Our regular monthly update featuring the latest news and opportunities for your cinema, festival or film society.
ICO News
- Apply before tomorrow’s early deadline for the best chance of securing a place on the ICO’s flagship Cultural Cinema Exhibition course, running Jan 12-17, 2025 in London. This intensive course features contributions from industry leaders and alumni have gone on to find top jobs at the BFI, Picturehouse, Curzon Cinemas, Watershed, Sheffield DocFest, Altitude, the Barbican and film festivals around the world. Watch a recording of our recent online information session to find out more from the course leaders. The final application deadline is 15 Nov.
- Founded last year, the International Film Festival Network continues to grow and evolve, this month welcoming MINT Chinese Film Festival to the membership. Be sure to check out their ‘Women Hold Up Half the Sky: Mint on Tour’ season, visiting venues across Scotland until late October. To find out more about the IFFN and how your festival could join the network, click here to apply via our website today.
- In-person passes for Autumn Screening Days are nearly sold out. Join us at Broadway, Nottingham (15-18 Nov) for an extensive line up of previews including Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain, Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night and Raoul Peck’s new documentary Ernest Cole: Lost and Found. Passes for the online selection (18-24 Nov) are also still available.
- In advance of next year’s Archive Screening Days, the ICO is hosting an open call for guest speakers and curators. If you have a presentation, panel, workshop or film programme which can tour indie cinemas we’d love to hear from you. Click here to apply via our website, deadline 25 Oct.
- Celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba with a breathtaking new restoration. Revolutionary in a number of ways, this film would be a great complement to future film seasons and is available in the original Spanish with English subtitles. Bookable via the Independent Cinema Office.
Opportunities & Resources
- Develop your Carbon Literacy this November with Historic England and BFI Film Audience Network in their new online training course, designed for film exhibitors working with heritage buildings. The course has a limited capacity so early application is recommended, click here to apply for the course.
- Arthouse Cinema Hub is running a free online Marketing workshop for independent cinemas with specialist Berlin agency Alphapanda on 3rd October at 3pm (UK time). Register before 1st October.
- The BFI is inviting applications from disabled film professionals to join a Group Attendance trip to participate in the industry activities, IFFR Pro, of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) from 1 to 5 February 2025. Applications close 10am on 1 Oct, apply via the BFI today.
- Explore some of the biggest leadership topics and challenges faced by cultural organisations at this year’s Governance Now 2024: Imagine it Different In London from 6 Nov
- As part of BFI FAN’s Art of Action, T A P E Collective and Invisible Women are celebrating the high-octane world of 1960s Mexican pulp cinema with two recently restored films from director René Cardona in their She Packs a Punch Film UK Tour.
- The BFI National Lottery Screen Heritage Individual Skills Bursary is open for applications from UK screen heritage with individual skills awards of up to £10,000.
- Remember the influential German filmmaker, critic, and curator with screenings of his works throughout October in Revisiting Harun Farocki: Images & War, Acting & Indoctrination, hosted by the Goethe Institute London and Birkbeck Institute of the Moving Image.
- Join the British Deaf Association (BDA) for an intensive. 3hr training course highlighting the fundamentals of Deaf Awareness, as well as the various tools available for D/deaf communities and the film organisations aiming to be accessible to them. This training in London (dates 30 Sept-2 Oct) and online (dates TBC) is available thanks to Paramount Pictures – please email info@independentcinemaoffice.org.uk to be put in touch.
Good Reads
Anna Highfield in Architects’s Journal on preserving the UK’s 20th century Art Deco cinemas
Zoe Williams for the Guardian on the ethical questions around continuing to use X
Emerson Goo for MUBI on what it means to be an ‘international’ film festival
The Arts Professional report that ‘Foundations granted arts more than £200m during pandemic’.
Lillian Crawford for the BFI on why context and content signaling matter at relaxed screenings.
Header image: Saturday Night (dir. Jason Reitman) courtesy of Sony Pictures Releasing