No funding for Salford Film Festival spells the end

Today’s MEN carries a very informative piece by Neil Keeling about Salford Film Festival.

Originally scheduled to go ahead as usual last November, organiser Stephen Kingston postponed it, hoped to secure funding by this month instead. But having found no one willing to stump up the �20,000 needed, he’s now axed the festival completely.

Previously �5,000 in lottery funding and sponsorship from a local property developer has covered the festival’s costs. But this time Kingston lays the blame firmly at the feet of the council:

The festival put the city on the map as much as last year’s World Cup triathlon event at the Quays did. The council spent �260,000 on staging the triathlon - we were asking for �20,000 to run a free festival for the people of Salford that would have been a glamorous showcase for local talent.

Kingston also points out that ‘the community is being used to entice the BBC to the Quays’. The Salford Film Festival previously took place at Red Cinema, directly adjacent to Mediacity.

Kingston’s name may ring a bell for Manchester media followers: he is editor of the free, independent Salford Star magazine. The community magazine, you may recall, was nominated for the Paul Foot Award for Investigative and Campaigning Journalism.

2 Comments so far

Hiya

Thanks for including stuff on the Salford Film Fest. There’s a couple of things that I need to put straight. Firstly I’m not the organiser of the Fest - I couldn’t put a Film Fest on to save my life. I used to do the PR for it and after last year’s Festival they stuck me on the board. But I can’t organise anything, even the Salford Star’s always late. There’s lots of people who put the Festival on, like Mike Knowles of Made Up North and Alison Surtees of CRIIS.

Secondly, it was the 2006 Fest that was cancelled as we couldn’t get any funding from the council. We’re hoping that they will see the light and put some funding behind a 2007 Festival.

We just wrote a huge article in the Star about the hypocrisy of Salford council finding half a million quid for Manchester’s big poncy Festival this year, quarter of a million quid for the Triathlon and over ten million quid for mediacity, when they only offered in-house marketing support of Â£3000 for Salford’s Film Festival which is a free event showing both community films and big box office stuff and to which everyone in the city is invited.

…And also the hypocrisy of luring the BBC to Salford while watching the city’s Web Studios, the biggest film studios in the country, put a great big For Sale sign up.

So there you go - we’ve now put the article on the website http://www.salfordstar.blogspot.com and would urge everyone to read it - it includes a lovely letter from Sir Ben Kingsley too.

The next issue of the Star should be out March 1st if we can get it written on time….

Thanks for your support and everything

Thanks for the reply Stephen.

The article made it sound like you were the organiser. Everything you add is interesting, particularly that you’re hoping to revive the festival later this year.

Let me know when you’ve got more details about the next Salford Star!

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[...] in January I wrote that no funding for the Salford Film Festival spells the end. Organisers had pulled the plug, you may recall, after a no one was found to plug a Â£20,000 [...]

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