BFIwatch

New address for bfiwatch

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 12:40:00 +0000

BFIwatch, along with its post archive, has moved to:

http://bfiwatch.wordpress.com

The blog at http://bfiwatch.blogspot.com will no longer be updated, though it will remain online for a short period.

More on agencies involved in funding British cinema

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 09:32:00 +0000

From the Guardian yesterday:

British Film Institute to take over from UK Film Council
BFI will distribute lottery money to film-makers, the culture minister Ed Vaizey announces

Mark Brown, Arts correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 November 2010 19.22 GMT

The British Film Institute will distribute lottery money to film-makers from next year, ministers announced today, ending – they hope – an acrimonious row that even prompted Clint Eastwood to write a concerned letter to the chancellor.

The government revealed its plan to abolish the 10-year-old UK Film Council in July. Even those who sympathised with the decision criticised the lack of a plan for who would take over.

Today the culture minister, Ed Vaizey, tried to alleviate those worries by announcing the BFI would take on most of the UKFC's functions apart from the task of encouraging inward investment, which would be in the hands of Film London.

Vaizey said the BFI would have to "change fundamentally" to be "more able to realise an exciting vision of a coherent, joined-up film industry".

It will be responsible not only for heritage and education, but for helping the production, exhibition and distribution of new British films.

In a speech at Bafta's headquarters in London, Vaizey said the intention was to build on the already considerable achievements of the British film industry. "Despite the success, we cannot be complacent," he said. "The goal of a sustainable, independent British film industry remains as elusive as ever."

The BFI immediately announced a rise in the money available for new films in the coming year from £15m to £18m, made possible by the cut in overhead costs because of the film council's abolition.

More than a year ago the Labour government planned to merge the BFI with the film council, with the BFI as junior partner. Today's announcement, a merger in all but name, puts the BFI in charge.

Its chairman, Greg Dyke, said: "It makes sense for there to be a single voice for film in this country - and that's going to be us." He added: "We can certainly do it significantly cheaper ... how much cheaper, we don't know yet. The UK Film Council carried quite a large overhead."
There are still lots of questions. How much bigger will the BFI have to become? How much more money will it get? How many film council staff will transfer? Vaizey said he expected a detailed transfer plan to be sorted in the new year.

He reaffirmed that lottery funding for film would rise from £27m to more than £40m by 2014 and said there were no plans to change the tax credit scheme which has encouraged Hollywood studios to make films in the UK.

Vaizey praised Channel 4 and the BBC for its investment in film-making but said he could not understand why Sky did not make films. "As one of the country's most innovative broadcasters, they would bring a new dynamic force to the table that would lift everybody's game."
The job of attracting foreign – principally Hollywood – studios to Britain will go to Film London, but Vaizey stressed that it would be working for the whole of the UK, not just the capital.

The announcements were generally welcomed by the industry. Film producer David Parfitt, incoming chairman of Film London, said: "The key thing for us is that the money is still there and there is a promise to increase it and also a guarantee of the long-term future of the tax credit.

"Those are the things that the industry really wanted to hear."

There was a more understandably downbeat response from the UKFC as it continues to help out in its own abolition. Tim Cagney, managing director, said: "We are relieved that, after over four months of uncertainty, the government has made up its mind on where public support for UK film will sit. There are still many unresolved issues so, to benefit the industry and to protect our staff, we will continue to work with the relevant organisations on a smooth handover of film functions and expertise."

Privately, ministers acknowledge that the film council's abolition was badly handled. It led to angry letters to newspapers, and the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, even travelled to Los Angeles to assert that the UK was open for business when it came to film.
Since then, Vaizey has consulted widely and also announced today that he was setting up a ministerial film forum to meet every six months or so to debate issues and concerns.
Vaizey also announced that the eight regional screen agencies outside London would be streamlined into a single body, Creative England.

British Film Institute to take over from UK Film Council | Film | The Guardian

Greg Dyke's response to DCMS proposals

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 12:15:00 +0000

From the BFI website today:

The BFI will become the lead strategic body on film and the distributor of Lottery funds to UK film-makers from April 2011, Minister for Culture and the Creative Industries, Ed Vaizey, has announced.

Greg Dyke, Chair of the BFI, has issued the following open letter to the film industry:

You will have heard that in a speech he gave this morning, Ed Vaizey has asked the BFI to take responsibility for film policy in Britain. Under this umbrella is the distribution of Lottery funding. Also included are certification, the Media desk, support for film in the nations and regions, and education.

It is a bold move to create a single body to champion film across the whole of the UK and provide a clear focus internationally.

In his speech, Ed Vaizey also confirmed an ongoing commitment to the tax breaks and he reaffirmed that lottery funding is expected to increase from £27m currently to over £40m by 2014. We obviously welcome both decisions.

This move will mean a major transformation for the BFI. In the immediate term we will be working closely with staff at the UK Film Council to make sure that the skills, expertise and knowledge needed for this new world are retained. For some time we have deliberately held back from making new appointments to the BFI Board, but now that we understand the full scope of our new responsibilities, we can begin the process of recruiting the new Board members. In particular we will be looking to appoint new Governors who are active in the film industry.

Also in the short term, we hope to make more money available for film in the coming year, increasing the size of the Production Fund in 2011-12 from £15m to £18m – that's an increase of 20%. This is possible because we will be making significant overhead savings.

We are looking forward to working even more closely with our colleagues in each of the Nations and with those across the English regions through the new "Creative England". We currently have a good relationship with Film London that is set to be come stronger and this announcement from Government has already become a catalyst for a new drive to promote British film, with initial pledged partnership commitments from BBC Worldwide, BAFTA and Odeon plus, we anticipate, many others.

Of course all of this is subject to the inevitable process of due diligence which will take several months, but we aim to move quickly and to work in an inclusive and collaborative way to develop a new, exciting and coherent vision for film in Britain going forward.

BFI statement in response to DCMS announcement on film | British Film Institute

BFI to oversee funding for British cinema

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 11:37:00 +0000

From the Guardian today:

British Film Institute to oversee 60% rise in movie industry lottery funding

Culture minister Ed Vaizey praises the efforts of the UK Film Council but says it is time for the industry to move into a 'new chapter'.

John Plunkett

guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 November 2010

The culture minister, Ed Vaizey, today said the British Film Institute would assume the lion's share of the responsibilities of the defunct UK Film Council and announced a 60% increase in lottery funding for the UK industry.

Vaizey added that the BFI would be a "single voice" for British film and described it as an exciting new page in the history of the industry in the UK.

He said the amount of lottery funding available to the UK film industrywould increase from £27m today to £43m by 2014.

He praised the contribution of the BBC and Channel 4 to UK film-making and called on BSkyB to invest in British movies as they had done in domestic television.

Vaizey said the BFI would be in charge of delivering government policy on film and the distribution of lottery money.

It remains unclear how much will be saved as a result of the controversial axing of the Film Council and the transfer of the majority of its powers to the BFI.

But Vaizey said: "I am pretty certain that we are going to save significant amounts of money going forward and we will see a significant amount of those savings going into film production."

He added that he did not want to "denigrate" the efforts of the film council, which had been a "great success", but said it was time for a "new chapter".

More details soon...

British Film Institute to oversee 60% rise in movie industry lottery funding | Film | guardian.co.uk

Update on funding bodies for British cinema

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 13:05:00 +0000

From the Daily Mail yesterday:

Curtains for UK Film Council as film charity takes over

JON REES

Last updated at 10:48 PM on 13th November 2010

The British Film Institute, the charity chaired by former BBC chief Greg Dyke, is to take over the UK Film Council's role handing out lottery funds to film makers. An announcement is expected from Culture Secretary Jeremy hunt next week.

The Government has pledged to abolish the Film Council in its 'bonfire of the quangos'.

The council was behind hits such as Bend It Like Beckham, Tamara Drewe and the Last King Of Scotland, though it also had its share of flops such as Sex Lives Of the Potato Men.

While the BFI is expected to handle the council's £15 million a year funding to film makers, the Arts Council will handle some of the administration to avoid any conflict of interest.

Curtains for UK Film Council as film charity takes over | Mail Online

More details of cuts to film-sector funding

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 11:15:00 +0000

From Screen Daily today:

Non-Lottery, non-BFI film funding to be chopped in half as part of UK's budget cuts

21 October, 2010 | By Mike Goodridge

After yesterday’s sweeping cuts across the board by the UK government, it has emerged that film-sector funding outside Lottery funds and the British Film Institute (BFI) has been slashed by over 50%.

The Department of Culture Media & Sport (DCMS) has confirmed to Screen that the annual grant-in-aid budget for film in each of the next four years will be around £18.618m, down from £23.9m in the year 2010/11. After counting the BFI’s newly reduced annual budget, that leaves just £4.655m for all other film activities (excluding Lottery development/production funding which the government has pledged to maintain at current levels).

That £4.655m will have to cover:

inward investment and the work of the British Film Commissioner
National and regional screen agencies
research and statistics
film exports
certification (assessing which films qualify as British and are therefore eligible for Lottery funding and/or UK Film Tax Relief)
diversity initiatives
anti-piracy initiatives
co-production support
The UK MEDIA Desk activities
Sponsorship of work such as The UK Film Centre at Cannes

At the UKFC, these functions had a 2010/11 budget of £9.37m (that figure does include UKFC overheads).

The total grant-in-aid budget for film over the next four years will be £73.755m, of which £55.137m goes to the BFI.

Cuts had been anticipated but the 50% figure for non-BFI and non-Lottery funding is a stiff reduction and confirms the fear of many in the industry that, while Lottery funding and the tax certification are safe, other areas of the film business will suffer.

UKFC chairman Tim Bevan expressed his fears to a Parliamentary Select Committee earlier this week, saying “The UK Film Council created joined-up thinking. The great danger of the Film Council being closed down is various activities being put out to disparate bodies, and that joined-up thinking goes away.”

The challenge for the bodies which inherit these functions is to minimise the hit in funding by absorbing them into its own administration and management. (The Government says that it will announce its post-UKFC plans by the end of the year.)

Bearing in mind that the government has stressed the value of inward investment and the tax credit, the assumption is that they will remain robustly supported. Meanwhile regional screen agencies are anticipating a cut in funding along the same 15% lines as the BFI.

Non-Lottery, non-BFI film funding to be chopped in half as part of UK's budget cuts | News | Screen

Spending review cuts BFI budget

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 17:13:00 +0000

From Screen Daily today:

BFI budget to be cut by 15% over four years

20 October, 2010 | By Sarah Cooper

The British Film Institute’s budget is to be cut by 15% over four years, it was announced today (Oct 20) as part of the UK Government’s Spending Review.

On first glance, the grant in aid cut is not as significant as the BFI’s previously predicted 25%, although a spokesman for the organisation said that it was “still too early to say what the full impact is.”

Reacting to the news, the BFI’s director Amanda Nevill said that whilst the organisation had been “looking at the best options to protect our staff and all key activities, the reality is that the BFI will have to change shape and re-scale considerably over the next 12-18 months.”

She added that the organisation would “approach this challenge with imagination and courage and remodel the BFI so that its contribution to this country’s film success remains vital and valued.”

It is not clear at this stage whether any redundancies will be made.

The news comes during the middle of the BFI’s London Film Festival.

Today’s Spending Review also revealed that the total budget for the Department of Media, Culture and Sport will be reduced from £1.4bn to £1.1bn by 2014/2015.

Chancellor George Osborne said that there would be a 41% reduction in administration costs at the department. As part of the cuts, The Arts Council England will also see its budget being slashed.

He confirmed the abolition of 19 of the 55 DCMS-sponsored quangos. However the review shed no further light shed on a potential UKFC successor for the administration of the tax credit and lottery funding.

Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport Jeremy Hunt, said of the cuts: “To deal with an unprecedented financial deficit we have been forced to make some incredibly difficult decisions. By cutting bureaucracy and waste and prioritising the services valued by the public we will be able to protect our sporting and cultural core for the long term.”

The Arts Council England is having its budget cut by almost 30%.

BFI budget to be cut by 15% over four years | News | Screen

Update on discussions about future of British cinema

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 10:56:00 +0000

From the BBC News website today:

Parties approached to take over Film Council duties

Industry figures discuss the future of British film

Four parties have been asked by the government to consider taking on the responsibilities of the recently axed UK Film Council, the BBC understands.

The BBC was one body asked to consider taking a lead role in distributing lottery money to film projects.

Channel 4, the British Film Institute and the Film London agency are also believed to have been approached.

Culture minister Ed Vaizey met with key industry figures this week to discuss future public funding of UK film.

Mr Vaizey said the meeting was one of many that would take place before a final decision on future government support is later this autumn.

"I want a robust and co-ordinated strategy to promote the UK as the best place to invest in film-making and to provide real support and advice to film-makers and investors alike," he said.

"I want to make sure that public funds generate value for a wider audience and are focused where they can really make a difference."

According to the BBC's arts editor Will Gompertz, the industry itself believes the Arts Council should have a role in film funding.

"Industry insiders say the simplest mechanism would be for the Arts Council to act as the go-between as they're already a lottery distributor."

Founded in 2000, the UK Film Council had an annual budget of £15m to invest in British films.

Earlier this week its chief executive John Woodward announced he will be leaving the organisation in November.

BBC News - Parties approached to take over Film Council duties

Consultations on future of British cinema

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 14:24:00 +0000

From the BBC News website today:

UK film future set for discussion

Future public funding of UK film will be discussed by Culture Minister Ed Vaizey and key figures in the movie business later.

The Government is expected to plough more National Lottery cash into film, despite announcing the abolition of the UK Film Council by 2012.

In July, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said the organisation would be axed to save money.

Mr Vaizey said he wants a "robust" strategy to keep UK filmmaking thriving.

Among the figures attending the meeting are representatives of the British Film Institute, the Arts Council, the BBC and Pinewood and Shepperton Studios.

Mr Vaizey said this meeting will be one of many that will take place before a final decision on future government support will be made later this autumn.

In a statement, he said: "There is no question that public support for film is continuing."

He suggested that lottery funding will increase from next year and the film tax credit will remain in place.

"I want a robust and coordinated strategy to promote the UK as the best place to invest in film making and to provide real support and advice to film makers and investors alike," he said.

"I want to make sure that public funds generate value for a wider audience and are focused where they can really make a difference."

Funded by the National Lottery, the UK Film Council has invested about £160m into more than 900 films over the last 10 years, including box office successes like Bend It Like Beckham and Streetdance 3D.

Since the announcement was made to abolish the organisation, which employs 75 people, dozens of leading film-makers, including Mike Leigh, Clint Eastwood and Bill Nighy have written to the government protesting the decision.

On Monday, the head of the organisation - John Woodward - announced he was resigning.

BBC News - UK film future set for discussion

Amanda Nevill interview

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 10:15:00 +0000

From the Evening Standard today:

Amanda Nevill is fighting for British film

Evening Standard 03.09.10

For Amanda Nevill, director of the British Film Institute, it is the best of times and the worst of times. After seven years in the job, she is gearing up for the 54th London Film Festival. The annual event goes from strength to strength: ticket sales of more than 124,000 last year were “almost at capacity” and this year LFF director Sandra Hebron has secured the hotly-anticipated Kazuo Ishiguro adaptation Never Let Me Go, and Danny Boyle's latest film 127 Hours, for the opening and closing galas. The rest of the programme, likely to equal or exceed last year's record of 193 feature films from 46 countries and 15 world premieres, will be announced next Wednesday.

Nevill, who is 53 and a glass-half-full person, is “fantastically excited” about the festival. It is a huge public event for London cinephiles, a chance for “more challenging” or obscure films to find audiences and distributors, and “a way of flying the flag for the film industry in this country”.

She is also excited about the fact that Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has told her, in writing, that the £15 million allocated annually from the Lottery to fund British film, and the tax breaks for inward investment in movie-making in the UK, are secure for the next year.  But the glass is also half empty. The body which has, until now, administered that £15 million, the UK Film Council, will be axed in 2012 in the Government's bonfire of the quangos. Its role as a funder, co-producer and international promoter of film was always separate from the BFI's role as curator of the nation's cinematic heritage. Indeed, the Film Council also used to administer the BFI's annual £16 million grant from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

But since the announcement of the Council's demise, there's been speculation that the BFI will have to take over the whole show. Meanwhile, the BFI has lost £45 million pledged by the last government, and £5 million from the Mayor's office, to kick-start the building of a state-of-the art, £166 million film centre for London to replace the decrepit BFI Southbank under Waterloo Bridge. And like all other publicly funded organisations, the BFI is being asked by the Government to come up with a business plan for the next four years based on a likely cut of between 25 and 30 per cent of its funding.

To put matters into perspective, the BFI earns an estimated £1.50 for every pound of its £16 million annual grant, but that grant has been at a standstill for six years. The organisation has the equivalent of 380 full-time staff nationwide, about 100 fewer than it did seven years ago. With inflation and pension liability, it faces a reduction in its operating budget of between £6 million and £7 million over four years: redundancies and a further scaling-back of BFI activities are inevitable. The sums involved are crucial but, in world film terms, tiny — for perspective, consider the budget for Christopher Nolan's cerebro-blockbuster Inception: £129 million. But as I say, Nevill is an optimist. So we start off with the good news.

As she points out, the beauty of The BFI London Film Festival, this year in partnership with American Express, is that it is a public event, unlike Cannes or Venice, or London Fashion Week. It's a celebration first and a marketplace second, and therefore presents a mix of films “which are more getatable, as well as films that you would not otherwise see in this country, and work by established film-makers who are doing something different”. The opening and closing gala films are cases in point.

The wistful coming-of-age drama Never Let Me Go, although directed by American Mark Romanek, is “British film-making at its best”, with a cast including Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield.

“There's something in the DNA of British actors, the Shakespearean tradition, the understanding of timing, and an ability to bring real subtlety to a role, that is unique,” says Nevill. “The cinematography by Adam Kimmell is amazing, and the way it tells an understated but devastating story in film —which is an in-your face medium — is beautifully done.”

On the other hand, 127 Hours shows “a great British director with a huge history trying something different”. Directed by Danny Boyle, and in inverse proportion to the huge casts and spectacle of Slumdog Millionaire and his forthcoming opening ceremony for the Olympics, it tells the story of climber Aron Ralston, who was trapped by a rock in a canyon while mountaineering in Utah and had to sever his own arm with a penknife to survive.

It sounds a bit like the decisions facing the British film industry. Understandably, Nevill doesn't want to comment on the rights or wrongs of axing the Film Council. British film is a small world. But she insists the BFI will not seek to take over the Film Council's £15 million funding budget: she expects that the Arts Council, “which has the mechanisms in place and can minimise overheads”, will fill that breach instead. “I don't think it's our role to be a distributor of Lottery funds,” she says, “but we definitely want to be closely involved with some of the things those funds end up funding.”  As Nevill points out, the BFI runs cinemas, mounts festivals, distributes films and DVDs around the country, puts film online and has a strong record in education, promotion and publishing. It makes an estimated 12,000 films available to audiences across the country, in various media, every year. Access to BFI screenings, in the festival and year-round, is open to everyone but the organisation is currently engaged on a drive to swell the ranks of its devoted membership, who enjoy many fringe benefits. “The BFI is a very powerfully vertically integrated cultural entity in the context of film, with huge expertise,” she says.  Recently the organisation has been particularly active in digitising material and putting it online. Nevill points out that digital technology has democratised film-making by making it cheaper and easier but damaged the idea of watching film in cinemas “as a congregational experience”, which is a core strut of the BFI's cultural remit. Currently cinema audiences are up — a movie is a cheap treat in a recession — but she believes some picturehouses will close, and those that remain will have to “make the film-going experience fabulous”. These are some of the many conundrums in an uncertain future landscape.

The forthcoming cuts are likely to be so savage, she says, that hardly any area of BFI activity is safe: not digitisation, not DVD distribution, not Sight and Sound magazine. But then, everyone is in the same boat, and as her chairman Greg Dyke told her: “We've just got to get on with it.”

The setback to the film centre, designed to be a practical home for glitzy premieres as well as the BFI's core activities, is particularly galling, though. Nevill acknowledges that it's hard to argue for a cinema when hospitals and schools aren't being built, “but it's not a vanity project”.

Britain has admirable institutions dedicated to art, theatre, opera and music but BFI Southbank, formerly known as the National Film Theatre, was built under a bridge in the Fifties. A sewer runs under it, traffic runs over it, and it leaks. It will have to close for three weeks later this year to replace air-chillers installed in 1957. These should have lasted only 10 years but they've been endlessly patched and fixed and are only coming out now because they are illegal. Nevill reckons the BFI could raise £72 million from the sale of its Stephen Street headquarters (which was a gift from John Paul Getty II) and fundraising. But that wouldn't even pay for the replacement of the Waterloo Bridge facilities. So they are looking at the possibility of a scaled-down film centre, or a phased build of a bigger one. Interest has currently been withdrawn from the preferred site, a car park next to Jubilee Gardens and the London Eye.

At least the BFI's peerless but imperilled collection of fragile, decaying film stock will soon be safe, stored and frozen in a new vault near Birmingham which was commissioned and paid for before the crash.

“We either do something about the film centre now or bequeath the problem to the next generation,” she says, “and I am keen to get it resolved on my watch.” Born in Yorkshire — she still has a house near Howarth — and mother of two adult daughters, Neville describes herself as a “sticker”.

She came to the BFI after consecutive nine-year stints running the Royal Photographic Society and the National Museum of Film, Photography and Television in Bradford. And she has no plans to step down from her current post anytime soon, although her reign has not all been smooth sailing. Together with her previous chairman, the late Anthony Minghella, Nevill has modernised and streamlined the BFI. She also faced intense criticism from some quarters over access to the archive and dumbing down.

“But that dynamic, of debate and argument, is the lifeblood of an organisation like the BFI,” she says. “One of our sponsors told me that if he could bottle the passion in this organisation, he'd be running the top-rated company in the world.”

Arguably, an organisation infused with passion will be better equipped to knuckle down and deal with the hardships ahead in a creative way.

“We are going to be living in a very different world, and everybody is affected,” says Nevill.

“But I've said to my staff and the board that we will look back in five years' time and see that this period was the making of some organisations. And the BFI is going to be in that category.”

Amanda Nevill is fighting for British film | Film

Hunt replies to critics in the Observer

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 10:48:00 +0000

In the Observer business section today:

Jeremy Hunt: I've cut the UK Film Council so that money goes to the industry

The culture secretary says that financial support for UK film-makers will continue and that he has axed an expensive quango

My first decision as culture secretary was to abolish ministerial cars, saving £250,000 a year. I wanted to send a signal that the money we spend on culture should go to culture, not ministerial pay or privileges.

It is in that context that last week I announced the abolition of the UK Film Council and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. My department is responsible for an extraordinary 55 quangos, the vast majority with highly paid bosses and costly bureaucracy. But if we are going to face budget cuts I have a duty to ensure that taxpayers' money is spent where it gets the most bang for its buck. It is simply not acceptable in these times to fund an organisation like the UK Film Council, where no fewer than eight of the top executives are paid more than £100,000.

Stopping money being spent on a film quango is not the same as stopping money being spent on film. In fact my second decision actually increased the amount of money going into film when I restored the lottery to its original four pillars, increasing the share going to arts (including film) to 20%. This is expected to increase lottery funding for film by around £3m a year.

Britain is the world's third-biggest film market, with box office receipts of nearly £1bn last year. We make Hollywood blockbusters – including the two biggest franchises of all, Harry Potter and Bond – as well as creative successes such as Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire. Less high profile but equally significant is the incredible skills base we have in our world-class facilities sector which includes visual effects and special effects.

But if the industry is to expand further, we also need to be honest about its failings. Two areas in particular need close attention.

The first is the chronic difficulties associated with film financing. Lew Grade said of Raise the Titanic that it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic. The challenges have not gone away. All too often when British film-makers want to make anything of scale, they end up selling all the intellectual property rights in advance simply to finance production. The result is that when we have a hit, the profits do not go back to the film-maker where they could be used to finance the next production. This is what happened with Slumdog Millionaire, a creative success for Film4 but a financial success for Fox Searchlight.

We welcome all foreign investment, which is why the film tax credit is staying. Worth at least £100m a year this is no small commitment. But a healthy film industry will also have a strong homegrown element. Our independent television production sector has understood the importance of IP retention and has become the largest exporter of TV formats in the world.

The second area we need to be honest about is where taxpayers and lottery money is best spent. That is why we want an open debate about, for example, how we fund films of high artistic worth that are unlikely to make it to general release. How do we ensure the public get to see the films they are paying for?

The other decision I have made is to guarantee the future of the British Film Institute. The role it plays in supporting our cultural heritage and promoting the cultural value of film is crucial. But we want to see them do this more effectively, so are looking to remove some of the red tape around what they do and give them greater operational and artistic freedom.

Support for film through the lottery and tax credits will continue. But it must be right to address the structural challenges it faces and focus resources on supporting frontline film-makers rather than expensive bureaucracy. We should not accept the relative size of the British film industry as a fait accompli. Rather, we must step up our ambitions and make the UK the best country for nurturing and promoting its homegrown creative talent.

Jeremy Hunt: I've cut the UK Film Council so that money goes to the industry | Business | The Observer

Hunt reaffirms commitment to the arts

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 09:59:00 +0000

Letters from Jeremy Hunt and Brian Winston in the Guardian yesterday:

Our commitment to the arts is rock solid

The Guardian 31 July 2010

Polly Toynbee claims (Comment, 28 July) the government wants to replace public funding of the arts with private. That is simply not the case – I have always argued that private funding should be in addition to, not instead of, public money. Why? Because state funding offers stability over many years which usually philanthropy cannot. It also, with a proper arm's-length relationship, allows creative risk-taking and artistic freedom that is not always possible with other forms of funding. But the arts, too, should play their part in helping to reduce the deficit.

So we need to protect the arts, which in this country are probably the finest offered anywhere in the world. We also need to explore whether the government can do anything else to help. That's why I returned the lottery to its original four pillars, which will lead to a significant boost in arts funding. That's why I am concentrating on removing costs from the parts of my budget that are not frontline. That is also why we are right to explore whether philanthropy can be increased, with the important caveat that this will be more difficult for smaller organisations, especially those outside London. Restoring the nation's finances is in the interests of all our sectors. We don't yet know what cuts we will have to make to our budget in the autumn spending review, but this government's support for the arts remains rock solid. The 2 million people in our creative industries and our reputation as a society that is both civilised and creative demand no less.

Jeremy Hunt MP

Secretary of state for culture, Olympics, media and sport

• As a governor of the British Film Institute at the time of the creation of the UK Film Council, I have to demur from Colin McArthur's description of the BFI's support for the UKFC as "treacherous" because the council was "designed to supplant it" (Letters, 29 July). The council was not so designed, but rather it represented a rational plan to focus official support for the film industry. The BFI's cultural functions were left untouched. OK, I will admit to naivety. The Film Council rapidly became a quango to give quangos a bad name – its chief executive earning more than the director of the Tate. He and its bloated staff have palpably failed to build a self-sustaining film industry. But we were not to know that in 2000. Not all of us at that time despised the BFI "as a ghetto peopled by unworldly intellectuals". For me it was rather a matter of its patchy record of support for production. McArthur's touching belief in the "irony" of the BFI surviving the Film Council is probably just as naive as my belief a decade ago that the Film Council was a good idea. The BFI is surely just as threatened by this government's Kulturkampf as any other cultural organisation.

Professor Brian Winston

University of Lincoln

Letters: Our commitment to the arts is rock solid | Culture | The Guardian

Time Out on UKFC demise

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:03:00 +0000

From Time Out yesterday:

The UK Film Council is dead. Let's give the British Film Institute a chance

The closure of the public body which put money into films like 'Hunger' and 'In the Loop' is a sad thing. But might this be an exciting new time for British cinema, asks Dave Calhoun?

Ten years ago, the then Culture Secretary Chris Smith gave birth to the UK Film Council, a body designed to boost homegrown film-making by investing Lottery and public money in British talent. Some of the strongest films in which the UKFC invested were ‘Vera Drake’, ‘Hunger’, ‘In the Loop’ and ‘Man on Wire’, and with less fanfare the UKFC has done good work to help the release of smaller films by funding extra posters and prints, as well as spearheading the switch to digital projection. Then, last week, Tory Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt pulled the plug on the show. The move came without ‘any real discussion’, according to UKFC chief John Woodward, and even its critics agreed it wasn’t much of a tenth birthday gift. As I write, Facebook, Twitter, an online petition and the letters page of The Guardian are alive with calls to save the UKFC.

Without doubt, the end of the UKFC is a blow, and directors like Mike Leigh and Mike Figgis have understandably spoken out against the move, not least because it creates huge uncertainty at a tough time. But should we run along uncritically with all this surprise and shock? The end of the UKFC is being portrayed as Tory axe-wielding, but the truth is, firstly, that the trouble started under Labour and, secondly, that a new approach to how and where we spend public money on film could be a good thing for British cinema.

To understand last week’s move, you need to know that last August Labour culture minister Sion Simon proposed a merger of the UKFC with the British Film Institute, the country’s other big film body, which manages the National Film Archive, runs BFI Southbank and organises the London Film Festival. The plan was to cut costs and prevent overlap. It’s now clear that the Tory solution is to run away with Labour’s plans by getting rid of one body entirely – and the UKFC was always more vulnerable. The UKFC was a New Labour quango and the sort of bureaucracy for which the Tories have been sharpening their knives for ages. Moreover, the BFI is a charity, protected by royal charter – it can’t be dismantled. Even more importantly, the BFI is a cultural body; too many of the UKFC’s activities existed to help the industry turn a greater profit – is that really the job of money designated to promote culture? Neither did it help the UKFC’s cause that so many of its execs were on high salaries compared to those doing similar jobs at the BFI. It looked bad.

Behind closed doors, the BFI and its canny chairman Greg Dyke will be thrilled. Not only have Dyke and his colleagues fended off talk of a merger but they find themselves back in the pre-2000 position of being funded by government rather than in the pay of the UKFC, an organisation too often embarrassed to treat film as culture. In the end, that was Chris Smith’s biggest mistake: to subjugate the BFI, a cultural body, to the UKFC, a trade one. That mistake has been corrected.

Yet this is no time for dancing on tables. Whatever its faults, the UKFC performed a crucial role in developing and producing British films. There has been wild talk about the UKFC only producing box-office disasters like ‘Sex Lives of the Potato Men’ or big films in no need of support. Neither is true. Filmmakers like Andrea Arnold and Steve McQueen needed government help and received it from the UKFC. It’s these filmmakers we should now be most concerned about.

However, let’s not call time on British independent film just yet. The Tories’ announcement last week suggested that the money given to film by the UKFC – £15m a year – is safe (even if the exact figure is not clear). The big question is: who will dish it out? Will the BFI be asked to manage a production fund, as it did pre-2000, producing films like ‘Under the Skin’, ‘Gallivant’ and ‘Love is the Devil’ ? Will the Arts Council assume a role? Or will a new body be established, with key roles for BBC Films and Film Four?

I think the most exciting – and daring – result would be for the BFI to take on the most essential of the UKFC’s work – meaning that a cultural body would be putting money into film as culture. But at the same time we must redefine what needs support. If the demise of the UKFC means that films on the level of ‘The Constant Gardener’, ‘Bend It Like Beckham’, ‘Gosford Park’ and ‘Girl With a Pearl Earring’ – all of which received UKFC help – have to go without, so be it. With its archive and twin focus on heritage and education, the BFI celebrates film as an art form, a principle that should apply to future funding. Our culture needs raw visions, new talent, difficult stories. We need to take risks. We need to be prepared to put money into films that might not make a single penny but which nurture and develop both talent and audiences and which progress British cinema rather than just repeating past successes and chasing foreign awards. Let’s ask ourselves why we give public money to film. Is it to provide support to an art form? Or is it to provide extra capital to an industry? I’d argue that it’s the former – and no organisation is better placed to honour that approach than the BFI.

Author: Dave Calhoun

The UK Film Council is dead. Let's give the British Film Institute a chance with Time Out Film - Time Out London

More on the axing of the UKFC

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:00:00 +0000

Letters in the Guardian business section today:

Grubby deals behind the axing of the Film Council

The circumstances in which the government proposes to abolish the UK Film Council (A move that impoverishes us all, G2, 27 July) are extraordinary. The decision, based neither on consultation nor independent research, must be either entirely random, or driven by ideology run mad. That makes a considered response difficult.

Among those who now join the outcry against this arbitrary act there are many, like myself, who were highly critical of the previous government's film policy, and particularly of the way in which the Film Council was constituted and how it spent public money. One of the key criticisms was that the British Film Institute, with its educational, critical and cultural remit, had been partially sacrificed to the more commercially oriented UK Film Council. Adjusting that balance would have been welcome, but it seems most unlikely that this is the intention.

The great danger is that the BFI, with its extremely limited resources, will be expected to pick up some of the work previously done by the Film Council. Even if the BFI, in exchange, escapes cuts or receives a small increase in funding, any radical broadening of its aims in this direction would put an impossible strain on it. This, at least, is a development we should be ready to resist. The BFI already indirectly performs a great service to the industry by preserving and promoting its past products and by engendering a love of film which goes beyond the desire to see the latest Hollywood release.

Margaret Dickinson

London

• All sympathy to those about to lose their jobs, but the UK Film Council has been hoist by its own petard. It was set up in 2000 in a grubby backstairs manoeuvre by certain figures in New Labour, the British film industry and (treacherously) the British Film Institute, the body it was designed to supplant. The conspirators' strategy was to prise film-making out of the BFI, shed that body's concern with culture and embark on a relentlessly business and training discourse aimed at making British cinema more like Hollywood.

Along the way, as the director and critic Alex Cox has indicated (A very British cop-out, G2, 15 August 2007), it shovelled heaps of sterling into the already bulging pockets of the American majors. The plotters did not foresee that an incoming Conservative-led government might just take the council's boasting about how business-friendly it was at face value. If the market is so responsive to British film, went the Tory thinking, then the market can handle it without the Film Council. It is profoundly ironic that it is the BFI – despised by the plotters of 2000 as a ghetto peopled by unwordly intellectuals – which will survive while the council goes under.

Colin McArthur

London

Letters: Grubby deals behind the axing of the Film Council | Business | The Guardian

BFI response to DCMS proposals

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:19:00 +0000

From Screen Daily today:

BFI says it will 'work in collaboration' with UK Government

27 July, 2010 | By Wendy Mitchell

BFI says it welcomes news that it will report direct to Government; says UKFC has done ‘really important work’ over past decade.

In response to yesterday’s news about the abolition of the UK Film Council, the British Film Institute issued the following statement today:

“We welcome the announcement that the BFI will report direct in to Government, alongside the other national cultural bodies.

“In these challenged economic times, we appreciate that Ministers have to make very difficult decisions, but we are glad to see absolute commitment from central Government that its support both for film culture and for lottery funding and tax incentives remains intact. We will work in collaboration to achieve this.

“We acknowledge and pay tribute to the really important work that has been carried out by the UK Film Council over the past ten years.”

BFI says it will 'work in collaboration' with UK Government | News | Screen

Different views on demise of UKFC

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:40:00 +0000

From the Guardian today:

Scrapping UK Film Council may be good for British film

Innovative film-makers have fallen by the wayside in the search for box-office success. This is our chance to rethink British film

Daniel Trilling

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 July 2010 11.00 BST

Whichever way you look at it, the announcement by the culture secretary Jeremy Hunt that the UK Film Council is to be abolished makes for uncomfortable. The organisation, which employs 75 people, has funded over 900 productions since its formation in 2000. Andrew Pulver, over at the Guardian's film blog, rightly describes the announcement as a "hammer blow" to the country's film industry, one that seems particularly bizarre as it was one of the few areas of the arts that actually saw a return on its investment. While the government has said it will continue to make lottery money available for films, it is not clear who will distribute this money, or how it will be distributed.

We should not, though, let the shock of this announcement stop us seeing the shortcomings as well as the successes of the movie-making culture fostered by the UKFC in its 10 years of existence. A key element of Labour's arts programme, the organisation took its structural cue from the City, with executive salaries well above the industry norm. Using a mix of lottery money and direct government subsidy, the UKFC has spent more than £300m – and the tax credit system it promoted has indeed enabled a commercial renaissance.

Yet, as Ryan Gilbey argued in the New Statesman last year, the industry has become hooked on recreating hit films modelled on the likes of Four Weddings and a Funeral or The Full Monty. From Bend it Like Beckham to Calendar Girls to Slumdog Millionaire, the tendency has been towards feelgood, aspirational stories (not unlike the sentiments expressed in New Labour's theme tune 'Things Can Only Get Better', in fact) aimed at a primarily American audience.

This is where an enlightened funding body should step in to promote riskier projects, but the box-office successes have arguably come at the expense of more innovative film-making. According to the critic and producer Colin MacCabe, the UKFC's "aggressive commercial strategy" has frequently stifled creativity. Organisations like the British Film Institute Production Board, which funded experimental films, were abolished to make way for it, and the UKFC has often insisted on having the final cut on films it funds.

The past decade has not been a creative desert – Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank and Steve McQueen's Hunger are wonderful examples of daring British films with political bite and potential mass appeal. But the praise deservedly showered on their directors also serves as a reminder that others have been allowed to fall by the wayside.

Take Andrew Kötting, a unique British talent whose latest film, Ivul, is receiving positive reviews. The project, which was almost abandoned when Kötting failed to find the money to film it on the Scottish island of Jura, is a French production, filmed in France and featuring French actors. No bad thing in itself, but Kötting is an established director. How many promising young film-makers have seen their dreams stifled by the same lack of foresight?

In the long run, this week's announcement could be good news for British film. Money is likely to be tighter, but there is an opportunity at least to rethink what kind of films we want to emerge from Britain in the years to come. It is encouraging that the government is now looking to work directly with the BFI, whose chair, Greg Dyke, has already fought hard to maintain the independence of his organisation.

Reasons for optimism are slim, however, as we must see this in the context of the coalition's ideologically driven attack on public spending: in the culture department alone, 54 other bodies will be abolished, merged or "streamlined". Hunt has already stated that he wants private donors to take a much greater role in funding the arts, which suggests that the commercial imperative for film-makers could become even stronger. Seeing one of the UK's major arts bodies abolished at the stroke of a pen is scary indeed – but so is the thought that we might come to look back on the past decade as some sort of golden era for British cinema.

Scrapping UK Film Council may be good for British film | Daniel Trilling | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Film Council axemen could murder an industry

The government's decision to shut down the UK Film Council is tragically naive. No other body will do a better job

Andrew Pulver

It was nothing short of a hammer blow. This morning, word came through of John Woodward's email to UK Film Council staff informing them that the government was planning to shut them down. Then the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) confirmed it in a written statement at lunchtime. I was genuinely shocked. It felt like I'd nipped out for 10 minutes to get a pie and while I was out they closed the British film industry.

Reading the fine print is tricky. Can it really be the case that the Film Council will be killed, with nothing to take its place? The government has said that lottery funding of films will continue, but transferred to already existing organisations. (Who, exactly? The reason why the Film Council was created in the first place was that no one had proved competent in dealing with film industry funding in the past.) The British Film Institute was promoted with the phrase "strong relationship", but the BFI was stripped of its production funding capability years ago, and was in any case preparing to merge with the Film Council. What's happening there? And what about the Edinburgh and London film festivals, who have basically been directed and repositioned as part of a Film Council funding programme?

But first and foremost, what about the films? Are we seeing a return to the early 70s, when the sudden removal of US studio finance saw a catastrophic drop in the number of films made in the UK? What will happen to the films already in development and production that are reliant on Film Council money? The tabloid view of British film-makers may be of goateed beret-wearers sucking down cappuccinos in Soho, but the truth is every film is comparable to a three or four-year small business enterprise, with its own traumas of cash flow and income generation. If a large chunk of cash suddenly goes missing, the whole edifice will collapse. This decision could prove devastating to an entire generation of film-makers; for all its ups and downs, the Film Council has got involved with the likes of Armando Iannucci, Andrea Arnold, Lynne Ramsay, Peter Mullan, Sam Taylor-Wood, Kevin McDonald and Pawel Pawlikowski. How much credit the council can take for their film-making is up for debate, but it has at least functioned as the connective tissue between such disparate talents.

It's also a tad ironic that this news comes as the Film Council has just been able to promote itself, and the British film industry as a whole, as exactly the kind of profit-generating outfit this government was supposed to like. It had also begun to feel like the wider industry had finally got used to its existence, and had stopped grumbling about the nature and scope of its funding decisions. (You suspect that any gatekeeping organisation would be subject to the same complaints of partiality.) Only the other day we had a meeting with a couple of senior Film Council executives who were positively messianic about their plans for trying to reinvigorate British cinema.

I can't help feeling that this is a tragically naive decision by the government. I've spent a significant amount of my time as a Guardian film journalist reporting on the various attempts to disburse lottery funding, which began in the mid-1990s. To summarise: first it was directly administered by the Arts Council, on a project-by-project basis, in the same way as theatre shows or brass bands. This set-up was clearly inadequate -- for keeping out both naive amateurs who wasted the money and smart operators who just ripped them off. In 1997 the franchise system was dreamed up. This meant established outfits would band together, offer a slate of projects, and be given a large amount of money. That system proved unwieldy and unworkable. It was quietly abandoned when the Film Council was set up in 2000 to operate like a mini studio, allowed to invest in big films (Gosford Park, The Constant Gardener) and also help out with small (Better Things, Red Road), as well as funding ancillary activities like the Independent Cinema Office, print and advertising assistance, and digital projection. The Film Council was essentially the most sophisticated method found so far to deal with the lottery money, and I simply don't believe any existing body will do a better job.

Of course, there will be many quiet sniggers of satisfaction at today's news in various parts of the film industry, though anyone with any sense will know that financial stability is vital for a healthy industry and that financial chaos doesn't help anyone. I can't help recalling the last cataclysm to hit the British film industry, the closure of FilmFour in 2002 -- though that was a commercial rather than a political decision. If there's any comfort to be taken, it's that Channel 4's film unit went through terrible times, but eventually re-emerged triumphant, with Slumdog Millionaire et al. British films will still get made; some will be great, and some terrible. But destroying the Film Council isn't helping anybody.

Film Council axemen could murder an industry | Andrew Pulver | Film | guardian.co.uk

DCMS proposal to abolish UKFC

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:01:00 +0000

From Netribution today:

The DCMS Announcement

DCMS improves efficiency and cuts costs with review of arm’s length bodies

26 July 2010  

A number of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s (DCMS) 55 public bodies are set to be merged, abolished or streamlined as part of the Government’s drive to cut costs and increase transparency, accountability and efficiency, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced today.

Mr Hunt has proposed a number of changes, including:

• abolishing the UK Film Council and establishing a direct and less bureaucratic relationship with the British Film Institute. This would support front-line services while ensuring greater value for money. Government and Lottery support for film will continue; 

• abolishing the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council to focus efforts on front-line, essential services and ensure greater value for money. Government support for museums, libraries and archives will continue; and 

• merging UK Sport and Sport England, creating a more effective structure to deliver elite sport success and a wider sports legacy from the 2012 games.

Some key functions carried out by these bodies would be transferred to other, existing organisations. DCMS will do further work over the summer to finalise the details and timing of these changes. It will also continue to look at its other arm’s length bodies and explore further opportunities to improve accountability and efficiency.  Mr Hunt said:

“The Government is committed to increasing the transparency and accountability of its public bodies, while at the same time reducing their number and cost.

“Many of these bodies were set up a considerable length of time ago, and times and demands have changed. In the light of the current financial situation, and as part of our drive to increase openness and efficiency across Whitehall, it is the right time to look again at the role, size and scope of these organisations.

“The changes I have proposed today would help us deliver fantastic culture, media and sport, while ensuring value for money for the public and transparency about where taxpayers’ money is spent.”

Further proposals include:

• abolishing the Advisory Council on Libraries and winding up the Legal Deposit Advisory Panel; 

• abolishing the Advisory Committee on Historic Wreck Sites; 

• declassifying the Advisory Committee on National Historic Ships and transferring its functions to another body; and 

• declassifying the Theatres Trust so it can act as an independent statutory advisory body.

DCMS is also:

• looking at its responsibility for heritage and the built environment, and considering the role and remit of English Heritage, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the National Heritage Memorial Fund; 

• considering the role of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment; 

• discussing with the Church of England the merits of declassifying the Churches Conservation Trust; and 

• considering whether to change the status, role and functions of Visit England and Visit Britain.

In addition, DCMS confirmed today that it intends to merge the National Lottery Commission with the Gambling Commission, subject to further consideration of the business case.

Notes to Editors

1. Key activities currently carried out by the UK Film Council will continue, including Lottery funding and work in support of film certification for tax purposes. DCMS will now consider options for transferring those responsibilities to other organisations. As a charity, the British Film Institute (BFI) is not within the scope of this review, but the Government is committed to its long term future. DCMS will now consider how to build a more direct relationship between the BFI and Government. 

2. The merger of the National Lottery Commission and the Gambling Commission was announced by the then Chancellor in the Budget on 24 March 2010. DCMS is working with both bodies on the merger which will improve efficiency while preserving appropriate and effective regulation of both sectors.  

3. Any necessary legislative changes would be made through the Cabinet Office’s Public Bodies Bill, which is due to be introduced in the autumn.  

4. Where proposed changes have implications for the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland we will work closely with them to finalise proposals.

Full article at:

UK Film Council to be scrapped as part of quango mass cull

Amanda Nevill Guardian article on arts cuts

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 11:18:00 +0000

From the Guardian today:

Arts are the barometer of civilisation

Spending on film and the arts gives good value. Cuts will pose a huge threat to the nation's social and cultural wellbeing

Amanda Nevill

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 8 July 2010 09.29 BST

A historian once said: "The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress." If you consider this in the context of the British government's recent spending cuts in the arts (with more to come), then our prospects are likely to be grim indeed.

But the truth of the quote also lies in what art can tell us about other lives and cultures from around the world. What is art other than a view or interpretation of life by the artist? And why does it exist other than to challenge or interrogate the status quo?

The late, much loved, Anthony Minghella used to say that watching a film was like seeing the world through borrowed eyes. As we sit in a darkened auditorium along with hundreds of other people all silent in anticipation, we reflect on a truth perhaps that we hadn't considered before; we are encouraged to dream, to wonder, to think about things and people and other cultures and histories in different ways.

Film has the power to move people, to stretch their imagination and see beyond their own existence for a brief moment. Look at how many people engage with it. It engenders understanding and tolerance of other cultures; it exercises and nourishes the mind; it feeds the soul.

Britain's wonderful cultural landscape is rich in this soul food, but these cuts coming down the line will cast a blight on that landscape like a bulldozer making way for a new bypass. And yet it is futile lying down in front of that bulldozer in the hope that it will turn around and go away. The financial situation is simply too severe, too pressing. We've all seen it coming – the government has warmed us up for this since before the election. These are incredibly difficult times and incredibly difficult decisions have to be made. Somehow, though, seeing the percentage in print has still sent a shockwave through the arts community, no more so than through the British Film Institute.

In June the Department for Culture, Media and Sport announced cuts of £73m, of which £47.5m in promised funding is being clawed back from the BFI, primarily from an essential new home to replace clapped-out buildings that would enable the BFI to meet audience demands for a better cinema experience, more and better access to the BFI national collections, greater digital engagement and a home for the film industry. This centre would be a physical manifestation of the importance we as a nation place on film – culturally, artistically and economically.

This case still stands strong. Britain is, after all, arguably the third most important centre for film in the world and yet the current home here is tucked under a bridge in a building that will reach the end of its life within the next five to 10 years, and will cost more to maintain and renovate over that time than to replace altogether. It is a project so important that even if the nation cannot afford to support it right now, then we must find alternative ways to go forward, to make sure that film has a visible presence and a voice every bit as loud and inspiring as the other great art forms. That means being brave and radical and entrepreneurial.

Film is everywhere. It is very persuasive and can like no other art form speak to the hearts of many. When Tim Burton released his much feted Alice in Wonderland this year, the BFI was there, on YouTube, with the first-ever film version from 1903. Not to compete, but to add context. It caught the public's imagination and was downloaded 800,000 times in less than a week.

Hours after the young and talented Thai filmmaker, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, accepted his Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes film festival, he was in London to open an exhibition of his work that had already been pre-commissioned by the gallery at BFI Southbank. For years the BFI has made short films available for mainstream literacy teaching – they are now used in one in four schools and film education is now part of the curriculum in over half of the UK's local authorities.

Great civilisations are not remembered for their spending cuts, but for the cultural legacies they leave behind. In terms of overall government spending, the arts are cheap to fund, yet they punch well above their weight. The effect socially and culturally to the nation's collective wellbeing is enormous.

What is at risk here is a loss to our sense of identity, that source of hope, inspiration and simple joy. That means a real loss to the soul of everyone in Britain and right now, let's face it, our souls need feeding more than ever.

Arts are the barometer of civilisation | Amanda Nevill | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

UKFC/BFI merger plan abandoned

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:31:00 +0000

From the Irish Film and Television Network today:

Proposed UKFC / BFI Merger Scrapped

23 Jun 2010 : Source - Screen Daily

British Creative Industries Minister Ed Vaizey announced yesterday, June 22, that there are “no current plans” to merge UK Film Council and British Film Institute, thus ending a long period of speculation that the two bodies would amalgamate.

In a written statement in Parliament yesterday, Creative Industries Minister Ed Vaizey stated that “There are no current plans to merge the UK Film Council and the British Film Institute.”

The merger was originally proposed in August 2009 by the then UK Film Minster Siôn Simon and the idea was welcomed by UKFC chairman Tim Bevan and BFI Chair Greg Dyke. At the time, Vaizey, who was then Shadow Arts minister, declined to lend his support to the plan.

Speaking about the move, John Woodward, CEO of the UK Film Council said: “It’s nearly a year since the DCMS initiated merger discussions – since then the political and economic landscape has been turned on its head.We’re now in a different world and it’s clear from the Chancellor’s Budget that the next few months will see further public funding cuts coming the way of all sectors.”

In what has been described by observers as a day of “relief” for the British film industry, there were no shocks in yesterday’s British budget with no cuts imposed on Film Tax relief (just one small change concerning Multi Year Claims has been introduced) and Lottery funding will remain in place.

Minister Vaizey commented yesterday he was “planning to reassess fundamentally how the Government support film in this country. I want to make sure that we are supporting the film industry so that it is ready for the challenges it will face in the decade to come, and that we make sure every pound of public money we spend gives the maximum benefit.”

Earlier this month the Department for Culture, Media and Sport announced a £73 million savings contribution to reduce the UK's fiscal deficit with over 50 per cent of the DCMS cuts announced coming from the film sector.

The UKFC’s Woodward added: “We welcome the new Government’s clear commitment to retaining the UK film tax relief and lottery funding for film, but only when we get past October’s public spending review will we know the full picture for public funding for film over the next few years.”

Proposed UKFC / BFI Merger Scrapped | The Irish Film & Television Network

BFI response to DCMS spending cuts

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:43:00 +0000

From the BFI website:

BFI statement on DCMS spending reductions

7 Jun 2010

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has announced a £73 million savings contribution to reduce the UK's fiscal deficit.

In today’s challenging financial climate we understand the difficulty of making decisions of this kind and fully expect to play our part. We had anticipated that the government would not be able to afford investment in the BFI Film Centre at this time and knew that we would face a challenge on the project. We still remain committed to taking the BFI Film Centre forward.

We are relieved that vital monies to save the BFI National Collections are secure.

We are concerned that film is bearing the brunt. Over 50 per cent of the DCMS cuts announced are coming from the film sector. Film is a critical component of Britain’s future cultural and economic prosperity and we welcome the Minister’s commitment to reviewing government’s support for the industry. Our one plea is that this is done as a matter of urgency.

BFI statement on DCMS spending reductions | British Film Institute

BFI Film Centre funding scrapped

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:13:00 +0000

From the Hollywood Reporter yesterday:

BFI Film Center plans scrapped

Government pulls plug on $67 million project

By Stuart Kemp

June 17, 2010, 11:02 AM ET

LONDON -- The U.K. government has pulled the plug on £45 million ($67 million) plans for the British Film Institute (BFI) Film Center here in the British capital and has also shelved plans for the £2.5 million ($3.7 million) BFI archive digital access project.

In an attempt at a silver lining to the cloud of cuts announced Thursday by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the freshly anointed government said it would still fund the building of a film store to safeguard the National Film Archive.

The Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport minister Jeremy Hunt said the cuts are part of wide-ranging plans to help reduce the fiscal deficit here.

"We are facing an unprecedented financial situation in this country, and it is essential that we act now to reduce the country's debt," Hunt said.

He said his department looked at a slew of plans with value for money and affordability in mind.

"This has involved some incredibly difficult decisions, but the cultural and sporting worlds, like everyone else, urgently need the country's finances to be returned to a sustainable position," he said.

Creative Industries minister Ed Vaizey also said the government plans to "fundamentally reassess how the Government supports film in this country" while admitting it simply could not commit to large scale capital investment projects such as the BFI Film Center.

"I want to make sure that we are supporting the film industry so that it is ready for the challenges it will face in the decade to come, and that we make sure every pound of public money we spend gives the maximum benefit," Vaizey said.

The reassessment will take account of the impact of Government financial support for film including National Lottery funding as well as the impact of film tax relief.

BFI Film Center plans scrapped

BFI vote on strike action

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 09:33:00 +0000

From the BECTU website today:

BFI members vote on strike action

15 June 2010

Following the breakdown of negotiations on the 2009/10 claim for a cost of living allowance at the BFI, BECTU served management with notice of plans for a formal industrial action ballot.

That ballot is underway and the result will be known on Thursday 24 June 2010.

Union members are considering a challenge to the company's decision to ignore a key part of their agreement on pay for the third year in succession.

No consolidated cost of living award

In 2007 the joint unions, BECTU and Unite, agreed a new approach to pay reviews at the BFI based on an annual pay and grading award, to recognise improved staff performance, coupled with a cost of living allowance (COLA). Since 2007 staff have been denied a consolidated cost of living award.

In January this year, the BFI indicated they could not agree an increase due to standstill Grant in Aid which is now a familiar excuse. However, this argument has not prevented appointment to yet more senior management posts including a director of digital on £90,000 per annum.

BECTU national official, Pat Styles, said:

“The BFI have indicated that they are unable to pay any COLA increase to our members this year - this is the third year in a row that our members have not received this increase."

Best efforts to achieve an amicable settlement

BECTU and Unite have used their best efforts to try to achieve an amicable resolution to these talks; officials offered a three-year pay deal and even proposed agreement on additional annual leave in lieu of a COLA increase for 2009/10.

The BFI refused to negotiate a three-year deal. In a letter to all staff BFI Director, Amanda Nevill, sought instead to offer staff not in receipt of a pay and grading award, two days additional annual leave plus £400 in lieu of a COLA increase for both 2009/10 and 2010/11.

The BFI's 25 highest paid managers earn between £60,000 and £109,000 per year, which suggests that around 12% of the BFI’s total salary costs are spent on around 6% of the workforce.

BECTU members and their colleagues in Unite, have insisted that the non-payment of a cost of living increase is unacceptable.

"Our expectation is that we will receive an overwhelming ‘Yes’ vote in the ballot,” Pat Styles concluded.

BECTU members work throughout the BFI and have strong organisation at the visitor centre on the Southbank where they look after guests and provide projection services; in Berkhampsted, home to the BFI Archive, BECTU members are responsible for the grading and preservation of film stock.

BECTU’s industrial action ballot will close at 12 noon on Thursday 24 June 2010.

BFI members vote on strike action - BECTU

BFI Film Centre in trouble

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:55:00 +0000

From Deadline.com today:

UK Film Council Delays BFI Film Centre

By TIM ADLER | Wednesday, 2 June 2010 09:12 UK

EXCLUSIVE: The film agency has suspended work on the British Film Institute’s £166 million ($271 million) flagship project until the autumn. The new Conservative government is cutting the UK Film Council’s budget by 3% (£1.3 million [$1.9 million) for this financial year. This comes on top of the £25 million the UKFC has already saved from its annual budget to help pay for the 2012 Olympics.

Suspending work on the UK Film Centre will come as a blow to the BFI, whose biggest project this has been for years. The centre, which was due to be completed by 2015, is to house five digital screens, with one large auditorium. The BFI is putting brave face on things. It only advertised for an architect last month. “As far as we are concerned, we are simply going ahead on a different timetable this year,” it says.

John Woodward, CEO of the UKFC, tells me that all public organisations must stop spending money on new capital projects until the autumn, when government spending plans for the next three years will become clear. “This one decision will effectively deliver the grant-in-aid cuts that the government has demanded,” Woodward says.

There’s worse to come. The UKFC has been asked to model further 20% cuts in its state-funded expenditure over the next three years. This is on top of the 20% cut it has already made to its overhead. “Like every other part of the public sector, we are braced for further and bigger grant-in-aid expenditure to come,” he says.

However, one BFI insider tells me the UK Film Council board presented the UK Film Centre freeze as a fait accompli. “There was no consultation with the institute,” this insider says. If so, it doesn’t bode well for relations during the impending merger between both organisations. I’m hearing that the wheels are getting wobbly on that, with new culture secretary Ed Vaizey making non-committal noises about the merger. The official line is that the merger is still going ahead as planned, and that the new government is only just getting down to work.

UK Film Council Delays BFI Film Centre – Deadline.com

End of BFI/UKFC merger plans?

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Sun, 23 May 2010 11:15:00 +0000

Extract from interview with Ed Vaizey, Conservative minister for media and arts, in the Sunday Times today:

'During the interview Vaizey offered some hope to arts organisations which, like other publicly financed bodies, may learn this week about swingeing cuts to their budgets.

He claimed there will be no “bonfire of the quangos” and said a planned merger of the UK Film Council and British Film Institute “may no longer be necessarily happening”.

However, Vaizey said the Arts Council, which distributed lottery funding, must cut back its administration costs.

“My immediate priority is to manage the arts after cuts,” he said. “The frontline services of what the public gets in performances must be protected as much as possible. The Arts Council itself must be more about providing cultural leadership and not just a place for the funding cheque.”

Vaizey has high hopes for the Cultural Olympiad, an arts programme that will accompany the staging of the 2012 Olympics. “It must be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to showcase the best of London’s arts,” he said.

He admitted that London’s eight-minute role at the closing ceremony of the Beijing Games in 2008 had been embarrassing.

“There were robust views expressed about that,” said Vaizey. “People have now listened.” '

See full article at:

Conservatives shelve plans to freeze TV licence fee - Times Online

BFI Southbank Centre update

noreply@blogger.com (spam) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 13:12:00 +0000

From Building today:

BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES £90M REVAMP

28 April, 2010

By Andrea Klettner

Major London project in the pipeline as BFI publishes OJEU notice for design team

A major building project in central London is on the horizon for contractors, as the British Film Institute announces a major revamp.

The project, which will carry a price tag of £90m, will sit on the South Bank alongside the River Thames.

It is expected the building will have a gross floor area of 12,500 m².

This week the BFI published a notice in OJEU seeking an architect, or team of architects, to design the project.

A contractor is expected to be appointed in 2013 and the building is expected to be finished by the end of 2017.

British Film Institute announces £90m revamp - Breaking news | The UK's leading construction magazine - Building