THE BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE (AND
NATIONAL FILM AND TELEVISION ARCHIVE)
139. The British Film Institute was retained by the
DCMS as a discrete entity when it established the UK Film Council
to take strategic responsibility for film in the UK in April 2000.
The bfi is separate from, but accountable to, the UK Film
Council which provides it with its grant-in-aid funding: £14.5
million on 2001-02. The current relationship has perhaps yet to
bed down. Despite the formal relationship, the bfi Chairman,
Anthony Minghella, was clear that the bfi was at the very
least semi-autonomous:
"I think it is very important that bfi
becomes a very loud advocate of itself, it needs to advertise
itself better, it needs to go out and brand itself better and
it needs to reach out on its own. The Film Council is not its
Dad and I think it is very important that we provide our own direct
access to government and find friends and find partners and find
sponsors." [230]
140. The bfi was described by a recent National
Audit Office report to be largely responsible for carrying out
the UK Film Council's objective to "develop film culture
in the UK by improving access to, and education about, the moving
image."[231] As
far as the regional archives were concerned the bfi's evidence
refers to "key relationships with the regional archives"
but did not go into further detail despite an emphasis on the
regional dimension of its own services and activities.[232]
141. The bfi aims to:
a) ensure UK audiences gain access to the
full range of the history and heritage of British and international
cinema;
b) create opportunities for UK citizens to understand
and appreciate film through the generation and dissemination of
knowledge about film; and
c) promote the use of film history in understanding
identity, representation, culture and creativity.
142. The bfi argues that through its products
and services its plays 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. The bfi set out its commitment 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; which are informed, in the UK, by free access
to the main collections of national museums and galleries. The
bfi has a substantial collection of artefacts and memorabilia
relating to the history and development of film and TV.[233]
Since the closure of MoMI the bfi has been criticised for
a lack of clarity and straightforwardness over its plans to establish
new arrangements for public access to this collection.[234]
143. The major long-term project of the bfi
is to establish a new Film Centre, as part of the on-going developments
on the South Bank, to provide opportunities to "transform
and enhance the experience of the culture of film in a dynamic
new environment." In addition to a commitment to physical
exhibitions, based at the new Centre as well as travelling around
the country, the bfi argues that the new technologies of
digital access and delivery must be recognised as the most effective
and democratic ways of making film culture more accessible. The
bfi accepted that its plans "to create a new national
resource, to 21st century standards" were ambitious and would
be 'financially challenging'.[235]
144. The bfi runs, maintains and develops
the National Film and Television Archive, one of the oldest and
largest such archives in the world (comprising some 150,000 films
and 250,000 television programmes). The Institute also runs the
bfi National Library, of similar international status,
in terms of information and data about film and TV.
145. The Institute's main activities are:
a) Providing or facilitating exhibition of
films from its own archive (to which there is no direct public
access), other archives and commercial distributors at: the National
Film Theatre; the Imax cinema; film festivals; and through film
societies and regional cinemas.
b) Providing access for private and commercial
research about film and TV to its resources; and
c) Providing a wide range of formal and informal
education opportunities including material for teachers and students
and by running courses events and other activities.
146. As the NAO report sets out, the bfi has
a range of objectives and goals set out in agreements with the
UK Film Council and also its own Royal Charter. It seems clear
that the process of aligning the objectives of Institute and Council
has not yet been concluded. The National Audit Office recently
concluded that this task needs to be accomplished for the Council
to be able to assess the extent to which the Institute's use of
its public funding is contributing to the achievement of the UK
Film Council's over-arching objectives.[236]
147. The Chairman of the bfi, Mr Anthony Minghella,
described criticisms set out within the NAO report as justifiable
but pointed to the exemplary reputation of the bfi amongst
its peers around the world.[237]
He also pointed to a significant role for the bfi —
complementary to the Council's growth of the film industry —
in increasing audiences for that industry: discerning, demanding
and younger audiences that would be open to more than the 'industrial'
offerings from mainstream Hollywood studios designed to reach
a global market without necessarily inviting or requiring audiences
to stop and think. To this end the bfi must provide and
promote access to its archive and educational resources.[238]
148. The bfi set out its achievements in providing
access to its resources as follows:
a) The number of people taking up access
and educational opportunities provided by the bfi has increased
by 25% in the last five years;
b) Over 220,000 cinema-goers attend the National
Film Theatre (NFT) each year;
c) The bfi London Imax Cinema attracts
350,000 people a year, 97,054 of whom are under 16;
d) bfi films were seen by more than 633,000
people at independent cinemas across the UK in 2001-2002;
e) Each year 1,000,000 people in the UK watch
bfi videos and DVDs;
f) Films from the Archive collection are seen
twice as much as films from any other archive in the world;
g) Over 110,000 people attended last year's London
Film Festival, together with 600 film industry delegates;
h) 19,000 participants of all ages took part
in educational events, short courses, conferences and seminars,
in 2001-02;
i) the bfi website received 6.47 million
page impressions in 2001-02.[239]
149. Clearly, a primary responsibility of the bfi
is the care and maintenance of its resources, including the National
Archive, in the first place. The Archive is a vast resource which
is growing each year with resulting backlogs of material awaiting
acceptance into the collection (representing 20-25% of the films
in the Archive); material needing preservation work (unquantifiable);
and material within the collection that needs to be made actually
viewable (54%).[240]
150. One complication has been that 'safety film'
designed to store copies of films over the long-term has turned
out to be itself stable. Mr Minghella told us: "One of the
great ironies has been that the bfi did sterling work at
the National Film Archive in putting nitrate film on to acetate,
on to safety film. The safety film has proved more unstable than
the nitrate; so now there is a new regime of trying to work out
how you can store film correctly".[241]
He went on to say that it was a crucial question of priorities
and a matter for review: "with the amount of money that we
take from government, which we have to justify and earn, we can
make a very simple decision and … will spend all of our money
opening those cans and restoring film; or we will spend all of
our money trying to go out and grow audiences. It is going to
be a judgment call as we go into this review, about where we prioritise."[242]
151. We received evidence that some parts of the
collection were being allowed to deteriorate in unsuitable storage
conditions due to funding problems. Amanda Nevill told us that:
"We would refute that statement completely.
I have been up there and one of the first things I did was to
try and find out what levels of big risk there might be round
the corner. The National Audit Office have also been there. Film
is very complex, and my colleagues from the Film Archive Forum
will no doubt reinforce this…Everything that is taken into
the archive, even before it is formally acquired, is put into
environmentally stable conditions so that we can minimise damage.
Film is inherently unstable anyway. We immediately do the best
we can to ensure that it is held at some sort of static level."[243]
However she accepted the underlying argument:
"we do need to look at the priorities that
we give within that archiving. Are the priorities in conservation
or are they in access and how do those two work symbiotically?
That is something that we will look at over the next six months."
[244]
This position was supported by Mr Patterson from
the Film Archive Forum who said that:
"I would not have said there was anything
within the storage of the bfi that was in any way endangered
because of the conditions in which it was being stored."[245]
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