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Digital Film Archive Fund (DFAF)

The Digital Film Archive Fund is a UK Film Council Lottery fund, which was set up to increase public access to regional screen heritage.

Ths fund ran from 2008 to 2010 and is now closed for applications, but we are still following the projects which were awarded funding.

Grants were awarded to support innovative programmes which will ensure wider access to screen heritage. Used strategically, the money will ensure that access to screen heritage is provided to as many people as possible through a variety of platforms (for example screenings, festivals, online, and public spaces).

The fifteen project that were awarded funding are as follows:

A Time Traveller’s Guide to Bristol
ArthurCox
Bristol is a city that has undergone a series of drastic changes to its city centre. Once buildings have disappeared and areas rebuilt it is hard to remember what was there before; the memory becomes extinct. This project is to create a series of digital maps of Bristol which enable a visual time travel; pinpointing locations and exploring how they looked at different points over the last century by linking them to clips of archive films and photographs shot in location. The experience will be accessed by via personal GPS units and mobile phones on location walks as part of hosted events and as a separate remotely accessed website and i-phone application.

The North Devon Movie Bus Project
Museum of Barnstaple and North Devon
The project is based around an original 1960s cinema bus, currently being restored, which will become a 20 seat mobile cinema and recording studio. The applicant will edit, and digitise where necessary, historic film from the collections of SWFTA and set up a programme of screenings around rural North Devon, with a target of 25 school visits, 15 community visits and 10 festival events during the lifetime of the project (till 2011).

Plymouth Pasts
Plymouth and West Devon Record Office
'Plymouth Pasts' will create a series of highly accessible digital packages drawn from across the archive collections held at South West Film and Television Archive (SWFTA) and based upon themes pertinent to Plymouth's past, present and future, e.g. 'Plymouth and the Sea', 'Naval Dockyard', 'Work and Play', 'Transport and Tourism', 'Moving to Plymouth' and 'Home Port; Life and Times in a Maritime City'.

Rural Heritage of Somerset Project
Somerset County Council Heritage Services
This is the smallest of the projects under discussion with three clear aims: to increase public access to and understanding of Somerset's rural heritage; to increase public access to regional screen heritage in partnership with regional archives including South West Film and Television Archive (SWFTA); and to work in partnership with a film-maker and a range of audiences to create a film which explores contemporary rural issues. The project will deliver this by working with a range of audiences and partners to create a contemporary film which explores contemporary Somerset rural industries; researching film archive content for a new gallery display at the Somerset Rural Life Museum and working in partnership with experts to create an interactive installation for a new rural industries display in the Somerset Rural Life Museum using regional archive film, newly created film footage, and the Somerset Heritage Service collections.

Development of South West partnerships
South West Film and TV Archive
The project will provide support to the selected audience focussed projects within the first call for the DFAF programme. Specific support will include finding appropriate material from the SWFTA archive, arranging rights clearance and copying the material onto an appropriate format. Access to editing facilities will be provided where necessary.  Whilst some applications have a cost relating to these services within their budgets, it will be essential for SWFTA to have this capacity due to the increased demand on its services. 

Film Trail
Trilith
The project will be an experiment in four locations in Wiltshire and Dorset, capable of replication elsewhere. It will link archive film directly to the village or town in which it was shot. It will use films dating from 1918 to 1960s already saved by Trilith.  A website will be created through which anyone interested in the village or town (its history, community, holiday possibilities, business or media potential) can encounter that place through films shot there in the past. These films may have been made as a straight record of the place or with a wider documentary or creative purpose. They will be provided with newly shot context, adding the knowledge and memories of local people and an idea of the changes that have produced the modern community, and specially commissioned music.

The Tre Project
Awen Productions CIC
A celebration of Cornish culture through existing and new film archives which reach out to rural communities across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.  Using 'home' to ignite the imagination of interpretation, the theme will be a starting point of what Cornwall has meant to people, both now and in the future.  The project will create new community events and take part in existing community activities across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, including oral history projects, events, fetes & festivals etc.

Home of Innovation: The Holman Years
Azook CIC
Holmans was a giant in the development of mining technology. The Holman Collection (160 reels of archive footage dating from the 1920s) documents the innovation and technological advances, which were in part responsible for the designation of Cornwall and West Devon's Mining Landscape as a World Heritage Site. The film footage provides an insight into highly skilled, close-knit communities whose work and home lives were linked to Holmans through factory hours, clubs and choirs. An online archive will be published featuring the Holman Collection and extracts of the footage will be disseminated to schools across Cornwall.

BAC 100 – 100 years of aviation in the west of England
Bristol Cultural Development Partnership
The specific element within the BAC 100 centenary project relates to making more widely available historic film of the West of England's aviation industry.

Between the Moor and the Sea
The Dartington Hall Trust
The Dartington Film Collection forms part of the audiovisual collections of The Dartington Hall Trust Archive and includes over 200 hours of original film and video. It holds iconic footage of the early work of the Trust including dance, summer school and reconstruction and also houses the footage of the Dartington Hall Film Unit which was at the cutting edge of documentary film-making in pre-war Britain. This collection has not only regional importance and cultural value to the South West but is also of key national significance to the history of film and film-making Britain.  This project is part of a larger undertaking to restore the entire Dartington film collection and make all its material digitally available and fully interactive.

Back to the Future
East Devon AONB
Back to the Future aims to provide a digital film resource, accessible to all, that celebrates or tells the real stories of people and life in Devon. Back to the Future is where traditional archive films or 'home movie' meets YouTube.  The application is to simplify the whole process by making selected locally relevant material available as a resource to those communities in Devon who want to illustrate the lives, concerns and occupations of past generations using moving picture. Material will be able to used in different digital platforms and searchable by category.

Britain Recut (South West)
Mosaic
Britain Recut is a mass participation project using digital storytelling tools to encourage the public to explore their sense of place and identity through recutting moving image archive material.  Anyone can view and edit material from regional archives around the country and the BFI National Archive, together with footage uploaded from their mobile phone or webcam, using an online editing tool to produce a short film responding to life in Britain today.  All films submitted will be tagged and added to an interactive online map and gallery. The four best, as voted by the public and a panel of industry experts, will be selected for distribution: online; as part of a touring programme; in festivals; and in the BFI's Mediatheques.

Home is Where the Heart Is
Roses Theatre Trust
To produce a documentary film comprising local archive footage around the theme of Home and exploring how Gloucestershire's identity has changed over a period of time; to use this footage to inspire an educational project working with schools, the travelling community and older people to produce a series of short films.  This project will unfold in 4 phases over 18 months.

Glastonbury: A cultural legacy
Strode College
A documentary film project using 20th century film as both inspiration and source material. Before the first world war, Glastonbury was the proposed site of a national theatre, was home to composers and writers of national standing and presented a programme of work that encompassed music, drama, the original Glastonbury Festival and, by 1922, feature film. This film aims to trace the early creative influences through use of archive film, form an understanding of how these independent thinkers have inspired the next generations and celebrate all that is extraordinary in the heart of a very rural county. It is intended that the completed film be made available for sale on DVD and offered for further exploitation following the public screenings, helping to continue the cultural legacy of Glastonbury for the next generations.

Faces and Places of the South West
South West Film and TV Archive
The main focus of the project is to develop partnerships in the north and east of the region.  The project will deliver a series of shows and web presented film and video stories of the people and places of the region to communities across the region. During the course of the project, 1300 hours of unique material will be digitised to preserve it for future use and future generations. The project will deliver 20 film shows relevant to new local audiences, often in new venues; more than 500 films, TV programmes, clips, adverts and other items online; new partnerships with film archives in the region; an enhanced volunteer programme and the preservation of significant at risk material.

Digital Film Archive Fund

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