BFI sets out £500m five year film funding plan

The British Film Institute is to invest £500m in UK film over the next five years.

The BFI set out how it intends to spend the money in Film Forever: Supporting UK Film 2012-2017, its long awaited plan based on extensive consultation on how to fund the UK film industry. The BFI took over as the lead funder of British film following the axing of the UK Film Council in 2010 by the government.

Film Forever outlines the BFI’s three key strategic priorities, funded by a combination of government grant, earned income and National Lottery funding.

They are: education and audiences with an annual investment of £44.2m, British film and film-making (£32.3m) and film heritage (£9.9m).

BFI chairman Greg Dyke said the BFI believed that it would be a mistake to spread the £500m too widely, so had decided to concentrate on three specific areas to drive growth.

The BFI said that funds for the production and development of UK films would rise annually to £24m a year, with new opportunities for film-makers working in documentary and animation and a greater focus on development. The BFI said this represented a 30% increase by 2017.

The BFI said it aimed to digitise 10,000 films - the BFI 10k - over the next five years, and would launch a public vote to help decide which films they would be.

It also unveiled a series of partnerships with companies such as Aardman, Accenture, Pinewood and Samsung.

The Aardman partnership will see it take part in a new Animation Lab designed to support and guide writers and film-makers in developing and packaging their concepts ready to take them to the market.

The Samsung partnership will lead to the launch of a Smart TV app giving exclusive BFI content. This is designed to pave the way towards the launch of a BFIPlayer, which will feature films and content from the BFI archive.

The BFIPlayer will aim to launch towards the end of 2013. However, it is unclear as yet what content it will be able to play as the BFI will need to clear up many rights issues around the films in its archive before making them available to the public - either as free to air or pay per view.