Summary:
As the curtain opens on the Times BFI 51st London Film Festival, Culture Secretary James Purnell today announced that the UK Film Council (UKFC) has been awarded £25 million to safeguard the future of the UK’s national and regional film archives.
FUTURE OF FILM ARCHIVES SECURED
As the curtain opens on the Times BFI 51st London Film Festival, Culture Secretary James Purnell today announced that the UK Film Council (UKFC) has been awarded £25 million to safeguard the future of the UK’s national and regional film archives.
Mr Purnell revealed the funding package from the latest DCMS funding settlement ahead of his attendance at tonight’s opening gala performance of David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises in Leicester Square.
This £25 million fund is in addition to £3 million from the UK Film Council for the UK Digital Film Archive Fund. It will enable the UK Film Council to implement its screen heritage strategy to preserve the visual memory of the UK and ensure access for all.
Using the funds the UKFC will:
- preserve and restore the British Film Institute (BFI) national collection and the regional collections, some of which is deteriorating and in danger of being lost
- ensure a joined up strategic approach to making the collections safe and overcome issues around rights, digitisation and skills investment
- increase accessibility to the public
- enable archive material to be accessed around the regions
The BFI National Archive is one of the world’s greatest collections of film and television and one of the most accessible.
The majority of the collection is British material but it also features a significant number of works from around the world. And it contains more than 60,000 fiction films, 120,000 non-fiction titles and around 675,000 television programmes, which is well over 500,000 hours of material.
But much of the content of the archive is in danger of being lost and much needs to be restored. An estimated 30 per cent (123,000 cans) of the acetate collection is deteriorating.
The national archive
Public interest in film heritage was demonstrated in the BBC TV series “The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon”, which showed everyday life in Edwardian Britain taken from the Mitchell and Kenyon Collection of 800 rolls of early nitrate film, and attracted a television audience in excess of 4.5 million each week.
In schools, DVDs of the Mitchell and Kenyon Collection are a useful teaching tool in aspects of Key Stage 3 history.
The BFI has released a number of DVD compilations of films from the Archive as free teaching aids to support Primary and Secondary teachers. The first of these specifically explores the topic of Citizenship and Britishness.
The regional archives
The regional film archives actively search for, acquire, and then provide access to film and video material specifically relevant to their regions. Almost all of the collections are non-fiction (feature films being the remit of the BFI ), and they vary in size from one individual film to a collection of hundreds of titles. The films are often acquired because of their local interest, but in many instances these collections are much more significant – and of national and international importance.
For example: one single reel of nitrate film was deposited with the Yorkshire Film Archive, by a member of the public who had been to an archive screening. The film shows unique moving images of Queen Victoria when she visited Sheffield to open the new Sheffield Town Hall on 21st May, 1897. A film found and made accessible through regional activity, but of national importance.
At the North West Film Archive, the Manchester Ship Canal Company donated 175 reels of professional industrial films, dating from 1908 to the 1970s recording the historical breadth and depth of the company’s domestic and maritime exploits.
On a larger scale still, the East Anglian Film Archive holds over 1,200 award winning films, dating from 1932, made by the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers – a collection of national and international interest. The IAC require frequent access to their collection, as it continues to be actively used, but their primary consideration was to deposit the collection with an Archive with a reputation for specialist small gauge film expertise.