“When I left the BFI in 1998, it was regarded worldwide as the outstanding example of an educational and cultural film institution. It had experimental film and television production arms, a postgraduate programme and a cutting edge publications division. It hired the greatest clustering of film expertise in the world ranging from its curators to its academics. These had at their disposal the best film library and film archive in the world. They also had the National Film Theatre.As Claude Raines exclaims in Casablanca, ‘I’m shocked, shocked!’ that given the number of film blogs I read, and the magazines and the newspapers that I should hear about all of this at the ‘tipping point’. There’s been narry a word anywhere else. To look at the BFI’s own Sight & Sound publication it’s business as usual and nothing in The Stage. It says a lot too of the current editorial policy at Empire Magazine that something so fundamental to the UK’s own industry has gone without comment, especially when, in the past they’ve covered such stories as who would be appointed as the director of the BFI and the reduction of tax breaks for film makers.
“Today there is a renamed cinema complex but every other activity has been abolished or is under threat while talent has haemorrhaged away. In international circles the BFI is now mentioned not as an enviable model but as an awful example of political vandalism. Variety magazine talks of the 'tipping point' at which the institute will cease to exist. In recent weeks the institute has announced that it can no longer support its publication division; its great library, the recipient of hundreds of valuable donations, from Derek Jarman to Richard Attenborough, is being offered to any university that will house it; and most recently the film archive itself has been declared in grave danger through lack of resources. This is the archive which houses not only the films of Hitchcock and Lean but also the biggest collection of silent film in the world and documentaries which record British life in every decade of the 20th century.”
I’m with McCabe, this is cultural vandalism of the worst kind. The BFI was once the envy of the world, for reasons examined in the column. To think that it should come to this; if an institution dedicated to an art form which is supposed to be so culturally important in this country is being treated with this kind of contempt what hope have the so called arts of the rich? It’s the nightmare of the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden all over again, the difference in this case being that the materials held are of a much clearer national and international importance.
Obviously I have a vested interest in this because I always saw my inevitable career aspirations in the BFI or an institution quite like it. Whenever asked what I want to do when I grow up (?) I’ll always say -- ‘I don’t know’ quickly followed by ‘Work in a film library or archive, like the BFI’. It’s one of the reasons I studied film as a post-graduate subject and now I can almost see that bit of the possible future fading away. It’s not hard to take it personally, to be honest.
Perhaps the plan would be to go over the head of the film minister Shaun Woodward and invite the new Prime Minister (if he can find the time) to the film archive where a mature, attractive woman who looks not unlike Lindsey Duncan (or in fact Lindsey Duncan if she’s available) could spin him through social history presenting his ancestry through the films they have in their archive, carefully underlining the importance of keeping the collection intact. Perhaps someone who looks like Timothy Spall (or indeed Spall if he too is in the mood for a reunion of cast members from Stephen Polikoff’s series Shooting The Past) could take Brown about the book library explaining how film can not only entertain but inspire, the studying of the media illuminating the human condition as much as the filmmaking process.
Failing that, let’s start a campaign. Who’s with me?
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