The North East International Film Festival is a registered community interest company currently run by a group of experienced and professional volunteers. None of our team members, including our Festival Director and our Board are paid for what they do! The team have prior experience in running and delivering this festival in its previous 3 editions as well as vast experience in running and delivering other programmes such as this one. We are also all inducted volunteers at the Star & Shadow Cinema, which is a community-led cinema.
The NEIFF has been billed as one of the most collaborative and inclusive film festivals in the UK. We are pioneers of many first ever initiatives.
As an organisation we have already been awarded various accolades for our support and acceleration of diversity on on-screen representation. The NEIFF is the first ever festival to sign up to the BBC 50/50 Equality Project, this ensures that we are responsible for monitoring the input and output of our festival activities. This was initially to monitor gender balance only, but has since progressed to encompass all diversity strands. year, we already exceeded our BBC 50/50 reporting targets.
The NEIFF is also the first ever festival to be awarded the Raising Films Ribbon for our efforts in supporting those with caring responsibilities in the industry and creating an inclusive space for not only our team but also our audience and Filmmakers. We are one of 80 festivals worldwide to adopt the F-Rating which represents female and female identifying Filmmakers.
The NEIFF has a comprehensive environmental and sustainability policy in place but to further develop our global efforts, we signed up to the One Tree Planted Initiative, making our organisation carbon negative.
Last year we were awarded The Prime Ministers Points Of Light Award (which is a cross-party initiative designed to award charitable and volunteer endevours) at 10 Downing Street for our work with the NEIFF.