Objectives

The Film Council has two overarching objectives:

• Developing a sustainable UK film industry;
• Developing film culture in the UK by improving access to, and education about the moving image

All Film Council activities are geared to supporting these two aims.  Its ambitions are wide-ranging, long-term, ambitious and most importantly, strategic.

Initiatives and activities in which the Film Council are involved, often with other industry organisations and commercial partners across the UK:

• Identifying areas where changes would be productive and working with the film industry to produce and implement strategies regionally, nationally and internationally to build a stronger, more diverse UK film industry.  
• Working with the distribution and exhibition sectors to enable a broader range of films to reach new and existing audiences. 
• Monitoring performance, providing strategic guidance and representing the industry's interests to government.
• Facilitating exports by ensuring key businesses from the UK access all key markets world-wide.
• Attracting inward investment by working to ensure that any film from anywhere in the world that could be made in the UK is made in the UK.
• Working with the industry and government to place visual literacy at the heart of education in order to create a more informed audience for film. 
• Providing training opportunities for people and organisations to raise their levels of expertise.

Film culture and education

The British Film Institute (bfi), which is now funded by the Film Council with an annual grant of £16 million, was restructured and refocused to help deliver the Film Council's cultural and educational objectives for film. The bfi is on track to play its part in achieving the Film Council’s goals and will foster public appreciation of film through improved access to cinema, film heritage and educational provision. The bfi will continue to work with other partners on individual projects.

Funding

With a combined budget of approximately £150 million over three years comprising grant in aid money from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and money from the National Lottery, the Film Council is the channel for virtually all public money for film production.   

Initiatives

The Film Council’s main initiatives to help to build a sustainable UK film industry and develop film culture in the UK include:

The Development Fund with £5 million a year to support the development of a stream of high quality, innovative and commercially attractive screenplays. This fund is the largest of its type in Europe.

The Premiere Fund with £10 million a year to facilitate the production of popular, more mainstream films.

The New Cinema Fund with £5 million a year to back radical and innovative filmmakers, especially new talent, and to explore new electronic production technologies.

The Training Fund with £1 million a year to support training for scriptwriters, film development executives as well as a programme to train business executives, producers and distributors operating in the international marketplace.

European co-production – a minimum of20% of the budget of each fund will be earmarked for co-productions with Europe as part of the Film Council’s strategy of expanding business with European partners.

First Light - a Lottery programme running in 2001 with a budget of £1 million to resource hundreds of low-budget short films offering children the opportunity to learn about film-making and display their talents, while building an interested and educated potential audience.

Research and Statistics - the creation of the Film Council’s Research Statistics Unit to provide authoritative statistics about the British film industry for the benefit of the industry at large, government and the media.  Only with reliable statistics can achievements be measured.

The Regional Investment Fund for England (£6 million) is designed to produce a strong and effective partnership of publicly-funded regional film bodies across the UK, all working to create a clear film strategy for each English region and cash support for production, screen commissions, cinema exhibition, training, archives and education.

British Film Office in Los Angeles has been expanded to attract inward investment into the UK from US productions. The British Film Office also offers a base for the Film COUNCIL to promote UK film exports and co-ordinate US-based training initiatives for UK industry professional.

Inward Investment –the British Film Commission, a division of the Film Council, is working to encourage continued growth in the amount of productions from outside the UK coming to use Britain’s world-class production and facilities infrastructure.

Recent FILM COUNCIL initiatives

The FILM COUNCIL announced a film production alliance on 4 October 2001 with the Centre Nationale de Cinematographie (CNC), the body for film and television in France, to encourage creative and financial film production relationships between British and French talent.  The FILM COUNCIL’s New Cinema Fund which aims to seek out emerging film talent and the CNC are each investing Euros 150,000 in this new initiative which will encourage French and British filmmakers of short films to work together.

The FILM COUNCIL is currently consulting with the distribution and exhibition sectors of the film industry to look at ways that we can develop cinema audiences in the UK by encouraging a broader range of films to be available.

The FILM COUNCIL is also co-supporting the CINEMA MARKETING AGENCY, a new organisation to promote cinema-going as a generic leisure activity in the UK (this organisation is still in the set-up phase and is therefore a fledgling initiative).

The first film to be funded by the FILM COUNCIL, Mike Bassett: England Manager is achieving great business at the UK box office taking £1.9 million after 10 days (Sept 28- Oct 7).  The next film funded by the FILM COUNCIL to be released will be Gosford Park.  The film which stars the crème de la crème of British cinema is directed by Robert Altman, has been selected as the opening film at this year’s Regus London Film Festival.  The FILM COUNCIL is also developing a number of films by young and emerging film talent.

Now read: Genre Today, Genre Tomorrow...