Greg Dyke's response to DCMS proposals

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

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

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

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

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