Welcome back to your monthly round-up from the ICO, featuring the latest opportunities for your cinema, festival or film society and industry highlights from the UK and beyond.
ICO News
- The ICO 2024-2025 Annual Report was released earlier this month. Read our reflections on the ICO’s work over the past year, as well as our thoughts on the wider trends across the UK film exhibition sector.
- Passes are now available for Inclusion & Diversity (ID) Screening Days, which will take place online (9 September) and at MAC, Birmingham (11 September). We’re pleased to announce that the first film for the event is I Swear: the funny, heartfelt, and emphatically moving true story of Tourette syndrome campaigner John Davidson. We’ve also announced the first two sessions at the event, one of which highlights the programming model behind Cinema Africa! at Hyde Park Picture House and the other that will focus on how organisations, even in challenging times, can take practical steps to build a trans inclusive culture. Find out more and subscribe to our Screening Days mailing list for further programme updates, coming soon!
- The deadline for BFI FAN’s REACH: Strategic Audience Development Training is 18 August. Available to all BFI FAN members and delivered by the ICO, the course is designed to help you build your expertise in attracting, diversifying and sustaining cinema audiences. As part of the course, participants will benefit from tailored support from experts as they design and implement a real audience development project for their venue. Find out more on the BFI FAN website, or by watching the recording of our online information session.
- We’ve announced the recipients of the third instalment of the Miles Ketley Memorial Fund, our fund to support filmmakers from communities traditionally excluded from the industry, and who make original, interesting work that connects with a wider range of audiences. The Fund is set to continue for a further three years with an increased budget. Read the full Screen story to find out more.
- The ICO blog is open now for pitches which share insights on a range of topics such as accessibility, audience development, and new exhibition initiatives. If you have an idea for an article that you’d like us to commission, please read our blog guidelines and get in touch.
Resources, Opportunities and Events
- Highlights from Cinema Rediscovered 2025 are going on tour! Stunning new restorations, pre-recorded introductions, and promotional materials are available for many of the titles, which are available to book for August 2025 to January 2026. Visit the Watershed website to explore the complete programme.
- Film marketing consultant Emma Jamieson has created a free and beginner-friendly social media guide for independent cinemas.
- The Power Up London accelerator programme, run by Big Issue Invest, is back, supporting organisations that address social and/or environmental issues by providing services to marginalised communities in London. Applications close 10 September 2025.
- Hugh Odling-Smee (Film Hub NI) and Andy Robson (BFI FAN Screen Heritage Champion) will discuss the newly published ‘Exhibiting the UK’s Hidden Moving Image Archives’ at an online event on 8 September.
- A recording of the Digital Culture Network’s recent webinar, A beginner’s guide to Meta Ads, is now available, offering step-by-step instructions on how to build adverts that reach the right people and make the most of your budget.
- Grant funding is available from Home Instead for organisations that work with older people to support wellbeing or reduce social isolation and/or loneliness, including running regular activities such as cinema clubs.
- T A P E and Invisible Women invite independent curators and cinema professionals to their creative retreat in Smygehuk (Sweden), returning after a popular first edition last year.
- Film London’s Distributor Slate Days will take place on 24 and 25 September at Picturehouse Central, London. Sign up to the Film London mailing list to hear when passes become available, and contact slatedays@filmlondon.org.uk if you have any questions about the event.
- The B&Q Foundation has grant funding available for projects that seek to improve or develop spaces benefiting local communities. This can include decorating, fixing roofs, upgrading key fixtures and fittings, and creating new buildings or rooms.
- Learn the Essentials for AI for Marketing with the Arts Marketing Association in their new course, which offers a hands-on, mindful and ethical look at the basic AI tools available to marketers, and how you can use them to reach new audiences.
- LUX are having a special screening of their shorts programme Celebration, Spectacle, Ritual on 9 August, bringing together distinct perspectives on how ritual and celebration reshape public space, memory, and identity in the UK. The programme features Syncopated Green, one of the new commissions for our Right of Way programme in 2022.
- You’ve got until midnight tonight (31 July) to nominate your venue for BIFA’s Cinema of the Year.
Good Reads
- Screen Daily asks how inclusive is the UK film and TV industry five years on from the structural racism debate that followed George Floyd’s murder?
- Screen Daily has highlighted five African directors to watch at Locarno Film Festival, including first-time feature directors and seasoned directors from Mauritania, Niger, Uganda, Congo, Iran and Sudan.
- Laura Bailey, manager of the newly established Mayoral Authorities Creative Health Network, writes on the government’s Devolution Priority Programme and the opportunities it presents for creative health (for Arts Professional).
- Little White Lies report back from the second edition of the Creative Non-Fiction Weekend, dissecting what it means to explore “personal documentary” in a festival setting.
- Daniella Shreir recounts the turbulent history of Cannes Film Festival and details the ways the 2025 festival continued the tradition of making major headlines (for the London Review of Books).
- Lucy Fitzgerald shares a week in her life as a staff member at a multiplex cinema; selling popcorn and drinks, opening and closing the venue, and reflecting on how human nature takes shape within the fleeting space of the cinema foyer (for Vittles).
- Film Comment have written about the Low Cinema, a new single-screen venue in Ridgewood, New York, one of many new cinemas centring repertory and “unusual” programming.
- Distribution Advocates reflect on the current state of film exhibition, cinema, and the ways the industry must evolve to remain relevant.
- The BFI’s Object of the Week is Harold Brown’s handmade film printer: a truly DIY and pioneering piece of equipment which enabled film archivists to safely make duplicate frames of damaged or fragile films for almost 20 years.
- Bilge Ebiri gives a fascinating History of the Frame Rate (for Mubi Notebook)