The BFI’s annual accounts for 2017-18 have detailed the organisation’s activities for the financial year.
Production Awards
In total, the BFI awarded £48.19m in the 2017-18 financial year through its various funding channels.
The BFI’s production awards totalled £18,866,791, plus £1,957,883 in development and pre-production awards.
The biggest single award, £1.5m, went to See-Saw for its Untitled Chris Morris Project, the secretive directing effort from the Four Lions filmmaker that reportedly stars Anna Kendrick and Danielle Brooks and is also being funded by Film4. The BFI also awarded £1.5m to Doc Society to administer its new documentary funding model.
The top five single-project grants was completed by a £1.4m award to Tom Harper’s Wild Rose (previously titled Country Music) starring Jessie Buckley, £1.22m to Carol Morley’s Out Of Blue (announced in Toronto’s 2018 Platform programme) and £1.22m to Chiwetel Ejiofor’s directing debut The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind.
Other projects to receive more than £1m included Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir (£1.02m) and Annabel Jankel’s Tell It To The Bees (£1.09m).
Other awards
Further BFI grants saw the Audience Fund hand out distribution awards of £1.83m. A total of 13 companies benefited from the grants: Altitude received the most with five single awards led by £150,000, which went towards the releases of The Florida Project and Beast, while Curzon received three, and Arrow, Dogwoof, Peccadillo and Thunderbird received two apiece. The highest distribution award of £157,500 went to Thunderbird for Sweet Country.
The Audience Fund handed out a further £4.05m in other awards, including £578,106 to the Independent Cinema Office for its national strategic activities, £250,000 to Sheffield Doc/Fest, and £225,000 to Sheffield’s Showroom Cinema.
The Film Audience Network awarded £4.18m in 2017-18 across the 10 regional Film Hubs. Nottingham Media Centre received the largest award with £899,000.
The Targeted Development and Talent Network Fund gave out £1.4m in 2017-18, while a total of £1.76m was granted in International and Film Export Fund Awards.
Separately, £695,000 was given to Creative England through the Creative Enterprise Fund, £322,207 went on research and statistics, £551,550 was spent on Film Academies, £750,000 was awarded to the London Film Festival, £4.75m was spent through the Heritage 2022 Fund, and £7.07m was awarded through the Skills Fund.
Lottery income
The BFI’s income from the UK’s National Lottery was £44.34m in 2017-18, slightly up on the previous year’s £44.22m.
The figure had fallen significantly from 2015-16, when the amount granted to the BFI was £52.2m, roughly the same as it had been in the previous financial year.
This period’s figure of £44.22m equates to 2.7% of the total amount awarded by the National Lottery’s Distribution Fund.
The figures move in line with the sale of lottery tickets in the UK. In 2017-18, sales returned to growth for the first time in two years, with the UK public spending £6.95bn on tickets in that period.
Other income
Further BFI income this year saw the organisation recoup £6.9m from investments in the 2017-18 period, up from £6m the previous year.
It also pulled in £7.5m in fundraising, of which £5.8m (77%) were cash contributions and £1.7m (23%) were gifts in kind.
The BFI’s total income for the year to March 2018 was £96.9m – an increase of £1.2m from the £95.7m received in 2016-17.
Staff costs
The BFI spent £20.4m on wages and salaries across the entirety of its operation in 2017-18, up slightly from £20.25m in 2016-17. The organisation had an average number of 482 permanent staff in this period, down from 487 the previous year.
Staffing costs for its senior staff were £4.5m in 2017-18, down from £4.52m the year before.
The highest paid employee was chief executive Amanda Nevill, who earned a base salary £146,000 in 2017-18, up from £145,000 in 2016-17. Including pension and benefits, Nevill’s total remuneration was in the £190-195,000 bracket.
The next highest paid was Film Fund director Ben Roberts, with a base salary of £140-145,000 (flat from 2017) topped up by pension and benefits to £180-185,000. David Parkill, director of finance and resources, and creative director Heather Stewart both received remuneration in the £160-165,000 bracket. Will Evans, director of business affairs, earned a salary of £145-150,000.
There were 12 further staff earning in the £80,000-£89,999 bracket, 16 in the £70,000-£79,999 bracket, and 21 in the £60,000-£69,999 bracket.
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