Our regular monthly update featuring the latest news and opportunities for your cinema, festival or film society.
ICO News
- We are delighted to have been reappointed as the Lead Organisation for Film Hub South East! Over the next three years we will continue to deliver BFI FAN activity to support film exhibitors in the region, nurture filmmaking talent through BFI NETWORK South East, and empower 16 to 25-year-olds to develop in the film industry through BFI Film Academy Plus. Read more here.
- In-person passes for Spring Screening Days are now sold out! However, online passes will remain on sale until Friday 3 March, with 19 of the 24 titles in the programme available to watch from home – including One Fine Morning, The Eight Mountains, Return to Seoul and more. Check out the full programme here.
- This month we launched a new online learning course on Screening Films in your Community. Featuring case studies from Invisible Women and The Other Screen, this course will give you the skills and inspiration needed to start a film club or community cinema from scratch.
- Our season of contemporary cinema from Myanmar is now our most popular event on The Cinema of Ideas to date! If you haven’t tuned in yet, it’s streaming on the platform for free until Sunday and now features a roundtable discussion between some of the poets and filmmakers featured in the programme.
- We recently sat down with Ros Cranston, Curator of Nonfiction Film and Television at the BFI National Archive, to discuss The Camera is Ours – our programme highlighting the work of Britain’s pioneering women documentary makers through five beautifully restored short films from the 1930s to late 60s. Watch the interview here.
- Writing for our blog, Hippodrome Silent Film Festival’s FEDS trainee James Mennie considered how the fragility of archive film material can deepen the experience of watching silent cinema, and the ways in which archive film can be used to motivate new considerations of cinematic form and history. Read James’ article here.
- We are seeking a personable and inquisitive freelancer to help us update our database of film contacts. This project will consist of a minimum of ten day’s work, which will need to be completed by 31 March 2023. The deadline to apply is Tuesday 28 February – read more and apply here.
Opportunities
- Applications are now open for the BFI National Lottery Open Cinemas Fund. The £2.7m pilot aims to boost engagement with independent film by developing a programme of regular free screenings for new audiences at independent cinemas in the UK.
- This Way Up, the annual independent cinema conference, took place in December last year at Dundee Contemporary Arts. If you weren’t able to attend, captioned videos of all the sessions are now available to watch online.
- Hello Culture: SIGN of the Times is a series of four public Zoom masterclasses with leaders in the cultural and digital sectors. The first session will take place on 27 February and will feature a discussion with Iyare Igiehon, Creative Diversity Partner at the BBC, about his career journey and how diversity is transforming what we watch and listen to, and who makes it.
- As part of their Relaxed Cinema Project, Beacon Films is hosting an information session on Friday 24 February aimed at cinema staff who are working to help their venue become more accessible for disabled and/or neurodivergent people. Register here.
- Reaching New Audiences is new one-day event from the Arts Marketing Association giving marketers the chance to think differently about who their audiences are and who they could be, and to develop a working plan to adapt your current approaches to engage with wider groups of audiences. It’s taking place on Thursday 16 March at The Hellenic Centre in London.
- The New Curators Project is an annual programme run by UCL Special Collections and Newham Heritage Month which offers ten young adults in East London the chance to develop the skills and experience needed to start a career in the cultural heritage sector. Applications are now open for their 2023 programme.
- The Film and TV Charity has released the results of the 2022 Looking Glass Survey, which shows that progress is starting to be felt in our industry when it comes to tackling poor mental health. See the full report here.
- There are currently roles available at MUBI, London Film Festival, Watershed, Klassiki, LUX, Olympic Studios, and more.
- Otherness Archive is a new digital archive documenting queer cinema and its pioneers, with the aim of countering the historic censorship of homosexual, trans and racial themes. You can explore the archive here.
- Grierson DocLab, the Grierson Trust’s new entrant training scheme, supports 12 successful trainees as they embark on the early stages of their careers in factual TV and documentary. The programme seeks UK-based new entrants aged 18-25 with a passion for documentaries. The deadline for applications is 5pm, Friday 24 February.
- London-based young creatives aged 18-30 with a passion for creating compelling content and a desire for a career in media can now apply for six weeks of free intensive digital media training delivered by MAMA Youth and the BAFTA-winning Licklemor Productions. See further details here.
Upcoming festivals & seasons
- Borderlines Film Festival is nearly here! It’s running from 3 – 19 March in 22 venues across Herefordshire, Shropshire, Malvern and The Marches – check out the full programme here.
- The 21st edition of Polish film festival Kinoteka takes place 9 March – 27 April in London. Organised by the Polish Cultural Institute and supported by the Polish Film Institute, this year’s edition features an exciting line-up that spans over 60 years of Polish cinema.
- Tickets are now on sale for the 18th edition of Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, taking place 3–5 March in Berwick-upon-Tweed.
- Wales One World Film Festival (WOW), the UK’s only festival dedicated principally to films from Africa, Asia & Latin America, is back this year! The festival is touring across Wales in March before going online for a week from 31 March – 7 April. Explore the programme here.
- Glasgow Film Festival returns 1-12 March, with screenings taking place at Glasgow Film Theatre, at selected venues across the city, the festival’s online player, and in venues across the UK.
- The Essay Film Festival returns 25-31 March with a wide-ranging selection of screenings and events at the ICA and Birkbeck Cinema. The programme features a restoration of Ruchir Joshi’s classic Eleven Miles, Med Hondo’s examination of the lives of migrant workers in 70s France, an exploration of Sergei Eisenstein’s time in Mexico, and more!
- As part of Reflections and Refractions: Gender on Screen, a season of film that invites you to reflect on cinema’s inclusive good intentions and refract from narrow-minded portrayals, Watershed in Bristol are screening Girl Lost on Sunday 26 February.
- Glasgow Short Film Festival is back from 22-26 March! Programme highlights include a focus on contemporary Lebanese short films, a retrospective of award-winning artist duo Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca, and a screening of our Right of Way new commissions.
- The 2023 edition of the UK’s largest queer film event, BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival, will run from 15-26 March at BFI Southbank, with a selection of shorts available to watch for free UK-wide on BFI Player. Industry accreditation is open until 3 March.
Good reads/watches/listens
- Stories, research & advice for film programmers to champion trans-led and trans-loved cinema
- How to get a job as a film festival programmer
- Remembering the Scala, London’s classiest and trashiest cinema
- Who gets to be seen in love? Maya Cade on Black intimacy in cinema
- If We Demand Wondrous Cinema Palaces, Will They Build Them?
- Who was Muriel Box, Britain’s most prolific female film director?
- Watershed’s February 2023 Cinema Podcast
- Cinemasters: Sarah Polley programme notes
- Senses of Cinema Issue 104
- Sunshine State: Steve McQueen’s haunting art installation
- The Cinematologists Podcast: Akira Kurosawa at the BFI (w/ Asif Kapadia and Ian Hayden Smith)
- Censor director Prano Bailey-Bond on her favourite short films
- Nathalie Olah on Aftersun
- Little White Lies’ Truth & Movies Podcast: Rotterdam Festival Report
- Film Comment Podcast: Sundance 2023 [Link to ep1 of 8]
- The Upper West Side Needs More Art Film Screens
- A discussion on cinema past and future with Apichatpong Weerasethakul
- Berlin Critics’ Week 2023 magazine
- An interview with Danny Lyon
- A primer on British erotica
- How Garrett Bradley uses archival material to reimagine the present
- On the shape-shifting work of Alexander Hammid
- Annie Ernaux and Céline Sciamma on feminisms past and present
- A roundtable on Afrofuturism
- Jia Zhangke in conversation with Dennis Zhou
- On David Lynch’s lamps
We post our news & opportunities round-up on the final Thursday of each month. Have something you want included? Email Jake at: jake.abatan@independentcinemaoffice.org.uk
Header image: from One Fine Morning, screening at Spring Screening Days 2023.