Despite the AFI being officially placed under the Public Media Panel in the NCA structure, up until 1974 the Panel could not direct large sums to other institutions dealing with film. Furthermore, the AFI retained its exclusivity to award grants to individual filmmakers and to prioritise distribution of their IFP films. These settings signal that the AFI was an exception within the administration of public funding. Also, the NCA had simultaneously increased the AFI and the Panel’s budgets during the organisations’ first years of operation, but the latter’s power to endow to other institutions and filmmakers was restricted by the FI’s exceptional status.79 In 1971 the relationship between the NCA and the AFI tensed, especially after the cuts earlier that year. According to Michael Straight, the NCA Deputy Chairman, the changes culminating in 1974 which I explain next were the end result of the shift envisioned since the Panel appointed Chloe Aaron in 1970.80
78 Kitses, “Letters to the Editor,” 78. 79
Michael Straight, Twi s for an Ea le’s Nest: Government and the Arts, 1965-1978 (New York: Devon Press, 1979), 89.
80 Straight, Twi s for an Ea le’s Nest. See also ichael Straight’s records on the AFI’s udits
during those years. Subject Files of Deputy Chairman Michael Straight, 1969-1978, NCA-NFAH, RG288, NACP.
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In April 1971, Aaron heard complaints from David C. Stewart about the AFI failing to deliver on a co-production project for the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting programmes.81 Stewart knew of the discontent of the educational and independent film sector, and along with erald O’ rady, commissioned a survey of the patterns of distribution of 16mm films.82 O’ rady states that this “Study of the Distribution of Short Films by Independent Filmmakers” was lead by Van Dyke and John Handhardt, who sent a 36-question form to over a thousand filmmakers.83 The study was undertaken by Sheldon Renan, and while it was in preparation, the NCA members were cautious in releasing information to the AFI. After the 1971 cuts, the AFI stopped seeking distributors for the films. However, in April 1972, it signed a contract for non-theatrical distribution with Time-Life.84 The company, which in the 1960s produced Direct Cinema documentaries for television broadcast, attempted to expand by distributing content for cable television in the 1970s.85 Yet, the non-
theatrical and mainly educational orientation of the Time-Life contract did not suit all the films. It could be particularly disadvantageous to independent filmmakers who wanted to reach theatrical audiences first. Although to a lesser degree, it could also affect experimental films provided the content of these films did not fit into the categories normally distributed by Time-Life, or if the company did not market them to programmers adequately.
In December 1972, Michael Straight told Nancy Hanks in an internal correspondence that he had received a call from Stevens, who
had been told that the public media panel had received an unfavorable report on the AFI filmmaker award (a reference presumably to Sheldon Renan’s report which dealt with the largest context and recommended an
81 Chloe Aaron to Nancy Hanks, Memorandum Regarding David Stewart Visit, April 9, 1971.
AFI Correspondence/Report 1971, Subject Files of Deputy Chairman Michael Straight, 1969-1978. NCA-NFAH, RG 288, NACP. Stewart became Director of the Panel in 1966. There, he supervised the television, radio and film plans which included the creation of the AFI and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, becoming the latter’s Director of Special Projects in 1969. From his position at Corporation’s Special Project and Office of International Activities, Stewart negotiated the sales of American public broadcasting programmes with its international counterparts.
82 National Endowment for the Arts. Annual Report (Washington DC: Government Printing
Office, 1971), 61. O’ rady was an English scholar and early instigator of academic programmes of electronic image experimentation at the Center of Media Study in Buffalo.
83
erald O’ rady, “Introduction to the Frontier, 1979-1980,” in Video History Project. Resources: People, http://www.experimentaltvcenter.org/history/people/ptext.php3?id=61&page=1 accessed 16/02/2010.
84
The American Film Institute, Narrative Report to the National Endowment for the Arts. Fiscal Year 1972, p. 5. AFI Correspondence/Reports 1973. Subject Files of Deputy Chairman Michael Straight, 1971-1974. NCA-NFAH, RG 288, NACP.
85 Scott W. Fitzgerald, Corporations and Creative Industries: Time Warner, Bertelsmann and
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alternative film fellowship program). I assured him that Sheldon had not been asked to make it and had not made a direct report on the AFI.86
Subsequent communications suggest that, by April 1973, the Panel must have shown a draft of the report to the AFI’s staff, which lead to a change in policy. Nancy Raine, who was Nancy Hanks’ assistant, informed the latter that a first draft had been submitted to the Panel in December 1972, and between then and pril 1973 “minor editing was undertaken and the report was retyped.”87
Such revision concerned the section dealing with the distribution of IFP films.
The report’s final version was submitted to the Panel early in July 1973.88
The 1977 Report on the Status of Independent Film in the U.S., in which Renan also participated, mentions some results of the 1973 survey.89 The survey indicated that the average income from film for an individual avant-garde filmmaker in that year was $845, which included all film rentals, grants, institutional support, and other income available. The survey indicated that “89% of the filmmakers did not recoup production costs from film income, and 96% of the respondents indicated that they could not support themselves on the income generated by their films.”90
The 1973 Public Media Panel report provided substantial data to put pressure on a change in policy, focusing not only on the IFP distribution practices, but also other areas where the Public Media Panel and other philanthropic programmes could financially support the non-theatrical sector.