Opportunities
- Applications are open to the BFI Cultural Recovery Fund for Independent Cinemas in England. The £30m fund has two components – one off Safety grants to help cinemas make their venues safe for staff and audiences, and Business Sustainability grants to underpin ongoing organisational viability. Apply by Friday 30 October.
- The deadline for applications to the FAN Film Exhibition Fund is 5pm, Wednesday 30 September. The purpose of the fund is to support FAN members to resume cultural film programming and engage a broad and diverse audience as they navigate reopening.
- The Film and TV Charity has launched a new Covid-19 Recovery Fund focused on protecting the diversity of our industry for the future. The fund will provide financial and wellbeing support to help recipients sustain their careers through and out of the pandemic.
- Screen Scotland has opened applications to the Independent Cinema Recovery and Resilience Fund. The fund aims to bridge the financial gap faced by independently owned cinemas in Scotland during reopening and will cover a proportion of venue fixed costs until the end of March 2021. Apply by Monday 5 October.
- Independent cinemas in Wales are among the venues eligible to apply to a £18.5m funding pot as part of the Welsh Government’s Cultural Recovery Fund. Grants of up to £150,000 are available, applications close on 2 October.
- Cinema For All has launched Lift, a new package to help volunteer-run cinemas reopen their doors. Lift includes a booking scheme with a wide range of titles available at discounted licence fees, a Community Venue Grant, the upcoming Filmbankmedia Virtual Screening Room and more.
- BIFA has launched #ThisIsYourCinema, a nationwide marketing campaign encouraging 16-25 year olds back to the cinema. The campaign aims to offer an additional promotional tool for releases of new independent films and showcase the best emerging British talent.
- Screen Moguls has launched GO.CINEMA, a service aimed at helping independent cinemas run digital marketing campaigns on a range of social media platforms and reach a targeted local audience.
- The Creative Industries Federation has released A Plan to Reimagine, a publication created by 100s of their members from across the UK to share ideas and identify opportunities for practical action to build the sector of the future.
- Aged 18-25 and interested in a career in the film industry? You can now register for BFI London Film Festival Film Academy Accreditation, which gives you access to Online Press and Industry screenings, Online Industry events and screenings in the LFF Education programme.
- The UK Disability Arts Alliance has published The Seven Principles for an Inclusive Recovery, a document which offers practical guidance to arts and cultural organisations to support disabled artists, audiences, visitors, participants and employees.
- Current film job listings include positions at Watershed, Film Hub South West, the BFI and Showroom Workstation.
- Leeds International Film Festival is seeking volunteers to join their team for this year’s edition of the festival in November. They have positions for both Virtual Volunteers to support the festival remotely and Venue Assistants to help run the physical festival screenings in Leeds.
- Indigo Ltd has launched the Culture Restart Toolkit, a new set of free tools for cultural organisations at all stages of reopening, providing vital audience insight for the sector over the next 6 months.
- To help organisations prepare for reopening, Spetrix has released a guide which explores audience segmentation and customer service policies, and consists of step-by-step guides, audience strategies and industry expertise.
- ExcludedUK is a grassroots organisation supporting those excluded from government Covid-19 support. It has launched a series of Lobby Weeks, bringing together affected constituents to meet their MPs online and discuss their concerns.
- If you missed Club des Femmes’ online weekender Between Us We Have Everything We Need, you can catch up with some of the events on their website until 30 September.
- The Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre has published new research on class imbalances in the UK’s creative industries. It found that only 16% of people in creative jobs are from working class backgrounds, a figure which has remained largely unchanged since 2014.
- Talent Exchange is a new platform supported by the Creative Industries Federation, providing creative people with the tools and training to transfer their skills into a new sector.
- BIFA has released some more sessions for its Unconscious Bias training programme. The course is delivered via Zoom and there are places available from October 2020.
- FAN have produced a document to help community cinemas and non-theatrical exhibitors keep their audiences and volunteers safe during Covid-19.
- The French Film Festival UK has released its early programme of titles available to book for this year’s festival, which will run in cinemas across the UK during November and December.
Screenings and events
- Back for its fourth year, Little Wing Film Festival is running online from now until Sunday 27 September. The festival screens films exclusively by students, graduates and new filmmakers, and curates sustainable rewards for the winners to try and tackle inequality in the creative industries.
- The official selection for Depict 2020 is now live! Watershed’s short film competition as part of Encounters Short Film Festival, this year’s competition features 22 short films plus a separate strand of films made in lockdown.
- The Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival is running online from 17 September – 11 October. Featuring a mix of film screenings, live events, podcasts and essays, the festival highlights some of the most distinctive works of new cinema and artists’ moving image being made around the world today.
- Running online from 26-30 September, this year’s Women Over Fifty Film Festival will showcase 58 short films made by or about older women. Festival passes are available on a sliding scale, with the standard pass priced at £7.50.
- The digital edition of Encounters Short Film Festival is now live! Running from 18 September – 11 October, the £10 digital pass gets you access to over 250 short films from some of the worlds best new and emerging filmmakers.
- On Monday 28 September, Ourscreen will launch a new Virtual Cinema service. The first event will be a screening of High Rise with an introduction from director Ben Wheatley, with 10% from every ticket sale going to support independent cinemas in the UK.
- The UK’s leading festivals of African cinema have teamed up to present We Are Tano: a showcase of the best contemporary African cinema from the past decade which will run online from 1-20 October.
- Sheffield Doc/Fest has announced its Autumn Programme, which will take place both in Sheffield and online. Running from 2 October – 15 November, the programme features four weekends of screenings, an art exhibition, talks and discussions.
- The programme for the BFI London Film Festival 2020 has been revealed. This year’s festival will take place both online and in cinemas across the UK from 7-18 October. Get your tickets while they last!
- Running from 24-25 October both online and at the Darlington Hippodrome, Women X is a film festival celebrating women and non-binary creatives in the film industry.
- This Way Up is going digital! The film exhibition innovation conference will take place 1-3 December, providing a programme of events, workshops, networking, and a space to reflect and share.
Good reads/good watches
- Racism in the UK: what needs to change and who needs to change it?
- This Work isn’t For Us
- The history of cinema projection in Britain
- Behind the scenes with the projectionists at Il Cinema Ritrovato
- Crowdfunding for a major project
- Discovering the lost cinemas of Leeds
- Irenosen Okojie responds to Claudette’s Star
- André Aciman recounts his most memorable cinema-going experience
- John Akomfrah pays tribute to Dalston’s Rio Cinema
- Photos which capture a film in one image
- The art of subtitling
- Cultural Activism and Covid-19: ExcludedUK and the film industry
- Why the Cinemateca Brasileira is close to collapse
- The history of Black British protest film
- The construction of glamourous and decorative cinemas between 1909-1945
- A spotlight on Sarah Jacobson
- Reopening experiences from Europe’s cinemas
- Guest speaker recordings from the early years of the Pacific Film Archive
- How to keep your social media accessible
- An analysis of the BFI Diversity Standards
ICO News
- Second Sight, our national film tour celebrating the UK’s Black Film Workshop Movement, is now available to book for both physical and online screenings. Second Sight incorporates key archive films from the period, as well as new short film commissions from contemporary film artists.
- A big thank you to the 110 people who applied to our DDM Online course. We’re sorry we weren’t able to accept everyone this time around, but we will also have an online version of the course available on our website later in the year.
- We have launched a blog series where we ask people to share a personal vision of what the future of film exhibition should look like. So far we have had manifestos on Accommodating D/deaf audiences during Covid-19, Valuing Caring Labour, The Power of Pricing and Programming, and A More Inclusive Future.
- To aid those affected by the Covid-19 crisis, we have collated a list of the support & resources available to cinemas and people working within the exhibition sector.
- Our Developing Your Film Festival online course can be accessed for £50. A great opportunity for film festival professionals looking to build on their existing skills and gain new insights from some of the industry’s leading experts.
- Our REACH: Stategic Audience Development online training course can be accessed for £50. If you’re looking to grow your audience and bring new people into your venue then this course is for you.
- We have lots of free online resources to help you evaluate your current strategy and consider future initiatives. These include our recently launched guide to Developing Visually Impaired Audiences and Green Cinema Toolkit.
- As ever, we’re here to help and support you. Get in touch at info@independentcinemaoffice.org.uk.