The Contemporary Promotion of Artists' Film and Video in the UK
End of Project Report

In the course of the project we have examined the archives of the Lux, the Film & Video Umbrella, Cinenova, the Arts Council, the BFI and the LFVDA, undertaken indepth case studies of the Lux's Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! show and Cinenova's involvement in the NOF ScreenOnline consortium, examined the launch of DVD publishing of artists' moving image, together with conducting background research into a small selection of other recent shows/exhibition initiatives.

1. To examine the reasons for, outcomes and future implications of diminishing support for the traditional model of independent film/video distribution.

The initial kind of support that did exist for the traditional model of independent film and video distribution was from makers, volunteer staff, and users. Distributors like the London Film-Makers' Co-op (LFMC), The Other Cinema (TOC), London Video Arts (LVA), Albany Video Distribution (AVD), Cinema of Women (COW), and Circles Women's Film and Video Distribution (Circles) all emerged from wider political and cultural waves. Because of this, an audience and desire for a distributor who would make work available pre-existed the distributors themselves. Labour was donated on a volunteer basis, and distribution, promotion, event management and lobbying for public and other subsidy were done as part of general political activism, whether that was inspired by Feminism, the Third World movement or a general radical media critique. Distribution was organised by makers and activists both to supply works for their own campaigning activities, which can be seen as promotion, and to guarantee availability of relevant works if campaigning stoked public interest. Each of these distributors focused on the kinds of works that ran against the notion of 'public taste', and frequently 'public morals', propounded by the major media of the day.

It should be noted that the distributors were operating in a UK film industry considered to be in permanent crisis, and a cinema industry thought to be dying. The second kind of support that emerged for independent film and video distribution was from cultural funding, which had been assiduously sought by the distributors, sometimes for a significant period. Cultural protectionist rhetoric had been employed to defend and regulate the UK film industry since the mid-1920s, and a system of subsidies and reserved quota spaces for national production were employed from the late 1940s, partly to siphon funds from a cinema industry dominated by US product, and partly to encourage US investment in production in the UK. Thus state subsidy to the film industry was nothing new in the 1970s, nor of course state subsidy to the arts, both justified along cultural grounds, and this was not uncommon in the European context. As the causes they championed and serviced came to be accepted as worthy by funders, promotional, capital and revenue grants became available to the independent distributors. There were a variety of funders and a variety of reasons for funding: the ACGB/ACE funded film and video as either visual art or community art, while the BFI funded politicised film. The Greater London Council chiefly funded politicised and community film and video, and regional arts associations variously funded artists', political and community film and video. Funders also subsidised production, promotion and exhibition, so the funding of distributors was a part of a wider set of schemes. In this wider context distributors had a similar place to that in the earlier, unsubsidised radical situation: a place where subsidised works could be sent, and a source of work for subsidised promotional schemes and events. Each distributor had a substantial collection of rare work not held elsewhere in the UK, including much foreign material. However, overall funder intervention in the independent sector was rarely aimed at directly bolstering distribution, but instead at the making of work, its exposure, and provision to the public. All of the funding bodies invested more heavily in these areas, including during the early and mid-1980s, when the radical analysis of the Cultural Industries determined that distribution was the key to media power. In practice, the emphasis on production and dissemination was tending to sideline distributors by the mid-1980s, particularly but not only in artists' film and video, as production and promotion schemes linked up through the funding body itself. Albany Video Distribution is a case in point, which as a standalone distribution organisation with no ties to an exhibition space, failed to attract anything more than very small amounts of occasional funding. And although the Arts Council issued assurances when the Lux Centre closed in 2001 that the future of the Lux distribution library was never in question, no mention was made of securing a distribution facility in the Artists' Moving Image Review that followed a few months later. Additionally, promotional subsidy was deployed not only for publicity material and venue co-ordination, but to lower prices to venues and public. For this reason the promotional schemes functioned as subsidised competition for the distributors, whose subsidy was rarely sufficient to mount both such a concerted promotional drive or discounting regime. Thus, funded promotional schemes and curatorial agencies tended to outperform distributors in reaching the public, even when promoting work from the distributors' collections.

In response to this, distributors tended to chase (or chase harder) promotional or touring grants, and most sought to renegotiate royalty splits with their makers, the original generosity of which had been a source of pride. Even where distributors were successful in this, the increased promotional activity only affected a subsection of their collection, and thus only a subsection of their makers. For these reasons, from a maker's point of view, funder promotional schemes or a sponsored curatorial agency such as Film and Video Umbrella (FVU) offered superior opportunities in public exposure and remuneration. Thus, by the start of the 1990s, the survival of the independent distributors largely depended on their access to subsidy. COW closed when it lost its revenue funding in 1991; Circles retained its revenue funding and relaunched as Cinenova in 1991, but struggled to attract grants for promotional campaigns; while LFMC and particularly LVA/LEA retained and increased their revenue funding and gained substantial access to promotional and touring grants. Nonetheless, the underlying point is that this détente between subsidised production and dissemination had come to present the most obvious route to exposure for makers, whether this was between Channel 4 and the workshops franchised by it in the 1980s, the long running ACGB/Channel 4 co-production and broadcasting scheme Animate!, or the Film Council's more recent Digital Shorts scheme.

The outcome of this is that only two of the independent distributors have survived since 2001, but the manner of their survival is substantially an expression of funder priorities. By the late 1990s, women's film and video had been removed as a Performance Indicator for the BFI's London-region funder, London Film and Video Development Agency (LFVDA). Cinenova lost its revenue funding in 2001, but LFVDA did offer support to preserve the collection by rehousing it with another, larger organisation. Some of the suggested destinations would have allowed continued distribution, others did not. In 1998, LFMC and LEA merged under threat of financial collapse brought on by the strain of their joint building, the Lux Centre. The resulting company, Lux (I), was liquidated in 2001 due to massive insolvency. The LFMC, LEA and Lux (I) were not primarily distribution organisations, but integrated production-distribution-exhibition companies, Lux (I)'s remaining funders acted quickly to safeguard LFMC and LEA's historic and irreplaceable collection of UK and international experimental film and video, and ultimately to keep it in distribution through the successor company Lux (II), which is primarily a distributor. While Lux (II) receives revenue and promotional grants, Cinenova, whose collection was not taken up by another organisation, survives on low rent, volunteer labour and smaller, event-based project grants. However, it is also significant that although distribution remains its core activity, Lux (II) now describes itself as an agency which 'supports and promotes contemporary and historical artists' moving image work, and those who make it, through distribution, exhibition, publishing and research', while in contrast Cinenova have resisted relinquishing their commitment to the feminist distribution practice that informed its parent organisation.

The implications for the future of this are that independent distributors of the kind examined in this project are unlikely to be formed in a situation where funders tend to take a proprietary interest in the exposure of subsidised production (as with the Film Council's Digital Shorts), where the new work exposed by curatorial agencies like FVU and FACT tend to be sourced from the maker and sometimes commissioned by the agency itself, and, in short, where a substantial subsidised apparatus for gaining exposure exists as an alternative to the painful, time consuming and largely unremunerative work of audience building in the manner of independent distributors in the 1970s and 1980s. This has been exacerbated by the potential that appears to be offered by digital means of moving image distribution and internet marketing. Some of these developments are still relatively new, but the scope for cheap and/or DIY distribution (such as Pure Screen) has had significant appeal for makers (although not all) in particular and has further undermined the existence of the kind of independent distributors examined in this project. In contrast, organisations concerned with production, training and exposure have remained relatively fundable, survive in greater numbers, and are still being formed. While the number of works receiving significant exposure to the public has increased, the ongoing basic availability of a large number of works - which is a function of a distributor maintaining a collection - is decreasing. Lux (II), whose collection was largely built from LFMC and LVA's period as open access, non-selective distributors, is now strategically de-acquiring work and accepting a limited, carefully selected number of acquisitions a year.

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2. To analyse the current effectiveness of the curatorial approach to promoting artists' moving image work in terms of reaching audiences.

The curatorial approach to promoting artists' moving image work is and has long been highly effective in reaching audiences. It is important to note that this approach and many of its curators have emerged from 'pre-consecrated' and unfunded cultural spaces, be that the 'underground' of the late-1960s (LFMC, New Cinema Club, Vaughn-Rogosin Films) or the 'No Wave' film groups of London in the 1990s (Exploding Cinema, Omsk, Halloween Film Society). While selection, promotion and curation were originally anathema to LFMC and LVA as distributors, this was because the distributors existed as a resource for the artist-activists that had formed them, who undertook promotion and curation themselves. The artist-activist milieu which formed LFMC and LVA, and also that which formed the 'No Wave' screening groups of the 1990s, have a strong though sometimes uneven record of reaching audiences and exposing new work. Nonetheless, this activity has rarely been known to generate significant revenue through the contact of work with the public, and so the scale of endeavour has tended to be determined by the resources available. However, it has been highly successful in attracting revenue in the form of cultural subsidy.

Although moving image artwork has attained a higher public profile and reached audiences of increasing scale over the past 15 years, because the cost of the events where the work is exposed is not covered by audience attendance, the growing audience is only indirectly responsible for the escalating scale of moving image art. The economic model involves a basic disconnect between the impetus to draw as large an audience as possible and the funds needed to do this. Moving image art events are frequently expensive, particularly where new technology is involved, and the revenues that have fuelled its growth are not from entry charges (and thus public enthusiasm) but largely from sponsorship, substantially arts subsidy. Curatorial skill is high and has benefited from more than 10 years of reasonable stability and continuity - based on continuity of funding - for curatorial agencies such as FVU and Moviola/FACT. Additionally, for more than four decades there has been an interest in the arts-science/arts-technology crossover in avant-garde circles (signalled in earliest days of UK experimental film and video by the residence of some groups (LFMC, TVX) in the Institute for Research in Art and Technology (IRAT), and more lately by the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT)). While the growth of the gallery market for artists certainly moved through film and video in the earlier 1990s, the move away from these media and into digital and computer-based projects was avidly pursued and pushed by curatorial agencies previously involved with film and video. Technology at its newest is particularly expensive, but events displaying new technology in a prestigious art context can attract significant sponsorship, from both industry and arts funding. It is the ability to raise this sponsorship which has driven the gallery wave, and the integral factor in this has been the curatorial agencies and their specific competences of fund raising and project management. This has tended to route much creative ambition in the moving image field through the curatorial agencies, where the potential for exposure and notice are far higher than with moving image distributors. Additionally, there has been some resultant shift in the kind of work being made away from the easily distributable (single screen works) towards the site specific and unique (installations). In terms of reaching audiences, in any given case the number of people who flow through a gallery over the period of an installation or exhibition is likely far higher than those reached by distributors with a work in a year (unless they have made the now increasingly rare television sale). However, though it has been tried, the number of people flowing through a gallery is often harder to quantify than 'bums on seats' in a cinema, or distribution transactions.

It is interesting to note that the upsurge of interest in contemporary moving image work in the gallery arena has lead to a resurgence of that from earlier periods, the artists' film and video. While the parent companies of the only remaining specialist artists' moving image distributor, the Lux, had undertaken curatorial activities throughout the 1990s, their touring package Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! (SSS!) in 2002 showed their first success on the scale of the curatorial agencies, drawing substantial funding and selling out many sessions in its opening. Its US showing constituted the largest incursion of UK artists' moving image work since the 1970s. Thus undertaking the strategy of a curatorial agency, and gaining substantial funding, did result in the reaching of a much larger audience. The other high-profile retrospective of older work was A Century of Artists' Film in Britain in 2003-4, which moved further into the gallery context pioneered in the 1990s by projecting the works on a long loop from a computer harddrive (SSS! had projected celluloid film, mostly in a gallery cinema) as a free exhibit in the Tate Britain (SSS! charged entry fees to the cinema). Thus these major retrospectives, which reached substantial audiences, benefited from and used the achievements of the curatorial agencies of the 1990s.

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3. To examine the role of the relationship between the exhibition venue and the curatorial agency in the light of recent shows/touring programmes.

While the potential for exposure and notice has proved to be far higher when the work is fielded through the curatorial agencies, the curatorial agencies have found - just as the independent distributors had - that it is necessary to develop close relationships with exhibition spaces or venues. These were often undertaken in a fairly informal manner during the 1980s, but by the mid-late 1990s the imperative had intensified and can also be seen as an expression of funder priorities. By the mid-1990s it was increasingly apparent that artists'/independent distribution organisations could not achieve self-sustainability on self-generated income alone. Where funders were committed to ensuring the survival of an organisation, they were therefore obliged to increase the level of revenue funding, and the requirement that they deliver value for money in terms of securing audiences and visibility for the work rose accordingly.

While the internet has radically improved the possibilities for promotion and marketing, both FVU and Lux (II) in its curatorial initiatives have, however, found venues often undertaking inadequate levels of publicity to properly promote the work and help build audiences. At one extreme, the launch venue for a programme or tour may undertake no specialist publicity at all, as was the case for Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! (2002) while at the other venues might seek only local press coverage (such as those staging On General Release, 2002-03). Therefore, to gain the higher profile for moving image artwork, especially at a national level, FVU has sought to work very closely with venues in terms of programming, co-commissioning, undertaking publicity and advertising, supplying educational support material, and providing technical support and advice. In particular, regional venues have reported having little success at gaining national press coverage, and in response to that FVU employed a free-lance press officer in 2003 to work on all their projects in conjunction with the staging venues, which has yielded some positive results.

Recent shows have experimented with different presentational formats, in part to help develop audiences. Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! raised substantial funding to strike new 16mm film prints in order to restage single-screen, two-screen and installation film work from the 1960s and 1970s in its original format in a cinema space, while both On General Release and A Century of Artists' Film in Britain utilised digital technology to re-present artists' moving image work in manner that allowed more flexible audience viewing. While exhibition strategies facilitated viewing that would not have otherwise been possible, it is the ongoing and intensive promotional work developed through the close relationship between curatorial agency and exhibition venue that has proved crucial to ensuring the continuing visibility of the work. In the absence of a suitable exhibition venue to develop as its 'home venue' or access to an exhibition network, Lux (II) has had to utilise some of its own space to set up regular public screenings to maintain the visibility of the work it distributes and help build audiences. While this echoes the earlier integrated LFMC model, it is not a funded part of their activities but seen as a necessary survival strategy for the organisation in terms of its funding base. At one level, the new FACT building in Liverpool can be seen as an extreme variant of this, as a way of securing the future of the iniatives set up by Merseyside Moviola and carried on by FACT during the 1990s. The scale of the project, combined with its broader arts programming and educational outreach work, can be viewed as offering extremely good value for money in what had been a culturally deprived area and thus offered the best possibility for continued funding support.

Nevertheless, while this close relationship between curatorial agency and exhibition space can demonstrably yield bigger audiences, it doesn't necessarily introduce new audiences to the work. The staging of On General Release at Southampton's John Hansard Gallery succeeded in attracting a substantial audience (over 4000 visitors) over its 26 day showing, but the marketing officer reported that 'the composition of the audience was largely existing and former arts and media school students whom had an interest in or a former collegiate relationship with some of the artists whose films were featured' (2003).

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4. To analyse the impact of the wide take up of email and web-based marketing practices.

Before the World Wide Web, a major issue for each of the artists'/independent distributors was the regular production of an up-to-date catalogue. Catalogues were important as a general promotional tool, both for introducing customers to the range of work held in the collection and for projecting an organisation's identity. However, in relation to earned income, catalogue production was always a substantial financial commitment which rose over time as the size of distributors' collections increased. Just prior to the mass take-up of the web, Cinenova were quoted £15,000 for the production of a new catalogue and they were unable to raise the necessary funding. The advent of the web has, however, changed this entirely and the surviving distributors, as well as curatorial agencies, quickly prioritised setting up their own websites. Although these usually required external expertise and substantial investment to set up in the late 1990s, funding was often available for initiatives involving the exploitation of new media technology, or people were willing to donate their labour as a way of experimenting with the potential of the technology. As website construction skills have become easier to acquire, it has become easier for organisations to maintain their sites inhouse. All works held or promoted by an organisation can be listed in an easily updatable online catalogue. This has been of enormous benefit to the organisations in terms of freeing them up from the financial burden and time-consuming process of producing a new paper catalogue every 2-3 years and annual supplements in the intervening years. Further, it means that the full catalogue is readily available to anyone at any time, anywhere in the world, without the additional expense and labour involved in posting paper catalogues out to customers and processing invoices/payments.

However, Lux (II) currently holds over 4000 titles in their collection and, although all are listed in the online catalogue, it is impossible to effectively promote such a large number of works. Although the online catalogue can be browsed and searched according to name, title and theme, selection of a film or video still largely depends on a customer's foreknowledge of that work. And what most distributors like Lux (II) have always found and continue to find is that a mere 20% of their library generates 80% of their earned income. While the advent of the web has allowed distributors to make their collections far more accessible - not only via online catalogues, but via online ordering - of necessity (due to issues of storage space and collection maintenance, as well as promotion) Lux (II) still has to operate a selection process for new acquisitions.

And as with the conventional distribution model operated by the likes of TOC, COW, Albany Video, and to some extent Circles/Cinenova, selective marketing remains crucial, both for new releases and for shows. Whereas in the past this was primarily done via direct mail marketing, it is now done by email - which is of course much cheaper, far faster and at least as effective if not more so. When various constraints reduced traditional forms of publicity for Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! to a negligible level and left only a short lead-in time, an email marketing campaign contributed significantly to full capacity screenings at its launch venue. Similarly, Lux (II) have found that their Salon screenings are fully booked within half a day of the email announcements.

As with the traditional direct mail marketing, email lists are highly targeted and hence are usually directed at audiences already familiar with the type of work. Furthermore, for people to sign on to email lists, they have to be aware of the organisation running the list, or at least be circulating within relevant milieu to become aware of it. Even then it can be difficult for a new, small organisation to build its visibility. Hence, in terms of audience development, the effectiveness of email marketing is at least partly related to the 'real-world' visibility of the organisation. For this reason, both FVU and Lux (II), for instance, still undertake paper-based marketing and advertising. Even though Lux Salon screenings get fully booked via their email list, they still place adverts in the listings magazines to maintain their wider visibility.

That said, the web has also become crucially important in maintaining an organisation's visibility. While a website will not in and of itself necessarily bring new audiences, customers, or users to an organisation, among existing users and its own 'market' sector a website has become essential if an organisation is to retain visibility. After Cinenova lost its revenue funding, it was able to maintain its website through volunteer labour and donated server hosting. The site became crucially important for them since it ensured customers, curators, researchers etc were aware of its continued existence (as well as the history of the organisation). This allowed the organisation to continue to trade (albeit at a relatively low level) and generate some earned income with relative ease, as well as keep its struggle for survival in the public eye. However, in 2004, when the organisation was faced with meeting the hosting costs itself, the decision was taken to take down the site, and the visibility of the organisation plummeted.

The advent of the web has also allowed organisations to develop further ways of raising the profile of artists' moving image work. Both Lux (II) and Cinenova became involved in the NOF-funded Screen Online consortium for the Digitalisation of Learning Materials. While Cinenova was forced to withdraw due to its own funding instability and insecure future, Lux (II) developed their LUXONLINE project to act as an online resource 'for people wishing to learn about and explore British based artists' film and video'. While this provides useful introductory information organised by artist, theme, works and decade, part of its value is its linking to the BFI ScreenOnline site (even though the link from the ScreenOnline site to LUXONLINE is not particularly prominent), which ideally should function to draw people to the LUXONLINE site.

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5. To examine the impact/implications of DVD as a screening platform for artists' film/video, both in terms of gallery and home viewing.

To some extent the way for DVD as a delivery medium was prepared by the rapid growth of VHS as a delivery medium in the late 1980s-early 1990s. Within many educational institutions, for instance, DVD as a projection format has carried on from VHS's replacement of film throughout the 1990s. Video (and now DVD) projection was far easier to deal with than film projection and the take-off of VHS sales via distributors in the 1980s and the growing VHS retail market in the 1990s meant that work was readily available for students to re-view whenever they wished and to undertake detailed texual analysis if required. Although many artists, viewers and educators were (and indeed remain) concerned about the legitimacy and quality of the viewer experience when work originated on film was screened on video, once video projection reached sufficient quality, these concerns - certainly in the educational context - diminished somewhat (even though the image quality remained inferior to film) and video collections in the libraries of educational institutions became the norm. Licences for educational institutions to tape programmes off-air for educational use also contributed to this trend.

While most educational institutions have readily equipped themselves with digital screening platforms, the improved screening quality of digital formats (such as DVD, DV-tape, and HD projection) has revived concerns about transferring work originated on one format to another. On the one hand, the improved quality has meant that venues are far more willing to consider screening work presented in a digital format, irrespective of the format it was originated in. To some extent this has become a more accepted practice - all the artists or rights holders of work screened as part of On General Release and A Century of Artists' Film in Britain agreed to the transfer of their work to a digital format for screening purposes, and increasingly film and video artists whose work has been highly medium specific are starting to transfer that work to the more durable digital formats. Nevertheless, this has resulted in renewed concern about the quality of the viewer experience from both other artists and some audiences alike.

On the other hand, there is growing concern among some artists and distributors that once their work becomes distributed on DVD, precisely because of the improved screening quality, they lose control of their work. Whereas a VHS tape of a piece of work was unlikely to be projected outside of an educational venue, the opposite is true for DVD copies. As one distributor expressed it, 'the work takes on a life of its own'. Some distributors (such as the BFI) see this as a benefit, in that it can only increase the visibility of the work and audiences' exposure to it. For others, such as Lux (II), it threatens once again to undermine their distribution income. In 2004 in a move that echoed earlier funder intervention, the BFI released a William Raban DVD (comprising five titles and a documentary about the artist) which made available work that Lux (II) distributes on video and film. Not only did the pricing of the DVD substantially undercut the Lux's prices for the film and video formats, but the BFI sourced the work direct from the artist, cutting the Lux out of the loop. While some venues will still wish to screen the work in its original format, others will certainly opt for the easier - and cheaper - option presented by purchasing the BFI's DVD release. As a result, some film and video artists are reluctant to transfer their work to DVD.

The advent of the DVD format in particular has also exacerbated a trend in multiple-tier pricing that had started to emerge with the take-off of VHS as a delivery medium. In an attempt to develop audiences for artists' moving image work, distributors and artists alike have experimented with the packaging and pricing of their work. In the 1980s and 1990s there were several experiments with sell-through video at retail prices (around £14.99), none of which were particularly successful for the distributors, but did demonstrate there was a small domestic audience for such a product. With the huge popularity of DVD as a medium (out-performing VHS) however, there has been renewed interest (as indicated by the BFI's Raban release, with others planned, and a growth of small specialist DVD distributors) in trying to develop a retail market for artists' film and video. While the BFI and other distributors' catalogues of art and world cinema material have demonstrated that a modest but relatively lucrative market exists for non-mainstream films, the early indications are that the Raban release - while selling well for an artist's release - will nevertheless take a number of years to cover its costs (which were financed by the BFI and the Arts Council). Hence the likelihood is that such releases will continue to need subsidy and will remain fairly limited in number.

Thus there remains an important role for a distributor like Lux (II) with its extensive back catalogue and original format works, but there is also a risk that its best selling and hiring titles may gradually migrate to DVD releases through other distributors. In an attempt to counter this, they have taken the initiative in reinstigating a higher institutional price of around £150 for some video and DVD sales, on the basis that institutions are paying that price in lieu of multiple hire fees. At the same time, the market is further complicated by a third pricing band of around £500 for institutional sales to galleries/museums for the limited edition or signed copy of an artist's work, usually self-distributed by the artist. Some artists have the same work in all three markets, albeit packaged differently, and the Lux has yet to see how successful they are with their higher pricing strategy. But whilst the co-existence of three very different markets and pricing strategies for artists' film and video could be problematic, our research found some evidence to suggest that such market differentiation could work, at least in the short term.

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