Profile - Amanda Neville

Profile of Amanda Neville - BFI - published in Sunday Times April 20th


The boundary between profession and passion is blurred for Amanda Nevill, director of the British Film Institute.

Her working hours are full of the challenges of running an institution in the throes of radical re-invention. It is 75 this year and waiting for Government approval to create an ambitious £200 million National Film Centre on the South Bank in London.

But after hours and at weekends she can often be found – along with many other BFI staffers - at the present BFI Southbank centre, watching films or mingling with people from the business.

“I don’t know how many films I’ve seen, but I still get excited every time that curtain opens. I want other people to have the opportunity to get as excited and to be nourished in the same way that I do.”

Nevill, 51 who earns around £120,000 annually was appointed in 2003 by the then new chairman of the BFI, film director Anthony Minghella. He died this March.

“His loss numbed me. The BFI that exists now is very much his vision. He and I shared the same values. We wanted the BFI to be loved by a lot of people.”

His successor is former BBC Director General Greg Dyke. Nevill has just taken him to see the BFI’s film archive – the world’s largest - housed over 34 acres underground near Birmingham and in Hertfordshire.

During the week Nevill moves between meetings with colleagues to discuss things like the London Film Festival, conservation issues, the proposed National Film Centre and how to make the BFI’s vast collection increasingly accessible.

“We are like the British Museum for film – one of the great planks of UK culture. Our job is interpret this stuff in a way that is relevant and exciting for lots of different audiences.

The BFI is multi-faceted. As well as running the BFI Southbank and Mediatheque, it has the IMAX, a vast library and immense film archive, a distribution wing, Sight and Sound magazine, publications and more.

Nevill says there are many challenges for the BFI – all interconnected. These include protecting the archive and ensuring that everyone has access to the widest diversity of cinema and to knowledge about it in the digital age.

“Our distribution of films is spectacular now. We serve over 800 venues across the UK with around 12,000 prints in an average year.”

Then there are the Mediatheques in London and touring the UK and co-productions utilising forgotten archive film. But the single biggest vision is the proposed National Film Centre.

“Anthony used to say that BFI Southbank is a rehearsal run for this. It will be a collision of facets which have never sat together before.

We are in the throes of negotiating a very exciting formal partnership with higher education which will breathe the next level of scholarly engagement with our collections.”

“We want to create a destination where anybody who loves anything about film can come, a place to capture the hearts and minds of the public, for people from the industry and for everyone else.”