LIKE most bureaucracies, Scottish Screen is mostly unknown to the general public, and generally unloved by the community it was established to serve. Why, then, should anyone - inside or outside the film community - care about Scottish Screen's demise as a film agency, prior to its expected total disappearance in the next year or so?

Scottish Screen was established from several pre-existing agencies which supported film production, training, locations, archive, exhibition and education. The idea was that this fragmented support be brought together into a single, dedicated and coherent agency which would deliver a film policy for the nation: for the film community and general public alike.

The idea on which Scottish Screen is based is sound: a single agency which straddles culture and industry; a classic one-stop shop for all matters to do with film. However, uncertain management at executive and board levels, underfunding from the government, overreliance on National Lottery money and political indifference (exacerbated by adverse publicity) meant that, in practice, the film policy was rarely convincingly articulated by Scottish Screen - and certainly not delivered. It has fallen victim to its own uncertainties.

In addition, the Scottish Executive's realignment of the cultural agenda resulted in questions being asked of the arts agencies. The Scottish Arts Council was seen to need a shake-up. Scottish Screen's performance pointed, politically, to a neat, convenient and possibly cost-saving solution. A new organisation, Creative Scotland, will absorb most of the current functions of Scottish Screen and the Scottish Arts Council. It is expected to be operational by April 2008.

The rationale for placing film under the control of Creative Scotland is suspect and unproven. It is important to integrate cultural policy across various forms, including film. It does not follow that it is necessary, or wise, to attempt to integrate cultural operation.

The Scottish Screen board seem intent on a kind of pre-emptive institutional suicide: the new structure of Scottish Screen prepares it to slide smoothly into the imagined future represented by Creative Scotland. There is no clear sense of Scottish Screen's desire to defend itself, or the industry it is supposed to represent and support. The current chief executive inherited an organisation which required a thorough managerial re-assessment and a detailed restructuring to make it fit for purpose. The consultation with the film community during that process has been woefully inadequate and, not surprisingly, the results are f lawed.

The recent pronouncements from Scottish Screen are obituary notices masquerading as blogs for a bright new future. A facade of (managerialist) modernity is accompanied by a misguided over-concern for delivery systems - mobile phones, for example - instead of content and form. Content-providers, ie the film producers, are alert to and welcome technological change, especially when it expands the potential audience for films. However, the real and continuous concern of culture is content and form: in the case of film, the stories we have to tell and how it is that we set about telling them. It is in the making and telling of these stories that our real film culture is made and constantly renewed; the delivery systems for these stories are not the central issue. First, we have to have something to say and know how to say it.

A key concern for Scottish filmmakers is how international filmmakers will be able to engage with Scotland in the demise of Scottish Screen and its replacement with Creative Scotland. A film agency is a clear and internationally accessible means of foreign producers finding Scottish partners. In a country which is crucially dependent on co-productions, we need an agency whose structures and personnel make sense to the international film community.

Calls to Dublin, Belfast or Cardiff get a clear and knowledgeable response from the Irish orWelsh film agencies. The same is true throughout the small nations of western Europe. Calls to Scotland will not find their way to a film production agency but to "talent and creativity". This "category" isn't a credible department - it's an administrative convenience intended to be applied across all cultural forms. It won't work, and the fear is that co-production will move into its default mode - everything will gravitate towards London.

Scottish Screen's role in supporting the development of film ideas (ie scripts to make into films) is crucial. In its newly published guidelines, Scottish Screen has allocated only 2.5per cent (GBP150,000) of its resources to the development of film scripts. GBP150,000 was the sum available to film development in 1989 - and even at that time it was acknowledged as being pitifully inadequate.

Development will become more difficult because the financial support available will be dependent on the judgment of other selfinterested third parties, such as broadcasters. Broadcasters will do what they have always done, which is principally to serve their own interests; any benefits to the film industry will be secondary, indirect and uncertain. If development funding from the public purse is tied into dependence on matching funding from broadcasters or distributors, it means that the rights to projects are going to continue to be taken from the independent production company. This makes the film company dependent rather than independent, culturally as well as financially.

The new cultural test has resulted in the inclusion of Scottish filmmakers who live and work outside Scotland. Their ability to access support is to be welcomed. However, Scottish Screen no longer recognises the importance of supporting Scottish film production companies. It is understood that we have to avoid the "brass plate" syndrome of shell-companies pretending to operate from Scotland, but it is vital that Scottish Screen support the developing infrastructure of indigenous, independent film companies.

Public intervention in development and production should be designed to enhance, rather than damage, the independence of Scottish companies.

Scottish Screen has announced that it will allocate GBP1.5m of its lottery finance to film production. When this sum is added to its development and short-film expenditure, it totals 60per cent of its lottery money (GBP1.8m out of GBP3m) , implying a significant reduction in the number of feature films that will be made in Scotland. The clear intention in the National Lottery Act (and in the practice of the various national and regional bodies responsible for disbursing lottery funds for film throughout the UK) is that the lottery money available for film should go direct into development and production. What is happening to the remaining 40per cent of the lottery money for which Scottish Screen is responsible?

We, the undersigned feature-film producers and directors, have long and deep experience of film-making in Scotland and internationally. We are the focus of the debates and the work to build the Scottish film industry. We have participated in the 30-year struggle to have an effective film agency to support our industry. Collectively, we have made 134 feature films.

What is to be done? The Scottish Screen experiment, of having an agency which dealt with every aspect of the screen industries, has been deemed a failure: so be it, and let's move on. It is our considered opinion that it is essential to retain an independent film development and production agency which will serve the nation by serving the film industry. We call for a dialogue on this issue.

The point about film is that it is a collision of culture and industry, international financing and law, creative collaboration and market competition: it is a highly specialised, volatile sector which, in a small nation, demands highly specialised, rigorous support. The new agency which is necessary is one which is adequately funded, independent, expert and confident in its own judgments of the culture and industry of film. A few knowledgeable core staff focusing on the essential nurturing of short films, the development of individual projects and the slates of dynamic companies - and judicious investment in lowbudget feature-film productions.

Let us have such an agency, passionate about film, deeply concerned about the industry and determined to stand by Scottish film-makers in their efforts to make films which are loved and watched from Leith to Los Angeles.

Yours faithfully, Catherine Aitken (Afterlife) Mike Alexander (As an Eilean) Gillian Berrie (Dear Frankie) Ros Borland (Wild Country) Peter Broughan (Rob Roy) Iain Brown (Far from China) John Byrne (Slab Boys) Peter Capaldi (Strictly Sinatra) Eddie Dick (Blind Flight) Douglas Eadie (As an Eilean) Annie Griffin (Festival) Pat Harkins (Final Curtain) Jim Hickey (Frozen) Frances Higson (Orphans) Paddy Higson (Silent Scream) Leslie Hills (Touch the Sound) David Kane (This Year's Love) Claire Kerr (Night People) Angus Lamont (Late Night Shopping) Gillies MacKinnon (Regeneration) Andrew Macdonald (Trainspotting) Kevin Macdonald (Touching the Void) Paul McGuigan (Lucky Number Slevin) Adrian Mead (Night People) Scott Meek (Velvet Goldmine) David Muir (Skagerrak) Peter Mullan (Magdalene Sisters) Lynda Myles (The Commitments) Rebecca O'Brien (The Wind that Shakes the Barley) Alison Peebles (Afterlife)

Stuart Pollok (One of the Hollywood Ten) Douglas Rae (Mrs Brown) Aileen Ritchie (The Closer You Get) Craig Strachan (Wild Country) Stewart Svaasand (One Last Chance) Kate Swan (Play Me Something) Tilda Swinton (Thumbsucker) May Miles Thomas (Solid Air) Owen Thomas (One Life Stand) Penny Thomson (Conquest of the South Pole) Oscar van Heek (Blinded) Christeen Winford (Tickets for the Zoo) Willie Wands (House of Mirth) Chris Young (Venus Peter) Eleanor Yule (Blinded)