03/11/2005

The well-known UK industry figure Simon Perry, former Head of British Screen Finance and current President of Les Ateliers du Cinéma Européen (ACE) has just been appointed as the new Chief Executive of the Irish Film Board. He will take up his new position in Galway-left vacant since the resignation of Mark Woods last April- on January 6, 2006.

Commenting on the new appointment, James Morris, Chairman of the IFB said: "Simon Perry brings a depth of knowledge and achievement in international film production that few can equal. As the head of British Screen from 1991 to 2000, he helped numerous high profile European films make it to the screen including Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game and Ken Loach’s epic Land And Freedom. His experience covers every critical stage of the film making process, from creative development to production to finance and to distribution".

Simon Perry added: "For a good many years I have watched the rise of Ireland as an enviably vigorous European country, able to boast artistic and entrepreneurial talents in equal measure. So I am truly delighted at the prospect of being involved and making a contribution to the further growth of Irish cinema".

A former film trade journalist and then producer of a dozen films such as Greta Scacchi’s vehicle White Mischief (1987), Gillies Mackinnon’s The Playboys (1992) or Patrick de Wolf’s Innocent Lies (1995), Perry was the godfather of the UK film industry in the 1990s as head of the main funding body British Screen Finance (BSF). But his reign came to an end with the swallowing of BSF into the new UK Film Council. Perry lost his political connections within the UK film industry and turned to continental Europe that he had strongly supported under his BFS leadership. Apart from his position as President of the MEDIA supported-programme ACE based in Paris, he was director of co-productions at the UK tax financier Ingenious Media from January 2003 to March 2004, had a lecturing job at the International Filmschule in Cologne and scouted UK films for the Cannes and Berlin Film Festivals.