The British Film Institute (BFI) has renewed its commitment to finding and supporting a wider range of voices and perspectives in its films. ScreenDaily confirms that BFI has introduced several changes to its Film Fund, which helps subsidize UK movies, including diversity targets for women, people of color, LGBTQ individuals, and individuals with disabilities. The changes to the Film Fund will reinforce and extend BFI2022, a five-year plan unveiled in 2016 that outlined ways to draw a wider audience and better develop diverse talent by 2022.
Effective April 1, 2018, the BFI is setting specific diversity goals for its writers, directors, and producers. It hopes to hire 50 percent women, 20 percent people of color, nine percent LGBTQ, and seven percent individuals with a disability.
“As a community we have to stay relevant and be more inclusive,” BFI Film Fund director Ben Roberts writes at ScreenDaily. “We recognize that the best creative voices don’t come from the same place, and that audiences…are getting their cultural kicks from a whole range of form and platform.”
The Film Fund is also relaxing its theatrical guidelines, especially in terms of films’ length and use of immersive technology, and reforming its approach to talent development, theatrical restrictions, and financing. For example, BFI Film Fund will be more welcoming of non-commercial films. “We want to support early and risky work that doesn’t necessarily have a clear path to theatrical distribution,” Roberts says. “Not everyone is making work for theatrical release — that isn’t necessarily their starting point.”
The BFI Film Audience Network will also hire six full-time regional talent development scouts, who will be posted across Britain’s five cultural hubs (North, South West, South East, London, and the Midlands). Finally, the Fund will introduce a “full-financing” plan for projects from first-time filmmakers and smaller budget films.
“A lot of this is about giving our filmmakers the freedom and resources to go for broke, armed with the knowledge that they know someone is interested in supporting it, even if the risks seem substantial,” Roberts emphasizes of the Film Fund’s changes.
These reforms are encouraging, especially in the wake of the BFI Filmography launch. The complete, living record of all UK films underlines the pronounced gender inequality and lack of inclusivity present in UK movies, both on and offscreen.
Two years ago, the BFI officially launched the Diversity Fund, which implemented the BFI Diversity Standard and encourages diversity in race, disability, gender, age, sexual orientation and socio-economic status both in those working behind the scenes and in the portrayal of characters onscreen.
