The new National Lottery Filmmaking Fund is the BFI’s attempt at creating a clearer and more transparent funding mechanism with an emphasis on equity, diversity, and inclusion, Mia Bays, director of the fund, told the Deadline shortly before the launch of the new plan Tuesday morning.
The fund, first announced late last year as part of the BFI’s 10-year strategic plan, will grant $44m (£36.6m) in cash awards over three years to support fiction feature films. The cash will be available through four separate funding strands focused on different parts of the filmmaking pyramid, from debut features and development to more experienced filmmakers. The fund will also hand out $21m (£17.4m) in cash awards to support documentaries, shorts, talent development, and immersive works. The total sum will be $66m (£54M) across three years.
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“The fund is moving from being a very wide brief into being very focused,” Bays told Deadline. “It’s very much evidence-informed. It’s informed by listening and a lot of lived experience.”
The figures outlined in today’s plan are a 20% drop from the previous funding plan set by the BFI and the Film Fund. The reduction is due to a significant drop in the pot of lottery money available to the organization, a shift that Bays predicts will be less damaging than the figures might suggest due to her experience and the reality of the current market.
“I’m sanguine about it because the industry always goes through peaks and troughs. I don’t think it’s any surprise to anybody that there’s less money, and it’s got to be more focused and go further,” Bays said before pointing to her history as a producer of independent features out of Film London’s microbudget scheme, Microwave.
“I used to run microwave, which was making films at the budgets we’re talking about making shorts for now. And as an independent producer and someone who has run their own company for a long time, never with much money, I’m pretty practiced in how to make a little go a long way.”
However, Bays confirmed to Deadline that the reduction in funds means the BFI has, for now, indefinitely shelved the Vision Awards, which previously provided cash awards to select producers aiming to increase and strengthen their development slates. In the last cohort in 2020, the BFI handed out up to £2m of National Lottery funding to 20 producers and producer teams over two years.
“There’s just not enough money to go around, so we’re not going to repeat them at the moment,” Bays said. “Similar support work will come, but it will be beyond the filmmaking fund.”
Bays was named head of the BFI’s Film Fund in April 2021. Before joining the body, she was Director-at-Large at Birds’ Eye View — a female-focused film charity backed by the BFI Audience Fund. Bays has worked in the industry for almost 30 years as a creative producer. She has worked on the releases of more than 150 feature films and produced the Oscar-winning short Six Shooter, directed by Martin McDonagh.
Bays told Deadline that her first year in position at the BFI, which she describes as an “incredible responsibility and honor,” has been “intense.” But she believes she is in the “right place” professionally and creatively.
“It’s very interesting having been a producer on the outside and then to be on the inside, you see how much more complicated decision-making is and the responsibility of how you pass on projects,” she said.
“That’s the big responsibility because the money really just doesn’t go that far.”
With the Filmmaking Fund, Bays said she hopes the industry and the wider public can see the “logic” behind the new approach and that the new strands, such as the tiered fiction fund, offer “exciting” solutions to the challenges the industry faces while promoting “accountability” in public funding.
“A lot is being asked of institutions like ours and directly of us, and we’ve listened to that,” she said. “I hope people see that it’s not just a kind of, ‘oh, we’ve got less money,’ so our ambition has scaled back. I’d love us all to be as ambitious as possible. It’s just within a particular framework that’s realistic.”
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