FilmFour (www.filmfour.com)

When Channel 4 was launched in 1982 it launched Film on Four and so helped sustain the British film industry through its darkest days of that decade. Much of Film on Four's production reflected the commissioning editor's, David Rose, preference for 'contemporary and social political topics'. Films such as The Ploughman's Lunch (1983), Letter to Brezhnev (1985), Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1986) were commercial and critical successes. Film on Four also funded My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), which featured a homosexual relationship between a white fascist (Daniel Day-Lewis) and Omar (Gordon Warnecke) born in Britain to Pakistani parents.

In the mid 1990s the then controller of Channel 4, Michael Grade, brokered a deal with the Government that allowed the channel to divert money it paid to the ITV companies (as part of an advertising airtime deal) into film production. FilmFour was first set up as an independent film production company and then also a film distributor. The company put up the whole budget for East is East after BBC Films had funded script development.

	FilmFour is sponsored by The Guardian newspapers. Why do you think this newspaper has chosen to pay to be associated with the type of films FilmFour produces?