News on Screen

The Children’s Film Foundation was created in 1951, based on the Rank project, Children’s Entertainment Films [qv] which had folded the previous year. It’s productions were funded by the British Film Production Fund (known as the Eady levy and made compulsory in 1957), but also greatly discounted by goodwill gestures from many parts of the film industry. The Foundation’s first Chief Executive was Mary Field, former head of the CEF.

The Foundation made all types of films, including two cinemagazines, Our Magazine, and Our World Magazine, to be shown at children’s cinema clubs around Britain.

With television’s move into the Saturday morning entertainment market in the 1960s, the CFF began to fund television programming too, and changed its name to the Children’s Film and Television Foundation. The Eady levy was abolished in 1985, spelling the end for the CFTF, and in 1987 it was wound up as a filmmaking concern. The CFTF continues as an advisory body helping develop TV and film production for children, playing an important part in successes like Danny the Champion of the World (1989).

Sources

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1148379/index.html; Accessed 26 February 2007.