BFI announces “pillars” of its Five Year Plan For Film

BFI CEO Amanda Nevill today disclosed the “three pillars” of the BFI’s Five Year Forward Plan For Film, which it will formally announce later this year.

Nevill said the Plan would be “broadly structured around three pillars” consisting of “a major commitment to education and a better deal for audiences across the UK; an emphasis on creating a supportive home for filmmakers across the value chain; and new initiatives to unlock our film heritage.”

Nevill told a gathering of UK industry at a Westminster Forum Projects seminar that the BFI will launch its industry consultation on the Plan on May 14th, and that the BFI and the government will officially respond to Chris Smith’s Film Policy Review on the same day.

She told the audience that the BFI will be consulting the industry on how it should spend the estimated £57m it is likely to receive from the Lottery in each of the next five years.

Nevill said the main thrust of the Five Year Forward Plan would be “bold” and that the BFI would “try things it hadn’t done before.”

“The Future Plan is going to be heavily influenced by the Film Policy Review,” said Nevill. “Our emphasis is going to be on the innovative and the entrepeneurial. It is up to us to take risks that private money can not and to grow future generations of audiences. We’ll be investing in new voices as well as established voices”.

Nevill added: “There will be a fresh approach to film education; a fresh approach to building audiences; a fresh approach within the BFI itself to bring new thinking to its creative, industrial and cultural role; and a fresh approach to how we invest in development, production and distribution. We are determined to be bold and brave and we will try things we haven’t done before.”

During the seminar, Nevill broke down the level of public money invested in film last year and estimated that the BFI would have around £57m in Lottery funding to invest in the UK industry in each of the next five years, above and beyond its government grant in aid:

“Last year close on £350m worth of public money was invested in UK film. This was made up primarily of the £200m from our highly effective tax relief, government grant in aid, Lottery money and broadcaster investment.

“Of that £350m, the money available for the BFI to invest is circa £79m… £22m is the grant in aid from government… £14m of this goes to the BFI for our directly funded activities such as the national archive. We are able to generate another £26m from that £14m… The rest of the grant in aid mostly goes mostly to Creative England, Film London and Film Agency Wales…

“Then there is the approximately £57m per annum of Lottery funding. That is the estimate of what we think we’ll be able to spend over the next five years. It’s this Lottery money that we will be consulting on later this spring.

“We will also be entrepeneurial in raising money from other sources to complement our public funding. The question is how we can make the most difference with this investment,” she said.