Our regular monthly update featuring the latest news and opportunities for your cinema, festival or film society.
ICO News
- The deadline to complete our UK Film Exhibition Workforce Survey is 6pm tomorrow, Friday 29 April. If you haven’t had a chance to do so yet – please take the survey and share it with your colleagues, both within and outside of your organisation. The survey will help us get a picture of the industry’s workforce, to see whether it’s reflective of UK society and to understand what our sector’s training needs are.
- Following the recent landmark season at BFI Southbank highlighting Britain’s pioneering women documentary makers, we’re now delighted to be making a select programme of these revelatory films available for cinemas and community screens to book from Friday 3 June. Get in touch to screen The Camera is Ours: Britain’s Women Documentary Makers in your venue.
- Registration is now open for Young Audiences Screening Days, an essential event for film exhibitors of all kinds looking to inspire and attract young audiences. This year’s event will take place online on 8 June and in-person at Depot, Lewes on 10 June. We’ve already confirmed the first film of the event, Girl Picture, and we’ll be announcing details of the rest of the programme in the coming weeks.
- We’ve also confirmed the in-person dates and locations for all of our Screening Days events for the year running April 2022 – March 2023. Mark your diaries!
- Last week we were joined on the Cinema of Ideas by curator, artist and writer George Clark to explore the history of one of the ICO’s most memorable artist moving image curatorial projects, ICO Essentials: The Secret Masterpieces of Cinema from 2008. If you missed the live conversation, you can now watch a recording on our YouTube channel (along with recordings of many of our past Cinema of Ideas events to date).
- We’re looking for new pieces for our blog! If you have an idea for an article about film exhibition which you’d like us to commission, please read our blog guidelines in the first instance. If you think your pitch is a good fit, please get in touch.
Opportunities
- The BFI is currently developing a new 10-year National Lottery strategy, setting out what they want to achieve as a distributor of funding from 2023-2033. They want to hear from as many people as possible about what they think about the emerging strategy framework, through an online survey and a series of online discussion events. You can find further information here.
- Kyiv International Short Film Festival (KISFF) is looking for partners to organise charitable screenings to raise funds for humanitarian needs in Ukraine amid the ongoing war with Russia. They’re open to cooperation with UK cinemas, festivals, film clubs, distributors, and any other kind of organisation who’d like to get involved. They can offer several classic Ukrainian films and more recent titles exploring Ukrainian culture, as well as programmes of short films — all subtitled in English and supplied with the necessary promotional materials. Funds raised will go to frontline charitable initiatives that KISFF are working with, such as Zgraya and UAnimals. For more information, contact Alika Kharchenko at KISFF.
- Applications are now open for the 2022 BFI Film Academy Specialist Programming course, a training programme giving 16 to 19-year-olds across the UK the chance to learn about film programming, marketing and distribution and eventually put on their own film festival.
- A new film season from Film Hub Wales, A Roof of Slate for Every House celebrates the UNESCO world heritage status of the North West Wales slate landscape and explores its lesser-known connections to colonialism and slavery. Exhibitors across the UK can get in touch to access short archival films, features and contemporary documentaries, with budget available to support event costs.
- Reel Roots: Windrush is the first of a two-part series exploring Blackness in Britain, curated by The New Black Film Collective with support from Film Hub Scotland. The programme provides a spotlight on Black people of Caribbean heritage who have resided in the UK since the Windrush generation, and on the fruits of their culture in cinema. Exhibitors can select from a programme of features and shorts to create their own screenings. See full information here.
- This year’s Film Feels funding programme is offering up to £10,000 for organisations to present special film events and engagement activity relating to the theme ‘Curious’. For organisations looking to go live with activity in July, the deadline to apply is Monday 2 May.
- Bird’s Eye View is looking to commission a written response to Leah Purcell’s The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson from an early career (of any age) UK-based film writer, curator, critic or poet. Submit your pitch by Monday 2 May.
- Last Friday, 22 April, was Earth Day. To learn how to make your venue more environmentally sustainable, read our Green Cinema Toolkit.
- This year’s Flatpack Film Camp will take place in Birmingham on Thursday 19 May and will once again gather together film exhibitors to share their wealth of experience as well as discuss new models and ways of thinking. Check out the lineup here.
- The Audience Agency has updated their Audience Spectrum segmentation tool to enable organisations to get a more detailed view of their community through a new layer of subsegments and enhanced resources.
- There’s only a few days left to book for this year’s Screen Heritage Conference, which focuses on questions around how the medium can reconnect and strengthen communities. Students and under-25s can take advantage of a reduced ticket rate of £15.
- There are currently roles available at Showroom, Comscore, Queen’s Film Theatre, Picturehouse Entertainment, the BFI, Watershed and more.
- The seventh edition of FRAMES of REPRESENTATION, the ICA’s annual film festival, kicks off next week! Conceived around the theme of ‘Communality’, the festival includes 8 days of screenings, discussions, workshops, live performances and more.
- Applications are now open for the second round of FLAMIN Animations, a new programme of commissions for four early-career black-identifying artist animators living in the UK.
Good reads/watches/listens
- A complete podcast guide to making a short film
- 15 indie cinemas from around the world that are thriving post-pandemic
- On the benefits of connecting with younger audiences
- The Film Foundation’s Restoration Screening Room
- Six Brazilian films about women and work
- The second edition of Prismatic Ground, a festival of experimental documentary and avant-garde film
- An introduction to the Feminist Film Collectives of the 1960s and ’70s
- FEDS Trainee Aagya Pradhan on Payal Kapadia’s A Night of Knowing Nothing
- One of the UK’s oldest cinemas comes back from the dead
- The Film Distributors’ Association’s 2022 Yearbook
- The 50 Best Films of the New Millennium (Not Based on Existing IP)
- Black Montage: The Video Art of Ulysses Jenkins
- A spotlight on editor Gloria Schoemann
- Why the UK’s boutique cinema sector continues to grow despite pandemic challenges
- On Cinema Reborn 2022
- The best British films of the 21st century
- The Cannes 2022 Official Selection
- On Kazuo Hara’s dedicated lives
- Pasolini and the Queer Revolution in Beirut
- Inside Ukraine’s film archive
Header image: Girl Picture (dir. Alli Haapasalo), courtesy of Vertigo Releasing.