DB7

Website warns of threat to film archive

Andrew Pulver
Thursday June 10, 2004
The Guardian

Staff at the British Film Institute are concerned about the ongoing review of the organisation, begun after the appointments of chair Anthony Minghella and director Amanda Nevill last year. The review's first high-profile victim was a planned film centre next to Tate Modern. A second was the Museum of the Moving Image, still mothballed after being closed, supposedly temporarily, in 1999. Now there is talk of a threat to the National Film and TV Archive, in Berkhamsted.
The website of an organisation calling itself the Curatori Lucis Group (FilmArchiveAction.org) alleges that the BFI plans to sell the archive's HQ, change its acquisition policy and make 40 specialist technical staff redundant. This, it says, is part of a drive to shave a third off the annual budget.

Curatori Lucis are anonymous, though the website has a list of supporters, including industry luminaries such as film director Mike Hodges. The BFI says Curatori Lucis is a group of disgruntled ex-employees who can't bear change.

Roy Payne of the BFI says: "We can't dismiss their allegations firmly enough. The archive might well go through some changes as a result of the review, and there will be some redundancies across the BFI, to free fixed costs ... But the review is all about enhancing what the BFI does. We're actually increasing funding into the archive."

DB7

Britain's film heritage at risk after £2.5m budget cut, say campaigners

By Louise Jury, Arts Correspondent
12 June 2004


Britain's vast heritage of film and television archives is under threat of "irreparable devastation", according to an alliance of film historians, curators and directors.

The new lobbying force, called the Curatori Lucis (treasures of light) Group, claims that Britain's rich tradition of films and television programmes is at risk as a result of threatened cuts to the National Film and Television Archive (NFTVA).

The group, which remains mostly anonymous but is known to include Mike Hodges, the director of Get Carter, claims that an internal report that has not been made public proposes axing up to 30 curatorial staff and cutting the budget, which was £4.5m in 1998, to £2m. The group also says that the focus in future would be on more selective conservation, focusing on saving what is regarded as "culturally significant".

The model of duplicating films as part of the preservation process would be dropped under the proposals, even though, opponents claim, two of the world's most advanced film archives, the Library of Congress and the UCLA library in America, are currently building conservation centres on exactly that model.

The British Film Institute (BFI), which runs the archive, is looking for a new "partner" in higher education to run the archive's extensive library, which the objectors fear will lead to reduced public access.

David Robinson, an eminent film historian with strong ties to the BFI, said he was backing the campaign. "It is the oldest and certainly one of the greatest archives and people have got to recognise that this collection of film is a piece of the national heritage. It's like the National Gallery or the British Library," he said yesterday.

"If you find you can't afford to preserve it, you've got to find the money. That's what their job is. The other problem is this idiotic notion that you can select films on the strength of their cultural importance. These proposals are really ill-informed."

The emphasis on "cultural significance" has particularly incensed the Curatori Lucis Group. On its website (www.filmarchiveaction.org), the group says: "It is a truism that many films (or other art or documentary products), totally disregarded or even reviled on their appearance 20, 40 or 80 years ago, are now recognised as of primary importance in interpreting the culture or history of their times."

Fifty years ago, for example, the negatives of Mancunian Films, regional producers of populist comedies, were rejected as culturally unworthy, with the consequence that a whole generation of regional music-hall artists are not represented in the archive.

Further criticism came from the union Bectu, which represents archive employees. It said the review "shows little understanding of the purpose of a national collection and contempt for NFTVA staff. It underlines a disturbing lack of knowledge about current practices at the NFTVA, other archives and commercial companies."

The British Film Institute insisted yesterday that its opponents were mistaken. A spokesman said budgets were set to rise, not fall. Expenditure on the archive was to be increased by £8m over the next five years, meaning an extra £1.4m this year on top of an original budget of £3.2m.

But there will be job cuts. The BFI has already saidstaffing levels are to be cut by nearly a fifth by 2007 from the current level of just under 500, and the archive will take its share of redundancies. The institute also says it is considering how to prioritise the conservation efforts on the basis of cultural significance.

Anthony Minghella, the BFI's chairman, has stressed the importance of the archive. "This is the most pungent record we've ever had for understanding our history," he said.

Steve Crook

To slightly misquote a famous lady "Well they would say that, wouldn't they."

Steve

Steve Crook

PaPAS

DB7

This conversation was going on last year on the Amial list and to be fair was rebuffed by the BFI even then. One person whose name appears on the list of Curatori Lucis supporters called the above article "badly researched and one-sided article". (before going of the usual BFI= London Film Insititute rant so beloved of those of us in the sticks blush )

Much of it is long on allegation but short on fact.

DB7

Film archive to cut jobs amid strong opposition

Staff and agencies
Wednesday June 30, 2004

The British Film Institute is to cut up to 25 jobs at its world-renowned National Film and Television Archive amid fears the move will seriously damage the archive's ability to preserve its wealth of material, drawn from decades' worth of film and TV footage.
Opponents of the job losses at the facility in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire - made as part of a wider restructuring at the BFI - have argued that those employees being axed have specialist technical skills that he archive cannot properly function without.

But the BFI has argued that the job losses are only being made among those whose skills are no longer needed - and that it intends to spend £8m over the next five years focusing its preservation work on the archive's most "culturally important" and high-risk films.

The job losses announcement follows the reports in early June of an organisation called Curatori Lucis Group (FilmArchiveAction.org) which accused the BFI of planning to sell the archive's HQ, change its acquisition policy and make 40 specialist technical staff redundant.

Gibbie

More contemporary "double speak." It sounds like the Brits have the same problem that the Yanks have when it comes to cultural preservation - run by politicos who have not the slightest interest in national preservation, but redefinition of what is "culturally relevent" and what a few think is worthwhile to preserve.

Perhaps a national consortium (non-government) of investors and film people could take over from BFI?