British Film Institute
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The British Film Institute (BFI) is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:
- encourage the development of the arts of film, television and the moving image throughout the United Kingdom, to promote their use as a record of contemporary life and manners, to promote education about film, television and the moving image generally, and their impact on society, to promote access to and appreciation of the widest possible range of British and world cinema and to establish, care for and develop collections reflecting the moving image history and heritage of the United Kingdom.
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[edit] BFI activities
[edit] Cinemas
The BFI runs the National Film Theatre and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London. The IMAX shows popular recent releases and short films showcasing its technology. The NFT shows films from all over the world particularly critically-acclaimed historical & specialised films that may not otherwise get a cinema showing.
[edit] Festivals
The BFI runs the annual London Film Festival and London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.
[edit] Archive
The BFI maintains the world's largest film archive, the National Film and Television Archive, containing about 500,000 works of television and film in total.
[edit] Other activities
BFI publishes the monthly Sight and Sound magazine as well as DVDs and books. It runs the BFI National Library, a reference library. BFI also maintains the SIFT (Summary of Information on Film and Television) database, which contains credits, synopses and other data on global film and TV. It also has a substantial collection of around 7 million film and TV stills.
[edit] Organization
[edit] History
The institute was founded in 1933. Despite its foundation resulting from a recommendation in a report on Film and National Life, at that time the institute was a private company, though it has received public money throughout its history - from the Privy Council and Treasury until 1965 and the various culture departments since then.
The institute was restructured following the Radcliffe Report of 1948 which recommended that the institute should concentrate on developing the appreciation of filmic art, rather than creating film itself. Thus control of educational film production passed to the National Committee for Visual Aids in Education and the British Film Academy assumed control for promoting production.
The institute received a Royal Charter in 1983. This was updated in 2000, when the UK Film Council took over the governing of its activities.
In 1988 the BFI opened the London Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) on the South Bank. MOMI was acclaimed internationally, set new standards for education through entertainment yet, after its opening, was never properly invested in by the very organisation that created it. The Museum was temporarily closed in 1999. Even as it closed, MOMI was achieving visitor numbers that many museums could only dream of. The BFI's claim that it would re-site MOMI in a different location was treated with contempt by those who had great affection for MOMI's pioneering spirit. MOMI's closure became permanent in 2002 when it was decided to redevelop the South Bank site and install a small mediatheque which could only service a small percentage of the visitors that MOMI had engaged with.
The loss of MOMI would create a negative climate for arts funding. MOMI was created from private donation and for funders to see their generosity dropped into builders' rubbish skips left many people horrified.
[edit] Today
The BFI is currently managed on a day-to-day basis by its director, Amanda Nevill. Her activities are directed by a Chairman and a board of up to 14 trustees. The current chairman is Anthony Minghella. The chairman of the board is appointed by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport who receives recommendations from the UK Film Council. Other board members are co-opted by existing board members when required. These appointments are ratified by the UK Film Council.
The BFI operates using three sources of income. The largest source is public money allocated through the UK Film Council from the funds given to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. In 2003, this funding amounted to approximately £15m. The second largest source is commercial activity such as receipts from the National Film Theatre and IMAX theatre (2003, ~£10m). Finally grants of around £5m were obtained from various sources, primarily National Lottery funding grants, but also through donations. J. Paul Getty, Jr. donated around £1m in his will following his death in 2003.
The BFI also devotes a large amount of its time to the preservation and study of British television programming and its history. In 2000, it published a high-profile list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes, as voted for by a range of industry figures.
[edit] See also
- Screenonline is a website run by the BFI.
- BFI Top 100 British films
- 100 Anime, a BFI Screen Guide to the top 100 Japanese animated films and television programs.
- American Film Institute
- Australian Film Institute
- Finnish Film Foundation
- Swedish Film Institute
- Independent Cinema in the United Kingdom
[edit] External links
- BFI homepage
- About the BFI
- Broadway Media Centre homepage
- Optronica - BFI/Addictive TV
- Research Project on the history of the BFI
- "Under the Bridge of Films" (2007) Arts Hub UK - www.artshub.co.uk
