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Crisis at the film institute
BFI funding ‘siphoned’ to Olympics
THE British Film Institute is considering breaking up its collection and selling its headquarters in Stephen Street, Soho.
The building holds the BFI’s library, which includes periodicals going back to its founding in 1933.
But the collection could be moved into storage after the government froze its annual £16 million grant.
The Olympics has long been the bugbear of the arts with fears that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is siphoning funds away from the arts and fuelling the rising costs of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, estimated at £3.3 billion.
The BFI, backed by its chairman film director Anthony Minghella, has issued a plea for £34 million to help it prevent the loss of a “substantial percentage” of its film and television archive.
The funding bombshell led to Amanda Neville, the institute’s director, revealing a contingency plan to sell its headquarters. “It is a possibility,” she said.
Ms Neville said the BFI’s “vision” was to create a new film centre housing the library and stills archive as well as a revamped National Film Theatre in Southbank.
Until then, a university or college would house the library.
She said: “We look after the greatest archive of film in the world. We have a responsibility to ensure that we continue to be an international centre of film in this country. The National Film Theatre is coming to the end of its natural life. So the plan is a new film centre that combines all of that.
“The vision is a very exciting one. The library and archive will be at the heart of that. It has to come back to the film centre at the end of the day - assuming that centre is built.”
Critics fear the centre will not be built with the library and stills archive going to the British Library.
A letter, signed by 50 other academics and film historians, has been written raising concerns about the plans.
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith of Queen Mary College, University of London, added: “You just wonder what this organisation is doing. The archive and library is the heart of how the BFI operates. While I appreciate they are trying to do their best, the idea of separating the library from the rest of the operation is crazy.”
A spokesman for the film council said: “The UK Film Council allocates as much money as possible to the BFI without compromising our other spending commitments.
“We recognise that more money is needed for the national archive, which is why we have been working closely with the BFI and other partners to produce the first ever national archive strategy.” |
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