Centre for the Moving Image (CMI), the Scottish arts company behind the Edinburgh International Film Festival, have appointed administrators.
They are the first high-profile victim of the looming recession currently gripping the U.K, which follows the two-year COVID-19 pandemic.
In a statement, CMI’s board said: “The charity is facing the perfect storm of sharply rising costs, in particular energy costs, alongside reduced trade due to the ongoing impacts of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis. The combination and scale of these challenges is unprecedented and means that there was no option but to take immediate action.”
As well as the film festival, CMI also owns Filmhouse Cinema in Edinburgh and Belmont Filmhouse in Aberdeen. All three operations will cease trading immediately.
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Tom MacLennan and Chad Griffin of FRP Advisory have been appointed as joint administrators.
“We have been proud to have led the CMI through incredibly challenging times, and in particular during the worst days of the pandemic,” the CMI board said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the combination of sharply increasing energy and other costs, together with both the lasting impacts of the pandemic and the rapidly emerging cost of living crisis affecting cinema attendances, means that we have had no other option but to appoint administrators at this time.”
“We would like to put on record our immense gratitude to the entire staff team whose passion for film as an artform and for the audiences and communities we work with and serve has remained undented by the challenges of recent years. We’re fully aware that this will be an exceptionally stressful time for them.”
Last year’s company accounts for CMI show how the film charity was struggling. Filed last October and covering the 12-month period from March 2020 to March 2021, the financial report said: “The underlying financial position of CMI Group remains fragile. It is inevitable the the organisation will continue to experience financial stress in the coming year as COVID specific funding such as furlough and local authority grants are removed, while public health restrictions and customer behaviour restrict our earned income potential.”
