17/03/2005

Film acquisition specialist Sally Caplan has just been appointed as the new Head of the UK Film Council’s prestigious Premiere Fund, the single largest public source of film production finance in the UK with an £8m annual budget. Caplan who takes over from Robert Jones, will run the Premiere Fund for an initial two years with an option to extend for another two years. She will work alongside Paul Trijbits, Head of the UK Film Council’s New Cinema Fund and Jenny Borgars, Head of the Development Fund.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Caplan is well established in the international film world, having hold key positions as senior acquisition person first at Polygram (1993-2000), then at Momentum Pictures (2000 to 2004) and she is still (for a short period of time) President of Icon Film Distribution. Her experience in selecting mainstream films for the widest possible audience will fit perfectly her new job at the Premiere Fund which goal is to invest in projects across a wide range of budgets and genres, and to establish strategic involvement in talent-driven projects from European producers.
Commenting on her new appointment, Caplan said: “I’m really excited by the challenge ahead of me. It’s a wrench to leave Icon but the opportunity to run the Premiere Fund was just too interesting to run down”.
Under Robert Jones’ aegis who oversaw the Premiere Fund from its inception in August 2000 until the end of February 2005, the fund invested over £24M of lottery money in films such as Robert Altman’s Gosford Park, Patrice Leconte’s L’homme du train, Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and more recently Charles Dance’s Ladies in Lavender, Dominic Savage’s Love And Hate and Michael Radford’s The Merchant of Venice.