Cultural Consecration and its Discontents: the Arts Council v. Film and Video Artists' Organisations, 1975-present

Presented as the closing pleniary at the 2005 Screen Studies Conference, University of Glasgow

Chair: Dr Jackie Hatfield
Post Doctoral Research Fellow on REWIND: Artists Video in the 70's and 80's, at the University of Dundee.
jackie@carte.org.uk

In her seminal book Rogue Reels: Oppositional Film in Britain 1945-90 (BFI, 1999), Margaret Dickinson disputes that British independent and artists' film and video should be labelled 'the grant aided sector', as this ignores that such aid was the result of surprisingly successful lobbying by a canny but disunified movement that significantly pre-existed institutional succour. This panel will examine the effects of film and video artists' successful campaign for arts funding and cultural consecration on their own organisations, specifically the London Film-Makers' Co-op and London Video Arts/Access/Electronic Arts. This will be undertaken by focussing on three moments of increasing Arts Council support for and intervention in the experimental film and video sector - the move from supporting individual artists to subsidising screening packages in the late 1970s; the conflict that the AC-supported curatorial agency Film and Video Umbrella experienced with LFMC and LEA over pricing, touring packages and access to new work in the early 1990s; and the transformation 1990-95 of the LFMC from a classic artists' Co-op to 'LFMC(TM)', a company from which virtually all traces of egalitarian Co-operative principles had been expunged, and which was not a Co-op.

It should be noted that each of these steps coincides with an increase in the commitment of funds and institutional muscle by the AC to experimental film and video, something that the artists and artists' organisations had themselves campaigned for.

The Struggle for Funding: Sponsorship, Competition and Pacification

In 1966 the London Film-Makers' Co-op was founded as an open access, non-promotional film distributor - all films were welcome, and no filmmaker would be promoted over another. Its merger with an Arts Lab filmmaking group made it an integrated workshop-distributor-cinema, and a new, similarly integrated notion of the role of the artist-filmmaker was propounded, where the filmmaker would work across all sections of the filmic process, including arranging screenings, programming, presentation, promotion etc. This omnivorous volunteerism both sustained the LFMC before it was grant aided, and fuelled the activity which put British Artists' film on the cultural map.

When, in 1976-7, the Arts Council matched its increasing recognition of British artists' film with a range of subsidised exhibition packages, it did so largely by directly sponsoring favoured artists, massively advantaging (and promoting) some over others. At LFMC, disturbing signs emerged quickly - filmmakers began behaving as if their responsibility 'ended with placing their films on the LFMC shelf'. Worse, an increasing number neglected even that, preferring to keep prints handy for AC-sponsored screenings. This paper will examine the myriad of conflicts that the long sought consecration by the AC brought to the artists and their own increasingly marginalised organisation.

Dr Peter Thomas
Post Doctoral Research Fellow on the AHRB funded project 'Independent Film and Video Distribution in the UK, 1980-present', University of Luton
peter.thomas@luton.ac.uk

Agency v. Archive: London Film-Makers' Co-op and London Electronic Arts v. Film and Video Umbrella

The London Film-Makers' Co-op's distribution was founded in 1966 as an open access, non-promotional film distributor, and in 1977 London Video Arts' (later London Electronic Arts) distribution was founded along the same principles. This model, sometimes called 'passive distribution', explicitly forbids the artists' organisation from selecting promotable packages from its own catalogue, as such selection would privilege some members' work over others. Film and Video Umbrella was founded in 1983 as a subsidised curatorial agency with a remit to select and promote touring packages. While the passive distribution model tended to make such collections ersatz archives, the curatorial agency model was highly effective at getting work to screens and audiences.

While this might seem a reasonable division of labour, by 1990 conflict between the artists' organisations and the curatorial agency had broken out on several fronts, including access to new work and pricing. Most seriously, both LEA and LFMC completed the reforms necessary to internally curate and began fielding their own touring packages. This opened up perhaps the most serious competition, not so much for audiences, but for touring subsidy. This paper will consider the contradictory effects of the curatorial model, which furthered the exposure and cultural consecration of artists' film and video in the UK, while transforming the artists' organisations into administrators of the funders' promotion of some members over many others.

Julia Knight
Reader and Lead Researcher on the AHRB funded project 'Independent Film and Video Distribution in the UK, 1980-present', University of Luton
julia.knight@luton.ac.uk

Internalising the Other: the End of the London Film-Makers' Co-op as an Artists' Organisation - or, The Oyster and the Grit

The London Film-Makers' Co-op, founded in 1966, survived until 1990 surprisingly (and notoriously) unreformed. However, since 1976 waves of Arts Council exhibition subsidies both undercut LFMC's distribution service and marginalised the importance of LFMC to the exposure and consecration of any given artist's film and artists' film in general. With its significance waning, LFMC's membership became decreasingly likely to donate labour to what was their own, commonly owned, organisation, an effect increased by the funded 'access workshops' of the 1980s, which required little reciprocal investment from users.

Bereft of both its former significance and main source of strength, LFMC struck back in the 1990s in contradictory ways. On the one hand, it restricted full membership (voting rights) to those who visibly donated their labour, while on the other began internally curating exhibition packages which might restore its role in exposing artists' film. But by promoting some members over others, LFMC broke the compact that the organisation was property of all its members equally, and in 1995 the executive quietly dissolved the Co-op, transferring its assets to a company (also called LFMC), making it property of none of its 'members'. This paper will examine the process and stakes of the LFMC's transformation, after 20 years of pressure, into its nominal nemesis - a curatorial agency.

Dr Duncan Reekie
Underground Filmmaker and Pulpiteer
duncanreekie@yahoo.co.uk