Memorandum submitted by the British Film
Institute
1. EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY
1.1 The Select Committee will be enquiring
into all aspects of the British film industry and British film
including the performance of the Film Council in promoting both
a sustainable industry and awareness of and access to the moving
image.
1.2 The British Film Institute (reporting
to and funded by the Film Council) is the national body which:
— ensures UK audiences gain access
to the full range of the history and heritage of British and international
cinema;
— creates opportunities for UK citizens
to understand and appreciate film through the generation and dissemination
of knowledge about film; and
— promotes the use of film history
in understanding identity, representation, culture and creativity.
1.3 The written evidence provided by the
British Film Institute therefore deals primarily with the following
question:
"What has the [Film] Council contributed
to education about, and access to the moving image? What should
the Council do with the bfi and the Museum of the Moving Image?"
1.4 Our evidence supports our belief that
through our products and services we play a direct—and essential—part
in helping create a cultural and educational environment which
supports the British film industry and thereby contributes to
the wider economy.
1.5 Our commitment remains to develop the
function served previously by the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI)
in a way which reflects the expectations of audiences of the 21st
century. The creation of a new Film Centre provides us with the
opportunity to transform and enhance the experience of the culture
of film in a dynamic new environment. The Film Centre will house
changing and travelling exhibitions that will excite, empower
and enthuse audiences not only in London but throughout the UK.
1.6 The bfi recognises that it must
embrace the new technologies of digital access and delivery as
the most effective and democratic ways of making film culture
available to everybody in the nation.
2. INTRODUCTION
2.1 This evidence relates to the British
Film Institute's primary activity of providing education and access
to the moving image. It responds to those parts of the Committee's
inquiry concerning the Institute, the former Museum of the Moving
Image and both education and access to moving image culture.
2.2 We believe that through our products
and services we play a direct—and indirect—part in
helping to create a cultural and educational environment which
supports the British film industry and contributes to the wider
economy. The range of our activities is not always fully appreciated,
and the description of our remit that follows may also be useful.
3. THE BRITISH
FILM INSTITUTE
AND FILM
CULTURE
Film culture
3.1 The British Film Institute was created
over 70 years ago, by Royal Charter, with the simple aims (a)
to ensure UK audiences gain access to the full range of the history
of heritage of British and International cinema, (b) to develop
opportunities for UK citizens to understand and appreciate film
through the generation and dissemination of knowledge about film
and the film industry and (c) to promote the use of film history
in understanding identity, representation, culture and creativity.
3.2 Since then, generations of film-makers
have testified that they were introduced to world cinema, educated
in film history and culture and inspired in their creativity by
seeing films at the National Film Theatre and the London Film
Festival. Enhancing the cultural and creative life of the nation
is a vital role, and one that directly supports the making of
distinctive British films and developing new audiences with an
appetite for them.
3.3 The activities we run as an Institute
have a fundamental impact on the quality of life of our citizens.
3.4 Film is an immensely powerful medium
which helps shape the way we see and understand the world. Cinema
informs, inspires and challenges people, as well as entertaining
them. A hundred years after its invention, cinema has established
itself as the most powerful means of communication we have—to
entertain, express ideas and to educate. The appeal of film is
universal and located as it is, in the heart of a rapidly expanding
range of moving image media, it has acquired a significant economic
importance. Film represents a growing and central part of the
UK's creative industries.
3.5 Hollywood's extraordinary dominance
in the field of filmed entertainment goes on intensifying. It
raises the very real prospect of a fundamental dislocation between
the world of imagination, created by the moving image, and the
everyday lives of people around the globe. The bfi is uniquely
positioned to create an appetite for a wider diet of film.
3.6 Understanding and appreciating the arts,
including the art of film, is integral to our sense of being a
civilized nation. We believe that film is the most important art
form of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Film reflects
lives, experiences and social history. It informs and influences
the way we see our own country and the world. Cinema takes from
every other art form. The British Film Institute can link the
worlds of leisure, education, culture and art. We represent both
the contemporary and the historical and combine intellectual quality
with accessibility. Everything we do is to help open up the real
magic of the moving image to UK audiences.
The British Film Institute
3.7 The British Film Institute (bfi)
is a unique, world-class organisation dedicated to promoting greater
understanding, appreciation and access to film and television
culture. Established in 1933, we are partly funded through grant-in-aid
from the Film Council (£14.5 million per annum) and -significantly—generate
the remainder of our income (£13 million) through our own
activities and through donations. The bfi is a registered
charity and in addition to the Funding Agreement with the Film
Council, is governed by a Royal Charter.
3.8 The Chief Executive Officer and his
Executive colleagues are accountable to a 15-strong Board of Governors,
chaired by film director Anthony Minghella. (A list of Governors
is at Appendix A). The diagram below shows the relationship between
the British Film Institute, the Film Council and the DCMS.
3.9 Hierarchy of relationship between British
Film Institute, Film Council, and Department of Culture Media
and Sport
3.10 We employ 508 members of staff in three
locations: the Archive at Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire (including
the special storage facility at Gaydon, Lighthorn, Warwickshire);
at the National Film Theatre and the bfi London Imax Cinema
on London's South Bank; and at the headquarters building (which
also houses the bfi National Library) in central London.
(A list of facts and figures about the British Film Institute
is at Appendix B).
3.11 Our vision is to be the world's leading
organisation dedicated to the arts of film and television, and
one of the top 10 cultural organisations in the United Kingdom.
We exist to stimulate this and future generations of critically
aware, and educationally informed, audiences. In our striving
for this, and to deliver our objectives, we offer a range of activities
and services, which can be grouped under the three banners of
conservation, access and education.
4. CONSERVATION
We conserve, strengthen and make accessible the
largest archive of film and television materials in the world
4.1 We manage the National Film and Television
Archive, based at the J Paul Getty Conservation Centre at Berkhamsted,
Hertfordshire. Here we carry out the vital work of preserving
one of the world's largest and longest-established collections
of film and television material. We are responsible for holding
the national collection of British produced or British related
film, television programmes and video recordings of all kinds
exhibited or transmitted in the UK. We have key relationships
with the regional archives. The bfi is held in high esteem
world-wide for the way we preserve, archive, restore and make
available material from our collections to audiences around the
UK and, indeed, around the world.
4.2 Preservation and restoration are, however,
expensive and detailed processes. The conservation of these hundreds
of thousands of items, consisting of material which decays easily
and whose formats change frequently, while acquiring some 3,500
further items each year, is a financial and management challenge.
4.3 We also have over seven million images
in our care, 30,000 film posters and 4,000 designs for costumes
and film sets. These collections, too, grow with every passing
year.
5. ACCESS
We provide a comprehensive and stimulating programme
of films, exhibitions, publications, displays and activities
5.1 We broaden access to non-mainstream
cinema by releasing films in cinemas and on video and DVD. We
run the National Film Theatre, which shows more than 1,000 titles
a year and hosts a range of events with film-makers, critics and
writers to complement screenings. We also run the bfi London
Imax Cinema, which has around 350,000 visitors a year to see the
mix of 2D, 3D, 35 mm and 70mm films.
5.2 Regional delivery of our cultural and
educational remit through exhibition and distribution is important
to us. We are currently working closely with the Film Council
to help rationalise a specialised distribution and exhibition
strategy.
5.3 Each November we organise the London
Film Festival, Britain's biggest film event. We also organise
the annual London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and others. Highlights
from the festivals tour to dozens of cities around the UK as part
of our commitment to attaining regional reach of our services
and providing the widest possible opportunities for people to
see new and classic non-mainstream films.
5.4 We are increasingly using our website
and other digital programmes to help develop online access to
our collections. More traditionally, we also mount a variety of
displays and exhibitions to enable the public to see and study
items including costumes, props, photographs, papers and posters.
At our headquarters office, books, papers and extensive related
collections (for example, designs, annotated scripts and photographs)
are available for private and commercial research, and people
can also view films for research purposes in our two viewing theatres
or nine viewing cubicles.
Providing access to our collection of films, television
programmes and other materials
5.5 We provide a wide range of opportunities
for people to gain access to our moving image collections. We
release films in cinemas around the UK as well as in our own NFT
and Imax cinemas—we have a core of 200 UK venues and 400
film societies screening our films, and an increasing presence
in galleries, museums, educational organisations and other spaces.
We sell and rent videos and DVDs in all major retail outlets,
specialist shops and by mail order/ online; organise nationwide
festivals and international tours; accommodate research visits;
offer membership of our Library; and mount a variety of displays
and exhibitions of our material. Our collections are increasingly
being made available to view, and learn more about, online.
5.6 Looking to the future, our plans for
the new Film Centre to be built in the South Bank area of London,
will give the bfi opportunities to transform and enhance
the experience of the culture of film, to present our object collection,
and to provide opportunities to engage with the kind of audiences
the Museum of the Moving Image was intended to attract. To be
specific, the Film Centre will provide a range of activities that
engage with day-time, family, young people and children audiences
who could be better served.
5.7 We are planning to create a dynamic
new environment for the twenty first century. With the introduction
of free entry at National Museums, it would be increasingly difficult
to operate a charging attraction like MoMI. However it is our
intention to house a number of changing exhibitions in the new
Centre which all share a common purpose: to excite, empower, inform
and enthuse our audiences. The new building will enable us to
provide greater access to our material, tied in to seasons in
our cinemas and education events, in a comprehensive, integrated
way.
5.8 The core elements of the Film Centre
will include:
— A new and enlarged bfi National
Film Theatre providing audiences with access to a range of film
from the UK, Europe and around the world.
— The bfi Education Complex
offering a state of the art environment for learning about film
and the moving image at all levels and drawing on the superb resources
of the bfi. This will encompass a Library, including a
mediatheque, as well as an Education Suite with fully equipped
teaching spaces.
— Interactive exhibition spaces drawing
on the bfi's unique collections and using digital technologies
to celebrate the past, present and future of the moving image.
5.9 Our plans to create a new national resource,
to 21st century standards, are ambitious and will be financially
challenging.
Making our Archive film and television material
available
5.10 Access to our collections is considerably
greater than for any other international archive and we achieve
this in a number of ways. We draw upon material from the Archive
when programming NFT seasons and other festivals. Almost three
quarters of the material in the Archive is non-fiction and is
not therefore in great demand for public exhibition but we try
to reach an acceptable mix in balancing cultural and commercial
objectives.
5.11 However, we are increasingly making
this non-fiction, educational material available by way of our
digitisation strategy—for broadband delivery to schools,
public libraries and regional film archives, which we intend to
launch shortly; by internet; through video and DVD sales; and
through sales to television, as well as by the traditional primary
research on the bfi premises. Furthermore, our video and
DVD Archive Television series allows nationwide access to our
television holdings.
5.12 Recent restorations of films, which
have been exhibited in the UK and toured internationally have
include Napoleon, The Magic Box and South. Footage from South
has also been used for a number of polar exploration documentaries,
and for an Imax film.
5.13 Through our Archive Specials at the
NFT series, we specifically showcase rare and unknown material
from our Archive, fully contextualised by expert guest presenters.
Making other material and items publicly available
5.14 Other exhibitions and displays of our
material recently mounted include subjects such as Charlie Chaplin;
the Boulting Brothers; Julie Harris; the papers of Dilys Powell;
the work of cinematographer Jack Cardiff; and on Shackleton to
support the film South at the Imax. The Moving Pictures exhibition
appeared at the Millennium Galleries in Sheffield. Our Bollywood
in Love exhibition of Bollywood film posters and associated items,
part of the ImagineAsia festival, has so far toured to half a
dozen major venues around the country. Much of this material was
previously displayed in our former Museum.
5.15 As an add-on to its usual services,
our Library recently started to feature displays of material from
its collections to support seasons at the National Film Theatre:
recent examples featured Jean Luc Godard, Cary Grant and Werner
Herzog. Last year we acquired the Independent Television Commission
Library: this has substantially increased our holdings and created
an unparalleled resource for the public, academics and creative
industries. It also raises resourcing issues for us.
5.16 In addition to these principal ways
of enabling access to our collections, we make material available
to audiences in a huge variety of other ways. For example, to
be exhibited at other organisations' festivals or exhibitions
both at home and abroad; to television companies who broadcast
Archive material in documentaries; and in collaboration with commercial
cinema chains.
Reaching diverse audiences
5.17 The bfi is at the forefront
of widening access to film culture to more diverse audiences and
encouraging participation by minority ethnic communities. As part
of our cultural diversity strategy we developed the pioneering,
flagship diversity project, ImagineAsia, a major celebration of
films from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka as well as British
Asian films. ImagineAsia ran for eight months last year in conjunction
with some 70 partner organisations in England, Scotland, Wales
and Northern Ireland, and consisted of a diverse range of screenings,
events, lectures, exhibitions, books, educational resources and
a special website. The festival enabled us to engage significantly
with British South Asian audiences in new and innovative ways.
We are now making arrangements for a similar project for 2005,
provisionally called Black World, targeting African Caribbean
communities and young people.
5.18 We are also working hard to open up
bfi premises, services and products to wider audiences
by implementing Disability Discrimination Act requirements. Our
Video Publishing Section started to produce DVD releases with
Hearing Impaired Subtitles of English language films. We were
the first video label to include subtitling of additionality—titles
subtitled include Sick and George Washington. We
will shortly release a catalogue, also available online, of all
our film and television materials relating to disability. And
we ensure that our website conforms to accessibility guidelines.
Last year our National Film Theatre was pleased to host the Lifting
the Lid disability film festival. The bfi will also be
participating in the celebrations of the European Year of Disability
and has raised £50,000 of EEC funding to produce the UK's
first teaching pack on disability and film.
6. EDUCATION
We promote dynamic and innovative education programmes;
we support exemplary research and scholarship
6.1 We publish renowned books, Sight
and Sound magazine, research papers and educational resources,
and offer footage and rights sales of our television and film
collections.
6.2 We produce resources and training for
teachers, and life-long learning is promoted through educational
events and activities for learners of all ages. We also hold numerous
events specifically for children and young people.
6.3 The bfi National Library is the
world's largest library of information and documentation on film
and television. It includes more than 47,000 books, pamphlets,
annuals and CD-ROMs, 6,000 periodical titles (mostly in extensive
runs) as well as outstanding collections of news cuttings, scripts,
personal and company papers, sound recordings, microfilm and multimedia
materials. And our website is a further major source of information,
with some 18,000 online pages of information.
Educating people of all ages about film and television
culture
6.4 Education lies at the heart of all our
activities. Our acquisitions, restorations, screenings, events,
exhibitions, festivals and publications all play an integral part
in this remit. Much of our focus lies in helping raise standards
of teaching and learning. We work specifically with other education
providers to encourage awareness of moving image culture, regardless
of people's age or level of knowledge. Two areas of particular
importance for us, where we are working with government and a
range of other external partners, are media literacy and e-learning.
6.5 All our education activities either
generate revenue or are supported by external funding. We, in
turn, part fund the organisation Film Education.
Formal education
6.6 We provide training for hundreds of
teachers across the United Kingdom, both on a face-to-face basis
and through accredited distance-learning courses. Our Associate
Tutor Scheme provides a UK-wide database of freelance educators
who can provide talks, workshops and training in a variety of
contexts.
6.7 Our books and classroom materials have
established the bfi as a leading provider of resources
for teaching about moving image media in schools and colleges.
We provide events such as study days, workshops and introduced
screenings for learners of all ages at the National Film Theatre
and in association with other venues across the UK. We gather
and publish evidence of good practice in moving image media teaching.
6.8 Contributing to our educational remit
in a significant way, and again raising awareness and appreciation
of moving image culture, is our publishing arm, which publishes
the renowned Sight and Sound magazine and bfi books.
We are also involved in research: organising conferences, conducting
surveys and publishing papers.
Educational projects and activities for children
6.9 We run a wide variety of events for
children, largely based at the National Film Theatre and the bfi
London Imax Cinema. Under the banner Movie Magic, we host workshops
and screen films specifically for children aged between six and
12. The Imax attracts children and family audiences and is an
important part of our commitment to this audience sector. Ninety-seven
thousand children attended screenings there last year.
6.10 We also try to allow as many children
as possible around the country to experience our educational events.
For example, we included a special educational event in the regional
tour of Monsters, Inc., previously shown at the London
Film Festival.
Digitisation
6.11 The digital provision of information
and education services is a significant area. In 2001, the New
Opportunities Fund (NOF) made an award of £1.2 million to
the bfi under its Digitisation of Learning Materials programme.
The significant contribution from NOF is enabling us to develop
a definitive reference resource on British film and television
history on the web, with material that will be useful for the
National Curriculum. Screenonline, the name of the consortium
of which the bfi is the lead partner, will provide online
information to schools and libraries on the history of British
film and television, and on the social history of Britain as told
in moving images.
6.12 This major undertaking will contain
hundreds of hours of moving image clips including many complete
films and television programmes, interactive timelines charting
the history of the film and television industries, interviews,
biographies, and specially written analysis explaining and contextualising
Britain's moving image heritage. It is a project that is expensive
to develop and would benefit from additional funding.
6.13 Our website currently has some 18,000
pages of film and television related information, as well as information
on media courses, "virtual galleries" of items in our
collection, listings and links to other related sites. Increasingly,
we are making available online, information and experiences that
were previously only available in our Museum.
6.14 From the bfi National Library,
members can log on to our filmographic database, SIFT, (Summary
of Information on Film and Television) which is the world's largest
film and television database.
7. CONCLUSION
7.1 The British Film Institute is the strategic
body developing film culture and education in the UK through a
wide range of activities. We believe we are uniquely positioned
to bring about a closer co-operation between the education system
and the film industry, creating an appetite for a wider diet of
film thereby strengthening the financial health of British film
and helping to enrich people's cultural lives. We hope that the
Committee will endorse our activities and acknowledge the challenge
that operating within a standstill budget creates for us to continue
to satisfy this remit and to preserve the nation's heritage of
this important art form.
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