THE Scottish cinema industry has received a major blow with the announcement that the Centre for the Moving Image (CMI) – the parent charity of the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF), the Edinburgh Filmhouse and the Belmont Filmhouse, Aberdeen – has gone into administration.
In a statement released at 11am on Thursday, October 6, the CMI board announced that all three of its constituent organisations (including the cafe bar at the Edinburgh Filmhouse) “will all cease trading with immediate effect".
The shock announcement is devastating, not only for the many staff who will lose their jobs, but for the cinema culture of two of Scotland’s largest cities and of the country more widely. The Edinburgh Filmhouse and the Belmont have been among Scotland’s leading independent cinemas for many years.
Their loss will be felt keenly by film lovers. Fears will also be raised about the future of other independent cinemas, such as the Glasgow Film Theatre and the Cameo cinema in Edinburgh.
The closure of the EIFF is likely to prove extremely damaging to the prestige of Scotland’s film industry. Only this year, the 75-year-old festival announced a return to an August programme (alongside the other summer festivals, including the Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe), after a 15-year hiatus in which it had been held in June.
In their statement, the CMI board said: “The charity is facing a perfect storm of external impacts which have created an environment in which it is unsustainable to continue.
“The pandemic and cost of living crisis are the two biggest reasons for this, but the storm is made of many factors which impact on the two cinemas, the café bar operation and the festival.”
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The board explained that income has been adversely affected by decreased ticket sales as a consequence of the Covid pandemic and the on-going squeeze on living standards.
However, they continued, the closure of the charity’s operations was also due to soaring energy costs, general inflation, a real terms decrease in public funding, the recent growth in digital screening platforms (such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+) and increased staffing costs.
Although it described CMI as “a proud accredited Real Living Wage employer”, the statement bemoaned the gap between the charity’s declining income and its “facing an increase of 10.1% in payroll costs over the next 12 months.” Initial reports suggest that 102 of CMI’s 107 staff face immediate redundancy.
A total of 58 staff are set to lose their jobs at the CMI, 22 at Filmhouse Trading, with a further 20 being made redundant at the Belmont and two at the EIFF. It is understood that five members of staff are being retained to assist in the administration process.
The CMI statement was particularly strident on the matter of public funding, raising questions about the sufficiency of the financial backing provided by public bodies such as Screen Scotland, Culture Edinburgh, the City of Edinburgh Council and Aberdeen City Council.
“Public funding has been [at a] standstill or reducing for over eight years and had been reducing in real terms value throughout that period”, the statement read. “The more recent steep rise in inflationary costs reduces the real terms value even further.
“Additionally our funders and the Scottish Government have indicated that the outlook beyond March 2023 for public funding is highly uncertain, given the other pressures that they have, making planning and beyond that point almost impossible.”
The failure of the UK Government to guarantee restrictions on energy costs beyond March 2023 was a major factor in this crisis, the board insisted.
“Even with the recently announced energy price cap for businesses, CMI’s energy costs are rising by approximately £200k over the next 12 months”, the statement read. “The price cap is also only in place for six months and so planning beyond March 2023 is highly uncertain.”
Announcing Tom MacLennan and Chad Griffin of FRP Advisory as joint administrators, the board stated its intention to: “work with Creative Scotland [parent organisation of Screen Scotland], City of Edinburgh Council and Aberdeen City Council in assessing what options there are for the future of the individual elements of the charity’s work and supporting staff through the process.
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