Adam Pugh on the death throes of the UKFC (Part 2)
With the UK Film Council in its death throes and the lottery funds it once administered to be lodged with the British Film Institute, funding for the moving image in this country is set to change. Whilst a far from perfect solution, it nevertheless represents a chance that a more real and fuller landscape of the moving image might be allowed to emerge – the marginal and peripheral included – out of the ashes of the ‘Green Zone’ of sanctioned activity funded by the Film Council.
Prior to the decision to entrust the British Film Institute with moving image funding, several options had been mooted, none entirely without problems but some better than others. One was to lodge ‘cultural’ film funds with the British Film Institute; another to set up a new organisation to take on (some of) the tasks of the UKFC; another to expand the remit of Arts Council England and have it deliver film funding.
To set up a new organisation, with the concomitant administration costs and bureaucracy that that entails, would have been fruitless, especially if the government’s desire is to reduce, rather than develop new quangos, and it is unsurprising that such an option wasn’t chosen. To lodge cultural film funds with the British Film Institute is entirely more likely to work, and indeed would seem to safeguard those funds since the BFI is a charity and cannot be disassembled in the way that the UKFC has been.
It is, of course, the BFI’s core business to deliver cultural film projects. Moreover, the organisation had a track record in funding film prior to the creation of the UKFC, and the extra administrative load it incurs will be far lower than the establishment of a new company, so on those bases it would seem an ideal match. However, the BFI is resolutely London-centric, and as vigorously as it would no doubt argue that its interest in the regions will multiply overnight, now it has been given the contract to distribute film funding, without an existing regional network (bearing in mind the old Regional Film Theatres have pretty much now all been commandeered by City Screen), it might look fairly hollow.
The option of lodging funds with the Arts Council was one riddled, needless to say, with problems — not least that of its ongoing confusion as to what exactly constitutes the ‘moving image’. Its semi-official policy of wholesale staff turnover every four years or so, which ensures that accrued knowledge is lost, is similarly unhelpful, and its quaint, not to say arcane, policies on the digital and broadcasting, as Gary Thomas has already pointed out on APEngine, a little troubling. But it would have been a better bet. Its heart is – or could have been persuaded to be – in the right place, or at least in the nearest thing we have to the right place. Needless to say, it would have depended on several factors: firstly, on a wholesale revision of its policies regarding funding the moving image; secondly, on a similarly comprehensive reappraisal of its value-system which seems to regard the moving image as an adjunct to, or even inferior to, other art forms (but a reappraisal which also stresses the possibility that the moving image presents for a truly interdisciplinary approach to those art forms); and lastly, on investing in people to administer the funds who have the necessary knowledge and insight. A tall order indeed, and by no means easy. But crucially, ACE has the regional infrastructure already in place, and its position as key funding organisation has been ratified by the new government even if it hasn’t survived the cuts unscathed.
It should have gone to the Arts Council, all things considered. As an organisation, it’s (just) more forward-thinking, it has an established regional network, and importantly, it operates independently of the sector it supports — that is, it doesn’t screen films and produce and sell DVDs as the BFI does, or, put another way, have one hand in the till whilst awarding grants with the other, which could be problematic, especially when it comes to awarding funds to festivals which are seen as direct competitors of those which take place at BFI Southbank.
The BFI can seem cumbersome and old-fashioned. Its eye-wateringly naff series of mnemonic taglines which included ‘Because Films Inspire’, and the light-flare logo designed by a sixth form student masquerading as a PR company with a five-figure price tag alone don’t inspire confidence; not to mention the expensive, strangely redundant recent capital development: they speak of an organisation desperately trying to be hip, which precipitates the concern that they might care more about trying to be hip than in tackling the task that faces them. Or, worse still, that they might care more about the cinema-under-a-bridge on the South Bank than about the rest of the country’s artists and film festivals. And yet, and yet, compared to the UK Film Council, it is a veritable beacon of light — and importantly, the move to disconnect ‘cultural’ and ‘industrial’ funding for the moving image has been made nevertheless. It’s important, therefore, now the decision has been made, to work with the BFI, artist or exhibitor, and hope that the process of designing the new ‘funding landscape’ might be a dialogic, rather than autocratic one.
Whatever happens next, the BFI will have to work, as ACE has had to do with its existing clients given the budget cuts it faces, to jettison some of the dead weight of the UKFC legacy and, rather than bow down to the hard news story of percentages cut, work to create a cultural film community which is able to support perhaps fewer, but better projects which are robust and rigorous in the way in which they approach the moving image. It has to be unwavering in its support of the truly talented and deserving and bold in its judgement: spend the time getting those right and the mnemonics will surely follow naturally (Best Funding Initiative?). But it has to get them right first, and it feels as though that was the biggest problem with the UKFC: ten years trying to justify a faulty premise.
Finally, and crucially, the BFI’s strategic function in terms of moving image funding will be to work to reverse the as yet-unquestioned link forged between art and industry in the case of the moving image: reclaiming it as a means of expression as entitled to freedom of experimentation as the wider visual arts. If it managed this, or even managed to start the process that leads towards it, the future of ‘cultural’ film funding under the BFI could be strong; stronger for sure than another ten years in the ‘film industry’ straitjacket that the UKFC forced it into.
About the Author: Adam Pugh is an independent curator and writer based in Norwich, UK. Until recently, he directed AURORA, an annual festival which focused on artists’ moving image. He is currently working on an exhibition for the Barbican, and on writing for Animate Projects, Artesian and others.
Adam has contributed articles to the German film magazine Schnitt, Vertigo and other publications, and to the annual AURORA publication, which he edited alongside its DVD edition. He has also delivered talks and curated programmes for various festivals and events worldwide, and served on the international jury at this year’s Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen.
