Prints and Advertising Fund
The Prints and Advertising Fund supports the distribution and marketing strategy of specialised films.
Important notice
On 1 April 2011, the British Film Institute became the Lottery distributor for film funding. From this date, the Prints and Advertising Fund will transfer to the BFI. There will be a click through from this website to the BFI's until this website is fully closed down.
All applications completed and received by the UK Film Council before 31 March 2011 weere transferred to the BFI on 1 April 2011. You do not need to do anything further as your application will automatically transfer at the stage of the decision-making process it has reached. However, all future correspondence regarding your application and subsequent funding decisions will be made by the Prints & Advertising Fund as part of the BFI.
If you wish to submit an application to the Prints and Advertising Fund you will need to complete a BFI Prints and Advertising Fund application form which is available on the BFI website.
What we do
The Prints and Advertising Fund is designed to widen and support the distribution and marketing strategy of specialised films and to offer support to more commercially focused British films that nevertheless remain difficult to market.
The UK BFI's Prints and Advertising Fund has an annual budget of £2 million which aims to benefit audiences by widening:
- access to the range of films available;
- opportunities to view such films across the UK; and
- audience awareness of the range of films potentially available.
Who we fund
Whilst concentrating on specialised film, the fund also backs more commercially focused British films by supporting UK distributors to produce extra prints, increase advertising or enhance media exposure and publicity.
Lottery funds have been awarded to a wide range of films including key Oscar®-winning films A Prophet, The Lives of Others and Tsotsi, award-winning British titles An Education, Red Road, Control and This is England, and acclaimed titles from all over the world including The Curse of the Golden Flower, La Vie en Rose, Volver and Pan's Labyrinth.
Case study: Specialised film in the UK
Since the UK Film Council introduced Lottery funding to support the distribution of foreign language and specialised films in 2003 to benefit British cinema-goers, 26 foreign language films have grossed more than £1 million at the UK box office. Of these 26 foreign language films, the P&A Fund has supported 15 in gaining a wider UK release.
In comparison, only seven films grossed £1 million or more in the previous three years (2000-2003) and the average number of screens they played at the widest point of release was 24. Throughout the 1990s, only nine films grossed more than £1 million at the UK box office.
