BFI INITIATED CULTURAL PROGRAMME BRIEF & PLANNING DOCUMENT for BRITAIN ON FILM

FOR DISTRIBUTION TO: ALL HLOS, HUBS, FAN NETWORK ORGANISATIONS, PROGRAMMERS and other potential screening hosts

OVERVIEW

Programme name / Britain on Film - Year 3 (Coast and Sea)
Short summary / Britain on Film is a three-year project led by the BFI,that reveals hidden histories and forgotten stories of people and places from the UK’s key film and TV archives. It is anchored by the BFI Player’s Film and TV Map of the UK, giving everybody in the UK free access to thousands of film and TV titles featuring where they live, grew up, or any place of interest in Britain. However, Britain on Film will also be reaching audiences across the UK via screenings and events run primarily by the BFI Film Audience Network (FAN), featuring British film and key UK archive content.
Timeframe & duration of programme / May to Autumn 2017
BFI Project team & contacts / Phil Foxwood, BFI Britain on Film Project Manager
/ 020 7957 4745
Jane Jarvis, Britain on Film Project Manager for FHCE, HLO on behalf of 07880 993730
Eleanor Thornley 0115 850 7815

PROGRAMME

The cultural ambitions of the programme / The vision of Britain on Film is “To offer the people of Britain, from school children to senior citizens, a unique and valuable insight into their screen heritage in all its national and regional diversity – through a vivid picture of life in Britain by its ‘people and places’ from 1895 to today”.
The intended cultural outcomes and legacy / In terms of audience development, it is about encouraging popular engagement with archive film. Building understanding & appreciation of the value and relevance of archive film is one of the key goals.
Additionally, widening audiences geographically and outside of the current older demographic and reaching diverse, non-specialised audiences are also a key aim.
As the final phase of Britain on Film funding, it would be good that any audience engagement could continue and this funding is regarded as an investment that builds a legacy of audience engagement for archive film.
The aims and objectives of the Project / The aim of collaboration with FAN for the launch of Britain on Film –Coast and Seais to engage audiences with Britain on Film archive content, primarily on BFI Player – both the newly added Coast and Sea titles, but also the previously added archive films.
In May 2017, the majority of the 10,000 titles digitised as part of the Unlocking Film Heritage strategy will be live on BFI Player. Many of these will be in themed collections (Cricket, Railways, Black Britain etc.) which have collection pages under but the primary way for audiences to find content is through the map interface (when films have been geotagged) and therefore directing audiences to the BoF map is the main focus of Coast and Sea activity.
Guidance for potential FAN BoF activities / COAST & SEA footage available through all regional/national archives will provide content suitable for a variety of screening events.
Applicants could consider for eg:
  • Events as part of an existing, established Festival/Exhibition/Seaside event to benefit from publicity and audience potential.
  • Archive shorts supporting COAST & SEA related features.
Worth noting :
  1. The majority of the 10,000 titles digitised under Unlocking Film Heritage are only licensed for online viewing on BFI Player (and in some cases theatrical and non-theatrical rights will not be available).
Exhibitors should therefore ensure sufficient budget is included in
applications to cover any licence and rights for any archive material
they plan to use / screen. As access fees and rights costs will vary for
different films and archives, Exhibitors should speak to the relevant
regional or national archive when preparing preliminary budgets or,
better still, attend a ‘consultation’ day for potential projects to be
organised by the film archive to be offered as part of the R&D
funding
  1. Archive content does not have to be exclusively from newly digitised UFH/BoF film although it is good to include as much as possible, particularly for linking to BoF on BFI Player for publicity. The UK’s film archives have been digitising content for a number of years and will have more COAST & SEA content to explore.
It is highly desirable that any compilations / programmes created for FAN Coast and Sea screenings and events are made available afterwards for potential future use.
Timescale / The Coast and Sea titles will be published on BFI Player and the Britain on Film map in May 2017.
We are therefore looking for coastal-related activities to take place between the launch inMayand Autumn 2017.See BoF EOI Form, PDF Guidelines and Guidance Notesfor full details on timescales for applications and delivery.
Press and Marketing / There will be continued BFI marketing and press support for the Coast and Sea content launch on BFI Player/Britain on Film which will highlight regional films and their stories.
It is expected that the excellent website will be continued as BoF COASTAL to promote all events across the UK.
Other BoF activities / In Autumn 2016, a crowdsourcing platform will launch that will enable the public to add new geotags to scenes in films on the Britain on Film map.
How will the programme approach on screen diversity? / From the Digitisation Fund Guidelines:
“Above all, we want to encourage audiences to watch archive films by selecting titles that are compelling, intriguing and relevant. Watchability is important. We want to work in partnership with applicants to identify films with which the public can engage.
Diversity in audiences relates both to the diversity of the audiences themselves, and to the diversity of the content they watch. Therefore, Unlocking Film Heritage has a role in ensuring that the films digitised reflect the richness of the diversity in the UK population.”