55,000 (US$88,000) was screened to great acclaim at the Edinburgh Festival, where the Michael Powell jury gave it a special mention. Now Small Time is set for its international premiere at Toronto, where foreign buyers will be able to see what all the fuss is about.
Meadows' no-budget comedy, a tale of inept small-time criminals in a Nottingham setting not seen since Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, has drawn comparison to the work of those other Great British realists, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. Martin Scorsese remains the director's own personal favourite, however.
In the aftermath of this auspicious debut, Meadows has been commissioned to write his next featurejointly by Ben Gibson at the BFI and Scala's Stephen Woolley, fresh from Venice's hot title Michael Collins. Nick Thomas
