Welcome back to your monthly round-up from the ICO, featuring the latest opportunities for your cinema, festival, or film society and industry highlights from the UK and beyond.
ICO News
- Revisiting Your Cinema Business Model, BFI FAN’s essential business skills course for cinema leaders, returns this year. Delivered by the ICO, this course offers a structured learning programme and six-month mentorship to empower participants to develop sustainable business models and enable organisations to thrive long-term. The course is open to all BFI FAN members. Make sure to submit your application by 7 March.
- Read our latest report on Support and Growth for Independent Cinemas. By exploring the results of our recent survey, the report assesses the independent exhibition sector’s current financial health and how it could be best supported to unlock its potential for growth.
- Although in-person passes for Spring Screening Days have sold out, there is still time to pick up an online pass, which gives you access to 20 key new titles from 3 to 9 March!
- This month, the ICO welcomed two new client cinemas to our programming network: Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle, and Electric Palace, Harwich. Learn more about our programming services on our website or by emailing info@independentcinema.org.uk.
- Another member of the ICO Programming Network, this year’s Borderlines Film Festival will take place 28 February to 15 March! Coming to venues across Herefordshire, Shropshire, Malvern, and the Welsh Borders, the programme features independent titles, recent releases, and captivating classics. Tickets for all screenings are available now.
- Gain new skills and refresh existing ones at your own pace with our online training courses. These courses cover key topics such as programming, sustainability, and audience development – find out more and enrol today.
- One last place has become available on BFI FAN’s new short course Film Programming Essentials, delivered by the ICO, that kicks off on Monday, 3 March.
Resources and Opportunities
- CICAE’s Arthouse Cinema Training 2025 is now open for applications. Apply by 29 April to participate in this week-long intensive cinema management training course alongside exhibition professionals from around the world.
- Reclaim the Frame has announced the full programme for their Reclaim, Reframe, Rejoice Weekender, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Birds’ Eye View Film Festival over International Women’s Day weekend (7 to 9 March).
- The New Black Film Collective is hosting TNB XPO 2025, a five-day hybrid programme from 24 to 28 March that showcases Black excellence and encourages increased diversity within the screen and creative industries.
- The CIISA Standards are now live! Created following an eight-week consultation with representatives from across the creative industries, the framework sets out four minimum standards of behaviour expected across the creative industries to ensure safe and inclusive working environments.
- BFI Flare press and industry accreditation is open from now until 14 March. A pass grants access to industry talks, networking events, select screenings, and more.
- WorkWise for Screen is hosting two sessions at this year’s Media Business Forum in Belfast (12 March). The sessions will discuss the impact of new employment legislation on the UK screen sector and provide relevant legal guidance to employers and hirers.
- The Film and TV Charity recently published the findings of their 2024 survey into mental health and experiences of loneliness among film, TV, and cinema workers.
- Artswork is hosting a series of webinars intended to empower young people in the creative, cultural, and heritage sectors. Sign up today to learn about the benefits and practical steps to welcoming younger voices into your organisation.
- Chronic Youth Film Festival returns to the Barbican this April, celebrating the many faces of resilience and the power of collective agency through exclusive previews, engrossing documentaries, and an evocative shorts programme.
- The Ultimate Palace Picturehouse and the Centre for Research in the Arts are partnering to support an MA to uncover and document the cinema’s history and make it accessible to current and future audiences. Find out more and apply by 25 May 2025.
- The Impetus Leadership Academy (ILA) is open for applications until Sunday, 9 March. An 8-month fully-funded development programme, the ILA aims to support future leaders from ethnic minority backgrounds to progress into senior leadership roles in youth education or youth employment organisations.
Good Reads
- Are you curious about ICO training and events? Hear directly from participants, with articles from access>CINEMA’s Stephen McNeice on the Cultural Cinema Exhibition training course, Film Hub Scotland’s Anna Ireland who participated in the BFI FAN’s recent short course, Accessibility Across the Board, and the Flatpack Festival team who attended Archive Screening Days in Leeds.
- The British Council has published new research on the key issues young people (11 to 24) face when participating in arts & cultural activities and how creative practice responds to those needs.
- Read Portia Cobb’s interview with Zeinabu irene Davis for Metrograph, discussing the intersections of their practice and influences, from Afrodiasporic folklore to literary luminaries.
- Kate Maltby gives her views on the effectiveness of content warnings for the Guardian, reflecting on the changes in audience behaviour during the theatrical run of the new production, “The Years”.
- Learn about the importance of planning marketing strategies and the role of festivals in promoting indie films from veteran programmer and publicist Kathleen McInnis.
- Featuring contributions from filmmakers, archivists, and film scholars, “Stretching the Archives Toward a Global Women’s Film Heritage” is out now. By exploring the history of film, the book aims to address gaps in our shared histories, with a particular emphasis on feminist cultural memory and film heritage in the Global South.
- Lawrence Garcia writes for MUBI Notebook on the cinematic use of “subjective” camerawork and the questions this unsettled and unsettling effect raises.
Image credit: Still from Motel Destino (dir. Karim Aïnouz), featured in Spring Screening Days. Image courtesy of Curzon Film.