Three weeks after Ben Roberts began a new job as chief executive of the British Film Institute – so becoming one of the most powerful people in the British film industry – the movie business abruptly collapsed. It was spring 2020: the Covid lockdown. Almost overnight the industry shut down: shoots were cancelled, cinemas were shuttered, meetings postponed indefinitely. “I went on bit of a journey,” he says.
The impact of those early lockdowns were profound – but in retrospect gave Roberts breathing space to develop what he calls a “reset” of the giant body he had just started to lead. “We’re a complex organisation. Some people know us for one thing, some people know us for something else. I thought: how can we better articulate who we are and who we’re for?” These days, you are as likely to know it for the giant screens hastily built last week to show archive films of Queen Elizabeth II to those queueing to see her coffin as for its cutting-edge programming.
