Wishing you a happy New Year from the ICO team!
ICO News
- Thank you to everyone who tuned in this month for our first ever Virtual Screening Days. 396 of you joined us for four days of preview screenings, panel sessions and discussions – we hope you found it valuable and came away with some food for thought as you make plans for 2021. We’ll be announcing details of our next Screening Days event in the New Year.
- In December we launched our new guide to Marketing for Independent Cinemas, which will help you think more strategically about the marketing and communications in your organisation. Download it here.
- Our marketing guide is part of a suite of new resources, including our recently launched Film Projection and Audience Development guides to inspire and help exhibitors throughout winter 2020/21.
- We’re working with Julie’s Bicycle to deliver free online training on making your cinema more environmentally sustainable. The training will take place across two workshops in January and February, register here.
- Our new Data-Driven Marketing online course is available to take on our Online Learning Platform, giving you and your team the chance to learn how to collect, analyse and act on data to engage more audiences. Enrol here.
- We published the second part of our conversation with Dr. June Givanni, Melanie Hoyes and Jan Asante about the return of the Black Film Bulletin and which filmmakers they would like to celebrate in this new iteration. Read it here.
- To round out our Second Sight Tour, we published two final pieces made in response to the tour – Jay Bernard’s poem Photographic Test and Reba Martin’s essay on B.O.S.S. Collective’s Collective Hum.
- As we head into the New Year, these continue to be very difficult times for cinemas and film exhibitors across the UK. Our office is closed until 7 January, but do get in touch at info@independentcinemaoffice.org.uk with any queries and we’ll get back to you once we return.
Opportunities
- From January 11-15 2021, Film Festival Alliance are hosting FilmEx: a virtual gathering for film exhibitors of all kinds. FilmEx will present conversations exploring the sustainability and future of the independent film exhibition industry and how it can and might be reimagined. Find out more and register here.
- Coming to cinemas around the UK in March 2021, BLIN! is a touring season of comedy classics from Russia and The Caucasus brought to you by the Kino Klassika Foundation. Find out more about the tour and opportunities for participating cinemas here.
- Are you an existing community cinema looking to further develop your skills and the sustainability of your cinema? Applications are now open for Cinema For All’s Sustain Shine coaching programme. Learn more and apply here.
- Creative England and the Creative Industries Federation are recruiting for two young people aged 18-25 to join the Creative UK board. Following a recent review, they are seeking two new board members who can better represent the voice of a youth demographic. Apply by 18 January.
- Inclusive Cinema has launched a new guide to help cinemas improve the experiences of POC audiences, staff and filmmakers – and other intersections including gender, sexuality, disability, income and class. Read it here.
- There are currently film roles available at the BFI, Vertigo Releasing, Rich Mix and Watershed.
- From Access to Inclusion, an arts and culture summit, will now be taking place online over the course of several weeks in March 2021. The event provides an opportunity to exchange ideas and discover new and innovative ways to include and welcome everyone, learn more here.
- Each year, Watershed invites exhibitors to showcase Depict winning shorts free of charge across the UK, following their big screen premiere in September at Encounters Film Festival in Bristol. This year’s five winners are now available for bookings, see more info here.
- The Film Distributor’s Association has compiled a list of Christmas titles currently available to book into cinemas, including distributor information and contact details. Download it here.
Good reads
- On the importance of subtitles and audio description
- On the changing nature of cinemas
- On the work of Frederick Wiseman
- On the new aesthetics of discovery and emergency in the New Brazilian Cinema
- On Indian documentarian Anand Patwardhan’s fight against government censorship
- Julie Dash on her relationship to historiography and anthropology
- On Anna May Wong in Hollywood and China
- Shabier Kirchner on shooting Small Axe
- On the work of 82-year-old Armenian filmmaker Artavazd Pelechian
- Sight and Sound’s top 50 films of 2020