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51-618: At its foundation in the 1930s, the BFI had no mandate to fund film production in the UK. However, the 1948 Radcliffe Report 'create[d] a more favourable climate for potential film production by recommending that the Institute should focus its activities exclusively on the promotion of film as an art form'. As part of the plans for the Festival of Britain in 1951, the BFI was allocated funding to produce

102-591: A "beacon for change" that proved immensely popular with thousands of elite visitors and millions of ordinary citizens. It helped reshape British arts, crafts, designs and sports for a generation. Journalist Harry Hopkins highlights the widespread impact of the "Festival style". They called it "Contemporary". It was: clean, bright and new.... It caught hold quickly and spread first across London and then across England....In an island hitherto largely given up to gravy browns and dull greens, "Contemporary" boldly espoused strong primary colors. Historian Kenneth O. Morgan says

153-535: A "giant chicken coop". The building was officially opened on 3 May 1951. The inaugural concerts were conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent and Sir Adrian Boult . In April 1988 it was designated a Grade I listed building , the first post-war building to become thus protected. The Festival Pleasure Gardens were created to present a lighter side of the Festival of Britain. They were erected in Battersea Park ,

204-533: A black filmmaker. Christophe Dupin notes that, despite only having £30,000 in funding for its decade of existence, the film fund had a wide impact: a fair proportion [of its productions] won major prizes in film festivals around the world and received positive reviews in the national press... Of the fifty or so filmmakers supported, at least 32 went on to work in a variety of jobs in the British (and occasionally overseas) film and television industries… The fact that

255-715: A cinematic side of the festival, using £10,000 to commission several short experimental films "to be shown in the Telecinema, a temporary four-hundred seater cinema on the South Bank". After the closure of the Crown Film Unit , there was no remaining state film funding body in the UK. When a new scheme, the Eady Levy , was introduced in December 1951, providing two grants of £12,500 to make experimental films for

306-565: A few miles from the South Bank Exhibition. Attractions included: The majority of the buildings and pavilions on the site were designed by John Piper . There was also a whimsical Guinness Festival Clock resembling a three dimensional version of a cartoon drawing. The Pleasure Gardens received as many visitors as the South Bank Festival. They were managed by a specially-formed private company financed by loans from

357-458: A number of young filmmakers - Lindsay Anderson , Karel Reisz , Tony Richardson , and Walter Lassally who were prominent contributors to the BFI's magazine Sight & Sound . The Experimental Film Fund supported Free Cinema films such as Reisz and Richardson's Momma Don't Allow , Lorenza Mazetti's Together (1956), and Lloyd Reckord 's Ten Bob in Winter (1963), the first British film by

408-650: A priority, and "between 1977 and 1979, a dozen new BFI films has a London theatrical release… six of them being bought by the BBC for television transmission". Budgets remained low, and in 1979, "the Production Board [had] to strike an agreement with the ACTT (the film technicians' union) to allow crews to be paid below agreed minimum rates in exchange for a share in the profits". Chris Petit 's debut film Radio On (1979), Peter Greenaway 's A Walk Through H (1978),

459-570: A steel latticework frame, pointed at both ends and supported on cables slung between three steel beams. The partially constructed Skylon was rigged vertically, then grew taller in situ . The architects' design was made possible by the engineer Felix Samuely who, at the time, was a lecturer at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in Bedford Square, Bloomsbury. The Skylon was scrapped in 1952 on

510-922: The British Film Institute and the National Book League. In addition, a Council for Architecture and a Council for Science and Technology were specially created to advise the Festival Organisation and a Committee of Christian Churches was set up to advise on religion. Government grants were made to the Arts Council, the Council of Industrial Design, the British Film Institute and the National Museum of Wales for work undertaken as part of

561-540: The Design Council's files relating to the planning of the festival. Exhibitions Festival Pleasure Gardens , Battersea Park, London (3 May – 3 November) London Season of the Arts (3 May – 30 June) Arts Festivals Pageant of Wales , Sophia Gardens, Cardiff St Fagan's Folk Festival , Cardiff Welsh Hillside Farm Scheme , Dolhendre Arts Festivals Exhibitions Arts Festivals Gathering of

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612-608: The Quay Brothers ' Nocturna Artificialia (1979), Sue Clayton 's The Song of the Shirt (1979), Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen 's Riddles of the Sphinx (1979), and Menelik Shabazz 's Burning an Illusion (1981) represented the diversity and innovation of Sainsbury's commissioning: they included and challenged both fiction and documentary, and combined social politics with experimental aesthetics. According to Sue Harper,

663-469: The 1950s. William Feaver describes the Festival Style as "Braced legs, indoor plants, lily of the valley sprays of lightbulbs, aluminium lattices, Cotswold -type walling with picture windows , flying staircases, blond wood, the thorn, the spike, the molecule." The influence of the Festival Style was felt in the new towns , coffee bars and office blocks of the fifties. Harlow new town and

714-430: The 1951 festival focused entirely on Britain and its achievements; it was funded chiefly by the government, with a budget of £12 million. The Labour government was losing support and so the implicit goal of the festival was to give the people a feeling of successful recovery from the war's devastation, as well as promoting British science, technology, industrial design, architecture and the arts. The Festival's centrepiece

765-569: The BFI to professionalise its approach to funding from 1966, under its first production officer Bruce Beresford , and grant-winning filmmakers 'were also given access to technical facilities at the BFI Production Board's offices near Waterloo '. The Board's first production, Herostratus , had begun under the Experimental Film Fund, and its production was delayed by the transition to the Production Board, and by

816-453: The Board backed projects which seemed too avant-garde for mainstream financiers… The aims of the BFI were laudable, and certainly films were funded which would otherwise have had no chance of reaching the screen, but the Production Board had a penchant for films with an academic flavour, which displayed their credentials with a degree of martyrdom . In 1982, ACTT suspended their agreement with

867-445: The Board continued in its remit to fund first-time filmmakers and filmmakers from under-represented communities. The New Directors scheme, initiated in 1986, led to funding for a remarkable range of films, including Gurinder Chadha 's I'm British But... (1989), Isaac Julien 's Young Soul Rebels (1991), and Margaret Tait 's Blue Black Permanent (1992). There was continuity across the change of funding that occurred in 1992 (to

918-845: The Board, leading to the ACTT Workshop Declaration, which created a Board-funded Regional Production Fund, with monies going to the Sheffield Filmmakers' Co-op , the Leeds Animation Workshop , the Liverpool Black Media Group and the Birmingham Black Film Group . According to the BFI's Screenonline, 1982 saw a major breakthrough when Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract became a modest but genuine commercial success. More significantly, it

969-546: The Board. In 1972, the Board's funding was increased significantly to £75,000, and producer Michael Relph took over from Michael Balcon as board chair. Under Hassan and Relph, the Board produced two further films by Douglas, My Ain Folk (1974) and My Way Home (1978), as well as features such as Winstanley , by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo, Horace Ové 's Pressure (1976) - the first black feature film produced in

1020-511: The Clans , Edinburgh Scots Poetry Competition Masque of St. Andrews , St. Andrews Ulster Farm and Factory , Belfast Arts Festival Festival Ship Campania ,: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland Land Travelling Exhibition  : England Construction of the South Bank site opened up a new public space, including a riverside walkway, where previously there had been warehouses and working-class housing. The layout of

1071-788: The Department of Heritage, and subsequently the National Lottery Fund), with filmmakers such as Patrick Keiller and Shane Meadows following earlier New Directors shorts with first features. The Board also produced features such as Sixth Happiness ( Waris Hussein , 1997), Under the Skin ( Carine Adler , 1997), Speak Like A Child ( John Akomfrah , 1998), and Jasmin Dizdar 's Beautiful People (1999), which won Best Film in Un Certain Regard at Cannes. This win

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1122-648: The Festival Office and the London County Council. As the attractions failed to cover their costs, it was decided to keep them open after the rest of the Festival had closed. The Festival architects tried to show by the design and layout of the South Bank Festival what could be achieved by applying modern town planning ideas. The Festival Style, (also called "Contemporary") combining modernism with whimsy and Englishness, influenced architecture, interior design, product design and typography in

1173-508: The Festival was a "triumphant success" during which people: flocked to the South Bank site, to wander around the Dome of Discovery , gaze at the Skylon , and generally enjoy a festival of national celebration. Up and down the land, lesser festivals enlisted much civic and voluntary enthusiasm. A people curbed by years of total war and half-crushed by austerity and gloom, showed that it had not lost

1224-402: The Festival. Gerald Barry had operational charge. A long-time editor with left-leaning, middle-brow views, he was energetic and optimistic, with an eye for what would be popular, and a knack on how to motivate others. Unlike Morrison, Barry was not seen as a Labour ideologue. Barry selected the next rank, giving preference to young architects and designers who had collaborated on exhibitions for

1275-550: The Fund also gave their first chance to seven women filmmakers at a time when creative jobs within the film and TV industries were the almost exclusive property of men was no small achievement either. Jennie Lee became Britain's first ever arts minister in 1964, as part of Harold Wilson 's newly elected Labour government. She increased the BFI's government grant-in-aid, and "insisted that port of it should go to experimental film production and young filmmakers". Increased funding enabled

1326-557: The Poplar district of London. The Festival's centrepiece was the South Bank Exhibition, in the Waterloo area of London, which demonstrated the contribution made by British advances in science, technology and industrial design, displayed, in their practical and applied form, against a background representing the living, working world of the day. There were other displays elsewhere, each intended to be complete in itself, yet each part of

1377-520: The Skylon was the "Vertical Feature" that was an abiding symbol of the Festival of Britain. The base was nearly 15 metres (50 feet) from the ground, with the top nearly 90 metres (300 feet) high. The frame was clad in aluminium louvres lit from within at night. It was designed by Hidalgo Moya , Philip Powell and Felix Samuely , and fabricated by Painter Brothers of Hereford , England, between Westminster Bridge and Hungerford Bridge . It had

1428-986: The South Bank Exhibition were planned by the Festival Office's Exhibition Presentation Panel, whose members were: The theme of the Exhibition was devised by Ian Cox. The Exhibition comprised the Upstream Circuit: "The Land", the Dome of Discovery, the Downstream Circuit: "The People", and other displays. Architect : Misha Black Theme : Ian Cox Display Design : James Holland The exhibits comprised: Architect : Ralph Tubbs Theme : Ian Cox Display : Design Research Unit The exhibits focused on scientific discovery. They included: Architect : Hugh Casson Theme : M.Hartland Thomas Display Design : James Gardner The exhibits comprised: An unusual cigar-shaped aluminium-clad steel tower supported by cables,

1479-468: The South Bank site was intended to showcase the principles of urban design that would feature in the post-war rebuilding of London and the creation of the new towns . These included multiple levels of buildings, elevated walkways and avoidance of a street grid. Most of the South Bank buildings were International Modernist in style, little seen in Britain before the war. The architecture and display of

1530-438: The South Bank story was put on in the Festival ship Campania , which toured the coast of Britain throughout the summer of 1951, and on land there was a travelling exhibition of industrial design. London Transport ordered its first batch of 25 post-war RF single deck buses fitted with roof lights to provide a fleet of sight-seeing coaches for the festival. The University of Brighton Design Archives have digitised many of

1581-474: The Telecinema, the BFI invited producer Michael Balcon to chair the selection committee, and the Experimental Film Fund was created. It received no further funding from the BFI, and offered scant support despite its ambitions. "The first projects considered were in the fields of stereoscopic technology and art documentaries." But this changed through the emergence of the Free Cinema movement, which included

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1632-550: The UK, A Private Enterprise (1974) by Peter K. Smith (the first Asian feature film produced in Britain), but it also provided funding for the London Film-Makers' Co-op , and experimental filmmakers such as Stephen Dwoskin , William Raban , Peter Gidal and Gill Etherley . In 1974, Barrie Gavin took over from Hassan as Head of Production, but resigned fourteen months later. "Yet his short tenure remains one of

1683-512: The arts, architecture, science, technology and industrial design, under the title "Festival of Britain 1951". Morrison insisted there be no politics, explicit or implicit. As a result, Labour-sponsored programmes such as nationalisation, universal health care and working-class housing were excluded; instead, what was allowed was town planning, scientific progress, and all sorts of traditional and modern arts and crafts. Much of London lay in ruins, and models of redevelopment were needed. The Festival

1734-463: The capacity for enjoying itself....Above all, the Festival made a spectacular setting as a showpiece for the inventiveness and genius of British scientists and technologists. The first idea for an exhibition in 1951 came from the Royal Society of Arts in 1943, which considered that an international exhibition should be held to commemorate the centenary of the 1851 Great Exhibition . In 1945,

1785-641: The festival organisation. In March 1948, a Festival Headquarters was set up, which was to be the nucleus of the Festival of Britain Office, a government department with its own budget. Festival projects in Northern Ireland were undertaken by the government of Northern Ireland. Associated with the Festival of Britain Office were the Arts Council of Great Britain , the Council of Industrial Design ,

1836-474: The government appointed a committee under Lord Ramsden to consider how exhibitions and fairs could promote exports. When the committee reported a year later, it was decided not to continue with the idea of an international exhibition because of its cost at a time when reconstruction was a high priority. Herbert Morrison took charge for the Labour government and decided instead to hold a series of displays about

1887-543: The government was set up under General Lord Ismay . Responsibility for organisation devolved upon the Lord President of the Council , Herbert Morrison, the deputy leader of the Labour Party , who had been London County Council leader. He appointed a Great Exhibition Centenary Committee, consisting of civil servants, who were to define the framework of the Festival and to liaise between government departments and

1938-611: The inexperience of the production team. Its second featurette Loving Memory (1970) followed on from its director Tony Scott 's opportunity to direct a short, One of the Missing . Beresford's successor Mamoun Hassan commissioned a featurette from London Film School graduate Bill Douglas . My Childhood (1971) won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival , a success that secured the reputation and future of

1989-785: The last of which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival . Subsequent international successes for British art house included a Silver Bear at Berlin for Derek Jarman 's Caravaggio and the International Film Critics' Prize for Terence Davies ' Distant Voices, Still Lives at the Cannes Film Festival . Alan Burton and Steven Chibnall refer to this period as the Board's "golden age". As well as providing funding for an expansive and internationally-successful British art house,

2040-490: The most audacious periods in the Board's history", with the production of 12 political documentaries by far-left and feminist film collectives such as the Berwick Street Collective . After Gavin's resignation and the appointment of Peter Sainsbury as Head of Production, the Board faced a number of crises: the first concerned Sainsbury's call of a set of explicit selection criteria, which "were frequently

2091-704: The one single conception. Festival Pleasure Gardens were set up in Battersea, about three miles up river from the South Bank. Heavy engineering was the subject of an Exhibition of Industrial Power in Glasgow. Certain aspects of science, which did not fall within the terms of reference of the South Bank Exhibition, were displayed in South Kensington. Linen technology and science in agriculture were exhibited in "Farm and Factory" in Belfast. A smaller exhibition of

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2142-523: The orders of Winston Churchill , who saw it as a symbol of the preceding Labour government. It was demolished and sold for scrap after being toppled into the Thames. Designed by Leslie Martin , Peter Moro and Robert Matthew from the LCC's Architects' Department and built by Holland, Hannen & Cubitts for London County Council . The foundation stone was laid by Prime Minister Clement Attlee in 1949, on

2193-607: The rebuilding of Coventry city centre are said to show the influence of the Festival Style "in their light structures, picturesque layout and incorporation of works of art", and Coventry Cathedral (1962), designed by Basil Spence, one of the Festival architects, was dubbed "The Festival of Britain at Prayer". A Private Enterprise A Private Enterprise is a 1974 British film directed by Peter K Smith. It stars Salmaan Peerzada as Shiv Verma, an Indian immigrant in Birmingham who attempts to start his own business. It

2244-404: The site of the former Lion Brewery , built in 1837. Martin was 39 when he was appointed to lead the design team in late 1948. He designed the structure as an 'egg in a box', a term he used to describe the separation of the curved auditorium space from the surrounding building and the noise and vibration of the adjacent railway viaduct. Sir Thomas Beecham used similar imagery, calling the building

2295-435: The subject of fierce controversy among independent filmmakers"; the second concerned censorship, after the BFI caved to police demands not to screen Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill 's documentary Juvenile Liaison (1975), the first full-length documentary funded by the Board; the third concerned the lack of distribution for the Board's films, including Pressure , due to economic constraints. Sainsbury made improving this

2346-515: The wartime Ministry of Information. They thought along the same lines socially and aesthetically, as middle-class intellectuals with progressive sympathies. Thanks to Barry, a collegial sentiment prevailed that minimised stress and delay. The arts were displayed in a series of country-wide musical and dramatic performances. Achievements in architecture were presented in a new neighbourhood, the Lansbury Estate, planned, built and occupied in

2397-629: Was a national exhibition and fair that reached millions of visitors throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951. Labour Party cabinet member Herbert Morrison was the prime mover; in 1947 he started with the original plan to celebrate the centennial of the Great Exhibition of 1851 . However, it was not to be another World Fair , for international themes were absent, as was the British Commonwealth. Instead,

2448-514: Was also the first co-production between the BFI and the newly established Channel 4 , which gave the BFI a regular television platform and correspondingly greater exposure for its work. Behind the scenes, C4 also became a significant contributor to Production Board funds in general as well as specific individual works. Other films that benefited from the collaboration included The Gold Diggers ( Sally Potter , 1983), Nineteen Nineteen ( Hugh Brody , 1985) and Ascendancy ( Edward Bennett , 1983),

2499-483: Was an attempt to give Britons a feeling of recovery and progress and to promote better-quality design in the rebuilding of British towns and cities. The Festival of Britain described itself as "one united act of national reassessment, and one corporate reaffirmation of faith in the nation's future." Gerald Barry , the Festival Director, described it as "a tonic to the nation". A Festival Council to advise

2550-536: Was followed by an announcement at the same festival by culture minister Chris Smith , amalgamating all British film funding agencies into the UK Film Council from the following year. BFI Production Board streaming video player BFI Screenonline: They Started Here and BFI Production Board imdb.com BFI Production Board Filmography (incomplete) Festival of Britain The Festival of Britain

2601-852: Was in London on the South Bank of the Thames . There were events in Poplar (Architecture –  Lansbury Estate ), Battersea (the Festival Pleasure Gardens ), South Kensington (Science) and Glasgow (Industrial Power). Festival celebrations took place in Cardiff , Stratford-upon-Avon , Bath , Perth , Bournemouth , York , Aldeburgh , Inverness , Cheltenham , Oxford , Norwich , Canterbury and elsewhere, and there were touring exhibitions by land and sea. The Festival became

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