BFI plans for world's best film centre are put on hold

Plans to build the most sophisticated film centre in the world on London's South Bank will not be developed for 10 years, the British Film Institute conceded yesterday at the end of a nine-month strategic review.

Plans to build the most sophisticated film centre in the world on London's South Bank will not be developed for 10 years, the British Film Institute conceded yesterday at the end of a nine-month strategic review.

The ambitious multi-screen scheme, which was revealed in The Independent two years ago, will require £50 to £60m and not the £35m previously estimated, the BFI has concluded.

Instead, a smaller-scale £4m film centre will open in the summer of next year using the premises of the former Museum of the Moving Image (Momi) next to the National Film Theatre (NFT), which have been empty since Momi closed five years ago.

Announcing the revised timescale for the development, Anthony Minghella, the film director and the BFI's chairman, said the decision showed "a healthy dose of realism about what it means to have a capital project on this scale". But he and Amanda Nevill, the BFI's director, reconfirmed their commitment to a national film centre as outlined two years ago by Adrian Wootton, then a BFI executive who now runs Film London, the film body for the capital.

Mrs Nevill said: "If you look at the other major sciences and cultures, they all have their homes in places like the Natural History Museum and the Royal Opera House. Film is the most popular, accessible and influential of all the art forms but has its national home - the National Film Theatre - tucked under a bridge."

The smaller-scale film centre will instead act as a "test bed". The aim is to double the number of visitors that currently attend the NFT by putting on contemporary film/art installations, offering a "mediatheque" where visitors can view part of the BFI's extensive archive and extra bar and shop facilities. There will be no extra screens.

In the meantime, the BFI is to continue looking for a site for the full-size film centre. The preferred venue is by the existing South Bank Centre, but the area has been mired in planning complexities for years. Mrs Nevill said they hoped a thriving test bed film centre would show the potential benefits and kickstart the process.

The review was established after a National Audit Office report criticised the BFI's financial management and failure to reach younger audiences and audiences outside London.

To counteract the London-centric image, the BFI said yesterday it would be setting up a network of "archive portals" where visitors can access the archives in about eight cities and towns in the UK. And it aims to have its entire archive of images online within two years.

The Film Council is to increase the BFI's annual grant by £1.5m to £16m. However, there will also be job cuts. The staff of just under 500 that Mr Minghella and Mrs Nevill inherited when they took over last year will be cut by nearly a fifth by 2007. Mr Minghella said the aim of all the changes was to "turn the organisation inside out, to reach more people and make known what is currently a great cultural secret".