Memorandum submitted by the UK Film Council
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 The UK Film Council welcomes the new
inquiry by the Culture Media and Sport Committee into the care
of archive collections. In particular our submission focuses upon
the care of and access to moving image collections nationally
and in the regions.
1.2 The UK Film Council supports the evidence
submitted by BFI to the previous inquiry on Protecting and Preserving
our Heritage (HC 912). This short paper offers supplementary evidence
to address the specific questions raised in connection with funding,
acquisition and disposal and the remit and effectiveness of DCMS,
MLA and other relevant organisations.
1.3 This paper draws upon the submission
drafted by the BFI and highlights issues of particular relevance
to the UK Film Council's strategic role and remit.
2. FUNDING
2.1 Care of film collections is extremely
expensive, perhaps more so than any other cultural material. The
media are expensive and unstable, and demand very high quality
storage environments to retard deterioration. In the long term,
film must be copied to preserve it, and further copies must be
made to allow it to be seen. For a simple sound print from a colour
film, this might cost £8,000 for a typical feature around
90 minutes in duration. Specialist conservation work multiplies
this many times over. There are several hundred thousand hours
of material in the BFI National Archive. There are substantial
collections in regional film and video archives in England and
the national collections in Wales and Scotland. The publicly funded
English Regional Film Archives (RFAs) alone contain in excess
of 280,000 separate films, programmes and videos.
2.2 Revenue funding of the BFI National
Archive is currently in the region of £4 million per annum,
and this is under pressure owing to increasing costs set against
grant-in-aid that is declining in real terms. Public funding for
the main eight RFA collections in England comes from a variety
of sources including the Regional Screen Agencies, local authorities,
higher education and the Heritage Lottery Fund. These eight RFAs
have an approximate annual turnover of £1.7 million, of which
less than £600,000 is in the form of annual revenue support,
the balance being one-off and project funding and earned income.
Many smaller collections in the English regions receive no public
funding at all. The total public support for the BFI National
Archive and the RFAs is a small fraction of the funds made available
to other cultural sectors, including libraries, museums and galleries
- which are also known to be under funded.
2.3 The National Audit Office inquiry of
April 2003[42]
identified serious shortcomings in the care of the BFI's National
collections, with a significant proportion of the Nation's heritage
actively at risk—despite application of significant additional
funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund and through generous donations
from the Late Sir John Paul Getty. Since then, the BFI has been
able to invest significant additional sums in storage to safeguard
the collections. The solutions are, however, temporary in nature
and significant extra funding needs to be found to effect a permanent
solution.
2.4 The situation at the RFAs is very variable
with some collections well-catalogued and held in modern, stable
facilities. However there are significant parts of the holdings
of the eight RFAs which are at risk of decay, or held in unsuitable
conditions, or uncatalogued. The Media Archive for Central England
(MACE) for example has found it impossible to find a permanent
home for its collections and has recently been given notice to
quit its current premises by its landlord, the University of Nottingham.
2.5 This lack of resources is an area where
the HLF can only provide a partial solution. Some of the challenges
faced by the BFI and RFAs can be broken into discrete projects
with the sort of strong access outcomes which HLF—quite
properly—requires. There is however a real need for additional
infrastructure and revenue funding to bring stability to these
institutions and allow for the unglamorous tasks of preserving,
cataloguing and storing vulnerable material in the long term.
2.6 So far as access is concerned, the BFI
stands out, internationally, in the level of access it provides
to its collections through traditional means: research access;
theatrical distribution and loan of prints for film clubs; DVD
release. It is also taking a lead in digital access. Its ground-breaking
screenonline service reaches users across the UK and will soon
be available in all schools. Screenonline, however, features about
450 hours of material, almost exclusively clips because of rights
restrictions. To give a similar level of access to the collection
as a whole would require the investment of an estimated £100
million, excluding rights clearance. RFAs at their best provide
first-class regional access via broadcast partnerships, bespoke
DVD releases and the creation of educational material. MACE's
touring programme Midland Journeys, for example, generated different
programmes for Nottingham, Leicester, Birmingham, Derby and Coventry
featuring material from its own collections, the BFI and elsewhere.
Yorkshire Film Archive has produced ground-breaking educational
materials illuminating local topics for schools in the region.
Such initiatives excite great interest from local audiences and
are invaluable in generating sense of place and encouraging an
interest in local history and citizenship. RFA access programmes
are however held back not only by the condition of collections
but the lack of staff time to generate project proposals, attract
project funds and curate material.
2.7 In short, funding for both care of the
collections and providing access is woefully inadequate, both
for the BFI National Archive and throughout the entire audio-visual
archive sector. The film and moving image archive has the potential
to offer significant "public value" and provide a lasting
legacy for the UK as a whole.
2.8 So far as the 2012 London Olympics is
concerned, the impact on lottery funding is not yet clear. Whist
there are opportunities for film archive projects to benefit from
Olympic funding and to add great value to the cultural events
surrounding the Games, the level of support for such projects
is not yet evident.
3. ACQUISITION
AND DISPOSAL
3.1 Compared with other cultural heritage
artefacts, film, video and other moving image material is subject
to a range of unusual features and constraints:
— It is reprographic, and the
technical process of production is complex. This means that the
concept of the "original object" is hard to define,
and authentic copies—and alternative versions or works—proliferate.
The original production materials generally occupy a far higher
volume than the final viewing or distribution materials, and are
inherently hard to access (an original camera negative without
sound is essentially useless to the consumer). Nevertheless, the
production materials are highly prized and often jealously guarded.
— It is prone to the rapid evolution
of technology. This has been especially marked with video, with
new formats appearing, being adopted and then phased out at an
alarming rate. This means that archives are faced with managing
collections of original material that cannot easily be viewed,
or undertaking to migrate the content to new formats at great
expense (and often with some compromise to the quality of the
material).
— It is overtly commercial, and
rights are separated from the physical materials. So although
an archive may hold a copy, or even the original production materials
of a work, it may not (and usually doesn't) hold any rights beyond
individual research access on its own premises. Indeed, the problem
of rights ownership means that most film archives do not collect
material with full title, as museums generally aim to do, but
accept material "on deposit"—a form of long term
loan, with ownership of both rights and the materials retained
by the depositor. Furthermore, a great deal of significant material
is not deposited at all, but retained by the producer.
— The transition to digital production
and distribution raises two new problems, one practical and one
more philosophical. Practically, there are major conservation
issues surrounding digital film. The technology is expensive and
yet not stable, raising serious questions about the archive's
ability to preserve material in the long term, even presuming
that studios would be prepared to deposit digital production materials
to archives. Philosophically, one can speculate whether it will
be meaningful, in the long term, for archives to hold digital
copies, when it is assumed that they will be universally available.
3.2 Disposal, therefore, is rarely a problem
from the perspective of legal restrictions. Of greater concern
is the requirement to contact owners of the materials and rights
holders before disposal. Because rights frequently change hands,
but rights holders do not notify the BFI/RFA of the fact (indeed,
they may not be aware that the BFI/RFA holds physical materials),
this can be difficult—so much so that it is cheaper to leave
the material in store.
3.3 It should also be noted that, unlike
many heritage collections, film and video are mass, reproduced
and reproducible media: there is a public expectation that films
and programmes should be shown in multiple locations (exactly
as films on release are) and a lack of awareness or understanding
of the limitation which rights issues place on wide access. Put
bluntly, many members of the public do not understand why archive
films are not widely and easily available in cinemas and online.
3.4 In light of all the above, one must
ask whether it is reasonable to preserve large collections of
moving image material, at public expense, when the archive is
so severely restricted in the use of the material.
3.5 The answer is that a great deal of material,
highly valued today, has only survived because archives collected
and preserved what they could. And, as centres of knowledge and
expertise, archives have used their collections to safeguard and
promote a broader and deeper cultural understanding of film and
television, far beyond the narrow view of commercial producers.
Furthermore, by developing and retaining the specialised skills
required in the care of archive moving images, they are frequently
able to assist the commercial sector in keeping our heritage accessible.
3.6 Statutory Deposit, as recommended by
the Kenny Committee in 1999, would offer a partial remedy. It
has, however, been resisted by some sectors of the film industry,
and the BFI has been locked in negotiation over voluntary deposit
ever since. Note that films funded by the UK Film Council and
other public agencies include the requirement for deposit as a
term in the funding agreement.
3.7 BFI collecting policy takes account
of these unique and difficult factors. A current initiative by
the UK Film Council, BFI, Regional Screen Agencies, RFAs and MLA
to formulate a UK Film Archive strategy will co-ordinate the collecting
policies of all of the publicly-funded film archives in the UK;
it should be pointed out however that resources and to achieve
this are limited.
3.8 The draft of that strategy defines three
key criteria that must be taken into account when considering
material for acquisition: cultural significance to the people
of the UK, fitness for purpose and affordability:
— Cultural significance to the
people of the UK enables us to place a proper emphasis on British
production, but collect international material where it has had
a significant impact or where it reflects the diversity of the
UK population.
— Fitness for purpose encapsulates
a number of issues concerning the purpose of collecting, and intended
use. This will also seek to prevent the unnecessary retention
of multiple copies in more than one location other than for access
purposes.
— Affordability recognises that
there are significant costs associated with the acquisition process,
long-term storage and access, which must be balanced against cultural
significance and fitness for purpose.
4. REMIT AND
EFFECTIVENESS OF
RELEVANT ORGANISATIONS
The remit and effectiveness of DCMS, the Museums,
Libraries and Archives Council and other relevant organisations
in representing cultural interests inside and outside Government.
— As noted above, the UK Film
Council is currently working with the Museums, Libraries and Archives
Council as well as with the BFI, Regional Screen Agencies and
others to formulate a UK-wide Film Archives Strategy. The level
of co-operation on this project from all parties is to be welcomed
and the opportunity which must be grasped by all concerned is
how to ensure that the Archives are fully supported and funded
for the future.
September 2006
42 Improving access to, and education about, the moving
image through the British Film Institute, report by the Comptroller
and auditor General, HC 593 Session 2002-03: 11 April 2003. Back
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