18/10/2007

The glittering red carpet opening night of the Times BFI 51st London Film Festival received additional sparkle with Culture Secretary James Purnell’s announcement that the UK Film Council (UKFC) has been awarded £25m to safeguard the future of the UK’s national and regional film archives.

The fund is in addition to the £3m that the UKFC has already bestowed on the UK Digital Film Archive Fund. The funds will enable the UKFC to preserve and restore the BFI national collection and regional collections, some of which is in a deteriorating condition. It will also increase public access to the collection.

The BFI National Archive contains more than 60,000 fiction films, 120,000 non-fiction titles and around 675,000 television programmes, which are well over 500,000 hours of material. However, around 30% (123,000 cans) of the acetate collection is in dire need of restoration.

Purnell said, “The archive is a national treasure. It’s a visual history of Britain since the moving image began. From the earliest silent newsreels to CinemaScope to 3-D, the BFI archive is one of the greatest collections of film and TV in the world. It’s vital that we safeguard its future.”

UKFC CEO John Woodward said, “This is a fantastic boost for our nation’s screen heritage which brings to life the UK’s cultural, social, political and economic history. We are now in a position to take forward our plan for screen heritage in the UK, which has been developed in partnership with the sector.

BFI Director Amanda Nevill added, “Through our emerging and nascent projects such as TV co-productions, online access activities and the Mediatheque, we have proved just how hungry the public is for archive and heritage film and how much they value it.”