I watched the Bafta's the other day and was surprised to find that the winnner of the best british film was Lord of the Rings! No naturally i was not suprised that it won a best film category. what confused me is that, at the risk of sounding un patriotic, i thought it was a New Zealand movie, not British. The directer is New Zealand and so is the production crew. Don't know what nationality New Line cinema is and Tolkein was British. Overall that = non Brit.
Can anyone clarify?

You never know ... maybe some british invested 10% of the money for that film ... for eager patriots that may be enough ... I even heared some british referring to BMW as a british company since BMW is a unit with rolls royce ... the movie "Enemy at the gates" was made with US and english actor iirc in the US ... with german money and was therefor considered by some as a german movie ...
There are things I'll never understand :cool:

Wasnt Tolkien atleast partially south african. That is atleast what I have always believed?
And to the movie, does it really matter which country who "made" a movie? Nowadays everything is transnational. We live in a globalised world. Just look at this board. The nation states are dying.

Let's proclaim officially the state of SP!

Well Tolkien was born in Africa, though I don't think he actually was african, hehe.

Yep, he was from Africa but soon moved to England, worked there as teacher and writer and stayed there for the rest of his live.

Maybe it's the company they worked for is English?

Well first of all enemy at the gates had four main characters and one of them was american (ed harris) and the leading two were british (jude law)(racheal weisz)

As for Tolkeins place of origin:
He was born in south Africa to 2 completely British Parents and then moved to England when his Father died and then later on his mother died too in England. He was English 100%.

The movie however is still a mystery to me
I would not give much credit to the Americans as i thought the one bad thing in the movie was American (Elijah wood) and if anything it was a New zealand movie.
Hollywood could have never turned out something that good. Harsh but true.
The cg, the directer and production and the location was New Zealand. The company was new line which is American/british. The cast were British (Gandalf, Saruman, Legolas, Gimli, Pippin, Merry, Bilbo, Boromir) Ozzie(Elrond, Galadriel, Sauron, Gollum) American (Frodo, Sam, Aragorn) and New Zealand (Elf King......who cares about his name he only had two lines anyway) and the funding came from just about any country which speaks the different languages that Tolkein's work has been translated too.

I may have come to the conclusion here that it is definatley between New Zealand and Britain. I don't think America get a look in.

And nationalism does matter. The world would be a boring place without Competition and that is what human instinct is made for so just accept the fact that most people want their countr to be the best.
Plus the more britain can do to show itself as a great power the more chance we have of not being swallowed up by our cousins over the pond.