Fans of the Fashion in Film Festival (FFF) - the London and New York-based biannual event that has, since 2006, rediscovered the links between fashion and cinema - will be glad to know that the organisers are already working on the programme for the next edition, scheduled to take place in 2010. While waiting for it, they will be able to actively support the festival by buying exclusive art created by five high-profile contemporary artists.

The FFF teamed up with New York-based organisation and art consignment service Artcycle launching a fundraising venture. Olaf Breuning, Scarlett Hooft Graafland, Lisa Kereszi, Kristen Schiele and Rainer Ganahl have indeed donated their work - illustrations, photographs, portraits, paintings and provocative t-shirts paying homage to the current financial and economic melt down - to help raising money for the next FFF. While the partnership strengthens the connection between the festival and the arts world, it also raises issues about funding schemes for film events in the UK.   

Dazed Digital: What inspired the Fashion in Film Festival to start this partnership with Artcycle?
Marketa Uhlirova: It was a conversation between Trong Nguyen and myself. Trong is one of the curators who work with Artcycle and who is also on our board in New York. We were trying to think of alternative ways to raise funding and felt that getting artists involved was an interesting way of doing it.

DD: Do you feel that this project will open a new connection between the arts world and fashion?
Marketa Uhlirova: I don’t consider our project strictly ‘fashion’ - we already are somewhere between film, fashion and art and have always from the beginning included a lot of art in our programming. But, interestingly, a couple of the artists who donated work considered the context of fashion and gave pieces that could be considered fit to purpose.

DD: What do you like about the five artists from Artcycle who donated their work?
Marketa Uhlirova: It’s a pretty diverse group of artists with diverse approaches and we felt they all were quality artists and that was more important to us than whether they deal with themes of fashion and style in their work, which, incidentally, some of them do.

DD: For how long will it be possible to buy artwork that supports the Fashion in Film Festival?
Marketa Uhlirova: Until we launch our next London edition in December 2010. In the meantime, we are also hoping to take the last festival programme to New York. We will keep adding artists and works to our portfolio in the meantime.

DD: Will there be further fund raising projects such as this one in the next few months?
Marketa Uhlirova: We mainly tend to approach arts and research funders and of course sponsors, so going through the standard routes most arts organisations and academic institutions go through. But it’s getting harder each year: firstly, there is much call for multi- and inter-disciplinarity. But the reality is that funders can get really confused about interdisciplinary projects and don’t always know which department to allocate you to and how to assess your proposal. This has happened to us time and time again, and we often end up falling between the cracks.

Secondly, the funding situation for film programmings, exhibitions and festivals in this country is becoming pretty dire, I fear it is worse than for exhibitions and events in any other media. If you look at the film funding landscape over the past decade, you might not be too wrong in feeling that the emphasis on artistic or curatorial excellence has almost completely given way to social agendas to do with social impact and participation. While this is of course a great initiative, it is also incredibly limiting, as ‘participation’ is often defined quite narrowly, literally, ticking boxes type of stuff.

Anyway, we don’t give up and we will crawl over broken glass to get where we want to be. When the Artcycle opportunity came up we thought it could be an interesting experiment, and working with artists is very close to our hearts anyway. I also like this way of fundraising because while supporting us you also get something tangible back and a good feeling.
 
DD: Will art have a major relevance in the next Fashion in Film Festival?
Marketa Uhlirova: Working with contemporary arts can help reinterpret the film heritage we want to show, and make it more relevant and exciting to a more diverse audience, not just to film buffs who already find it exciting enough. But here is the twist, the extent to which we can involve contemporary arts - I use the word in plural because we don’t just restrict ourselves to fine art - in the future festivals depends on us getting funding.