Welcome to our final blog of the year! As we approach the end of 2021, we’d like to thank everyone who attended our courses, events or partnered with us in any way this year. We wish you a healthy and peaceful Christmas season and look forward to seeing you in the cinema in 2022.
ICO News
- As we head into the New Year, these continue to be difficult times for cinemas and film exhibitors across the UK. After today our office is closed until Tuesday 4 January, but do get in touch at info@independentcinemaoffice.org.uk with any queries and we’ll get back to you once we return.
- The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport are asking cinemas to join the #GetBoostedNow campaign and encourage their audiences to get the Covid-19 booster vaccine and strengthen their protection against the virus. Cinemas can find a suite of assets to use in-venue and on social media here.
- Thank you to everyone who joined us either in person or online for Screening Days this year! Our next event will be taking place in March, we’ll be opening registration for this early in the New Year.
- This year we launched our new online platform, the Cinema of Ideas. Our first event of 2022 will be on 18 January, when we’ll be joined by film programmer, curator, critic and filmmaker Tony Rayns for Part Two of his conversation with Simon Ward. Tickets are free and booking is open now.
- If you missed Part One of our conversation with Tony, a recording of that discussion is now available to view on the ICO YouTube channel, along with recordings of most of our Cinema of Ideas events to date.
- We’re looking for both an animator & a Disabled content creator to contribute to an upcoming programme on the Cinema of Ideas, see more details here.
- We’ve updated our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan with details of the work we’ve undertaken since May. This covers unconscious bias training undertaken by ICO staff, the development of our programming charter, trustee recruitment & more.
- Looking for something to keep you occupied over the Christmas break? Our online learning platform contains a suite of training courses which can be completed in your own time and at your own pace, including our newly-launched Practical Programming Online Course.
- As well as our online courses, our website is home to a wide array of resources and guides to help you with your film exhibition work. These include our guides to Good Governance and Cinema Audio, both of which were published this year.
- To round-off the year we shared some of our favourite film viewing experiences of 2021, read about them here.
Opportunities
- A further £30 million of funding will be made available through the Culture Recovery Fund, enabling more cultural organisations in England to apply for support during the winter. Full details here.
- The Scottish Government has announced a £21 million support package to aid cultural and events organisations and freelancers experiencing cancellations due to the rapid spread of the new Omicron variant. See details here.
- Cinema For All is now recruiting for the next round of their popular coaching programme Sustain – helping community cinemas to build on the sustainability of their group and return to regular screenings.
- There are currently roles available at BFI Flare, Glasgow Film Festival, ComScore, Open City Documentary Festival, Olympic Studios, Flatpack and more.
- TAPE Community Film and Music is providing access support to those who want to apply for funding from the BFI or the Film Audience Network.
- The Women’s Film Heritage Global Networking Symposium runs online from 10-14 January 2022 and aims to make the role of women and their films more visible in the global film archives. Register here.
- Co-curated by T A P E Collective and Invisible Women, TOUCHED is a new film programme which celebrates female and non-binary desire. After premiering at the London Short Film Festival in January, the programme will go on a UK-wide tour in February. Get in touch if you’d like to host a screening.
- A couple of festival dates for your diaries: Borderlines Film Festival’s 20th edition will run in a hybrid format from 4-20 March and Cinema Rediscovered will take place in Bristol from 20-24 July.
Good reads/watches/listens
- Why the Chinese Visual Festival mattered
- Decolonise our planet, a new programme on environmental justice streaming on Shasha
- Ramu Aravindan speaks about his father and his film Kummatty for Archive Screening Days
- The silences of the silent era
- On watching Maeve
- Sight and Sound’s 50 best films of 2021
- Elhum Shakerifar’s keynote talk for Folkestone Documentary Festival
- An interview with Ryusuke Hamaguchi
- Film Comment’s top 20 undistributed films of 2021
- Sergei Loznitsa’s favourite non-fiction films
- The best film posters of the year
- Moviegoing memories with Radu Jude
- The year in archive cinema
- The coolest cinemas in the world
- On the work of Binka Zhelyazkova, the first woman narrative filmmaker in Bulgaria
Header image: The Souvenir Part II (dir. Joanna Hogg, 2021). Image courtesy of Picturehouse Entertainment.