Kids in America? Narratives of transatlantic influence in 1990s Scottish cinema.

This article explores some of the Scottish national cultural issues at stake in what was perhaps the defining characteristic of the Scottish cinema during the 1990s: namely, local filmmakers' pre-meditated, industrially aspirant adaptation of U.S. cinematic precedents and working practices, in a bid to construct a commercially viable Scottish feature production sector. The nature of this adaptation was twofold. Firstly, it was institutional and infrastructural. Many new or reconstituted local institutions and initiatives were created in order to better attract mobile--especially American--productions and associated capital to Scotland. Alternatively, prominent institutions and initiatives geared more towards the stimulation of indigenous production activity were often explicitly modeled on preexisting North American counterparts. Secondly, Scottish transatlantic borrowings were also generic and aesthetic in character, a self-conscious collective attempt to produce indigenous films with the potential to prove commercially attractive in both British and international exhibition markets.