ICO news
- While getting ready for Spring Screening Days this weekend, we’re delighted to announce that registration for our Young Audiences Screening Day is now open! Don’t miss out on this popular event and grab your early bird ticket before Friday 15 March.
- In further exciting news, we’ve also confirmed the dates for ALL upcoming Screening Days until next spring. Mark your calendars for: Summer Screening Days (6-7 July 2019, Depot, Lewes), I.D. Screening Days (26-27 September, Broadway Nottingham), Autumn Screening Days (9-11 November 2019, Showroom Sheffield), Archive Screening Day (5 December 2019, BFI Southbank, London) and Spring Screening Days (7-9 March 2020, BFI Southbank, London). We’ll be opening registration for these events before long so watch this space!
- We’ve also announced the next two programmes in our popular Britain on Film tour: Protest! and Welcome to Britain. During a time of intense political turmoil, growing public activism and ongoing debates, these programmes offer a chance to explore a century of protest and new arrivals to the UK via varied and fascinating footage hailing from around the country. Both of these titles are now available for booking with subsidised terms and in cinemas 22 March. You can also see a preview screening of Britain on Film: Welcome to Britain! at London’s Migration Museum on 7 March and Britain on Film: Protest! at Winter Gardens Film Festival on 17 March.
- It’s getting closer: our next Developing Your Film Festival (DYFF) training course will take place at New Horizons Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland this 22-28 July and we’ll be opening applications on 4 April.
- Our new archive film project New Towns, Our Town – Stories on Screen is currently bringing a touch of archive film magic to the South East of England. If you live in Hemel Hempstead, Stevenage, Harlow or Crawley and know a community organisation or group that would like to organise a FREE screening of local archive films, drop us a line at info@independentcinemaoffice.org.uk.
- To accompany our The Personal is Political: The Films of Margarethe von Trotta tour we’ve commissioned some exciting new writing on the influence and importance of von Trotta’s films. Explore the current selection and bookmark the site for upcoming pieces! The films are available for both theatrical and non-theatrical bookings until October 2019.
Opportunities
- Do you need advice on attracting new audiences or does your venue have a technical issue that needs fixing? The FAN Advice and Experience Scheme’s expert advisors offer FREE 1-2-1 advice on any aspect of the film sector.
- Inclusive Cinema has been collaborating with Dimension and UKCA to produce an autism-friendly screenings toolkit for cinemas, working towards wider provision of autism-friendly screenings for audiences across the UK. If you are running an autism-friendly/a relaxed screening that you’d like to include in the campaign’s publicity during April, please submit it to Inclusive Cinema using this online form. You can also share a case study with them by downloading and completing this template and sending it with an image to includeme@filmhubwales.org.
- Calling all aspiring film critics! Applications are now open for Cinema Rediscovered’s 2019 Film Critics’ Workshop: participants will receive a full festival pass and year’s free subscription to online streaming platform MUBI. Apply by 15 March.
- Early bird passes are now also on sale for this year’s Cinema Rediscovered. Enjoy the finest digital restorations, contemporary classics, film print rarities and discover some lesser known cinematic voices!
- Industry accreditation for the 2019 BFI Flare: London LGBTQ+ Film Festival closes on Friday 8 March. Register and apply now to access a rich programme of films, events, talks and professional networking!
- The Women’s Histories Film Menu is your latest opportunity to get involved with the Film Audience Network’s nationwide season of screen heritage events, running until May 2019. Explore which five titles are available to book at reduced rates and you can access up to £500 to enhance your screenings with guest speakers, bespoke marketing materials or accompanying shorts.
- Filmmakers! Submissions are now open for a wide array of great festivals, such as the 15th Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival, Underwire Festival, Margate Film Festival, The Smalls and the BFI London Film Festival.
- It’s time for some song and dance: This year’s BFI Blockbuster tour will celebrate the magic of musicals. Submit your expression of interest (for national project proposals between £12k-30k) to Film Hub Midlands by 22 March.
- The winning Depict ’18 short films are available to screen FREE of charge this year. Click here for more info on booking.
- Assembly is Open City Documentary Festival’s new £10,000 development lab for international filmmakers working on their first or second feature. Deadline for applications is Friday 3 May.
- After a 10-year hiatus, the ¡Viva! Tour of UK cinemas is back! ¡Viva! Spanish & Latin American Film Festival brings the best new cinema from Spain and Spanish-speaking Latin America to Manchester every year; this 22 March – 23 June, seven films from the main festival are available to book via a financially subsidised touring programme. The touring films all foreground female creative talent in the roles of director, writer, producer or star. Click here for further details.
- If you’re an exhibitor in the South East, don’t forget to become a member of Film Hub South East and gain access to fantastic opportunities and schemes across the region.
- Applications for The FLAMIN Fellowship are now open! This is a great development and commissioning scheme for early-career artist filmmakers. Apply by 29 April.
Good reads
- “Some industry players worry the awards themselves have become less meaningful to the broader public, with movies taking a backseat to prestigious television shows. And the Oscars brand itself has suffered from a steep decline in television ratings and a series of self-inflicted crises.” Despite the spending, many in the film industry increasingly question the economic and cultural value of the awards.” LA Times asks what an Oscar win is worth today both economically and culturally.
- Explore this great list of films directed by female filmmakers to look forward to in 2019, including High Life, The Third Wife and Rafiki from our Spring Screening Days line-up.
- “I want everyone who loves film and wants to learn more about it to get involved, because this is giving us skills we can use in any walk of life.” We spoke to Jasmine Alice, one of The Palace Cinema’s BENSHI Programmers about her experience of being a Film Hub South East Young Programmer.
- Our film programmers Heather McIntosh and Isabel Moir watched over 40 films at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. Find out which titles stayed with them the most, whether a new title not yet picked up for UK distribution or a classic restoration.
- “The 2019 Oscars is the end of a journey for many films. But where did they begin?” Screen Daily looks into which film festivals are the most successful for launching an Oscar hopeful.
- “Young people, from all backgrounds and regardless of prior educational achievement, must be given options and opportunities to develop the skills they and we need for jobs in the sector.” Arts Professional reports how the youngest segment of the UK workforce is still significantly under-represented in cultural professions: just 2% of the cultural sector is made up of people aged 16-19, despite these making up 3.2% of the working population – a representation gap of over a third.
- Tune in to Best Girl Grip’s episode 5 where our FEDS alumna, Gower Street’s Box Office Analyst Delphine Lievens talks about her experience in the film industry and the importance of our FEDS scheme.
- “30 years on, we’re not exactly sitting on a superior answer for measuring the movie industry’s gender imbalance.” FiveThirtyEight reached out to over a dozen writers, directors, actors and producers to ask what they think the next Bechdel Test should be.
- The legacy of our Revolt, She Said: Women and Film after ’68 tour lives on in this great piece by Another Gaze.