ICO news
- It’s time for some song and dance! Bookings for our BFI Musicals tour are now open. Our menu of 12 films offers you some of the world’s most acclaimed and classic musicals as well as underseen titles ripe for discovery. How about programming a singalong screening of Calamity Jane or offering your audiences a rare opportunity to see the British 1930s treasure First a Girl (pictured) on the big screen?
- Organised as a tw0 day event for the first time this year, our I.D. Screening Days (Inclusion & Diversity) is all about giving you the practical insights, inspiration and confidence needed to make sure your cinema is a welcoming space for everyone. Registration for this key event is now open and we are offering a limited number of early bird passes for only £20 (1 day) or £40 (2 days), including refreshments and lunch. Join us at Broadway Nottingham this 26-27 September!
- Don’t forget that we have a fantastic selection of archive titles available for booking as well. This year’s new additions are New Towns, Our Town, a unique feature-length archive film programme that reveals how New Towns have been continually reshaped by the public imagination; as well as the latest two programmes in our popular Britain on Film tour, Protest! and Welcome to Britain.
- Developing Your Film Festival, our training course for film festival professionals is currently taking place in the beautiful Polish city of Wroclaw. Keep your eye on our Twitter channel for live tweets from the sessions, offering some great tips from the expert speakers.
- Calling all film marketers! We’re currently recruiting for two marketing roles. Love musicals? Apply now to be our BFI Musicals Marketing Campaign Coordinator. Love all things social media? We’re looking for a Freelance Marketer to join our team.
Opportunities
- Expressions of interest for venue-based and regional project proposals (for up to £12k) are now open for the next BFI Blockbuster season: Musicals! Send your fantastic ideas over to Film Hub Midlands by 2 August.
- FAN members! Distributor Slate Days will take place at Picturehouse Central this 17-18 September. To register, get in touch with your Film Hub.
- Mark your calendars: the next Europa Cinemas Network Conference will take place in Lisbon 21-24 November.
- Do you need specialist advice for your venue, programme or festival? Film exhibition experts can help you with 1-2-1 advice sessions via the FAN Advice and Experience Scheme, offering half-day sessions tailored to your specific needs and questions – from programming to projection!
- This Way Up is a two-day UK film exhibition conference packed full of ideas and debates to inspire and enlighten, provoke and challenge. This year’s edition will take place at Broadway Cinema, Nottingham on 3-4 December.
- Film societies and community cinemas: The application deadline for Filmbankmedia’s Innovation Fund is 31 July. Don’t miss this fantastic opportunity!
- John Brabourne Awards offer up to £5000 in financial grants to emerging film and TV talent. Applications are now open until 31 July.
- The next film to receive FAN New Releases support is Penny Lane’s documentary Hail Satan?, in cinemas from 23 August. Talk to your Film Hub about additional marketing support if you’d like to screen the film.
- Looking for a bursary to cover the cost of couriering equipment to and from your community cinema? Check out Cinema for All’s Doorstep Fund.
- More good news from our friends at Cinema For All: they will be supporting five collaborative projects where community cinemas work together to create something exciting and special for their collective communities! Deadline for applications is 30 September.
- The Association of Moving Image Archivists, the world’s largest organisation of moving image preservation specialists is making their Archival Screening Night available for worldwide bookings. This package offers 22 films and videos in 110 minutes from archives and archivists around the world, featuring a promotion for a lost Thai film and an anti-drug commercial with Alice in Wonderland, to name a few. To book and for more details, get in touch with AMIA’s President Dennis Doros.
- BFI Flare, the British Council and BFI NETWORK are partnering to commission three new short films from cross-cultural teams collaborating to explore LGBTQ+ stories. Apply for #MOREFilms4Freedom by 6 August!
- Nominations for this year’s WFTV Awards are now open: don’t miss this great opportunity to give a shout out to exceptional women working in film and TV today.
- The second theme of Changing Times is Shifting Ground: an exploration of people’s changing relationship with their environment and a response to one of the most pressing issues facing society today. Led by Film Hub North, their engagement fund is now open for applications from FAN members.
- Looking for some cinema seats? Nottingham’s Broadway Cinema is renovating their screens and still has some cinema seats available to a new home. If you’re a venue or a collector and interested, please contact the team at seats@broadway.org.uk
Good reads
- Chance the Rapper was Lion King’s ‘Nostalgia Consultant’, but that’s hardly the oddest film job title ever. The Guardian listed six surreal jobs you didn’t know the movies required.
- “Chimpanzees watching a video together get the same sense of bonding and closeness that humans can feel from watching a movie or TV show together”. New research shows how humans and apes alike know that cinema really is the best pastime.
- Read a fascinating case study on our film heritage project New Towns, Our Town – Stories on Screen on The Bigger Picture. This audience feedback says it all: “Very useful for the young or those without experience of the New Towns…it sparked many memories”.
- Film ticket prices are going slightly down in the United States which analysts say is a good sign, despite this summer’s cinematic slowness at the box office. Vanity Fair reports how the decrease can be attributed to a number of factors, including theatre promotions, discounts, and theatrical subscription services.
- “After decades of older generations portraying the age group inaccurately, a new wave of auteurs are shaking up the film industry.”
- Screen Daily reports how Ron Howard’s Pavarotti is set to become the first major documentary to be given a wide theatrical release in Saudi Arabia following the lifting of its 30-year-cinema ban nearly two years ago.
- Distributed by the independent powerhouse A24, Lulu Wang’s indie film The Farewell has beaten Avengers: Endgame for the year’s best per-theatre average at US box office.
- This July, the ICO turned sixteen. To celebrate, we asked what our team members’ favourite films where at that tender age. From Hackers to The Big Boss, here are the results.