The Board of the European Film Academy – the organization behind the European Film Awards – has decided to restructure board membership for 2024. The change will ensure an equal voice for different parts of Europe in strategic decisions.

From the upcoming elections onwards, representatives on the board will be chosen from 15 regions in Europe. The move is designed to give a more equal distribution of voices from across Europe on the board.

The restructuring will take place in two stages, allowing current board members elected in December 2022 for a two-year period to finish their mandate until the end of 2024.

Additionally, one of the board seats is to be reserved for a transnational ethnic representative, and academy members belonging to either the Sámi and/or Roma populations in Europe will be eligible to be elected. The first mandate for this seat will be for an elected member from the Sámi population.

The board consists of 19 members, including one chair and two deputy chairs. The academy works in 52 European countries as well as Israel and Palestine. Currently, 25% of the board members represent all 30 Eastern and South-Eastern European countries. With the restructuring of the board completed by 2025, this will be 50% of the board seats.

The 15 new regions have been defined by the board as follows, and will all have one representative in the board from 2024 or 2025 onwards:

“These changes will make for a more diverse and more democratically representative board to serve the European Film Academy,” said EFA’s chair, Mike Downey. “We are making a number of structural changes to the way the academy is run, in order to bring it up to date with contemporary best practices, and this is just one of the changes which will help us serve our membership better, and provide a voice for some of those territories which have occasionally been marginalized or sidelined, not through any malign will, but simply by virtue of their geo-political location.”

Matthijs Wouter Knol, CEO and director of the academy, added: “Making sure we serve our academy members better is an important aim of the European Film Academy. Therefore, including members from different regions of Europe that haven’t been part much in the workings of the academy is a great step forward. It also forms part of making the organization more sustainable, ensuring its future and its ongoing support by members from all the 52 countries we work in.”

The academy will continue to enable all its members to nominate themselves as a candidate for the region they live and work in.

Members of the board are elected by all members of the academy registered to vote. The first step is a six-week self-nomination period, starting in mid-August. During the second part – the board elections that begin in October – the members have another six weeks to elect or re-elect the new board members who are announced at the academy’s general assembly in early December and take up their mandates in January.

The last time changes in the board structure were made was in 2018, when the maximum duration of mandates for positions within the board was limited to six years.

The BFI has set a major U.K.-wide film celebration of one of the greatest and most enduring filmmaking partnerships in the history of cinema: Michael Powell (1905-1990) and Emeric Pressburger (1902-1988), best known for iconic films including “The Red Shoes” (1948), “A Matter of Life and Death” (1946) and “Black Narcissus” (1947), the latter of which premiered on Wednesday at Bologna’s Piazza Maggiore as part of Il Cinema Ritrovato, screening from a new 35mm print made by the BFI.

From Martin Scorsese to Matthew Bourne, Kate Bush to Tilda Swinton, Powell and Pressburger have influenced creatives for decades and this is the largest and most wide-ranging exploration ever undertaken about the work of the legendary writer-producer-director team. The celebration will kick off this fall with the BFI Distribution re-release of “I Know Where I’m Going” (1945), recently restored by the BFI National Archive and The Film Foundation.

Arike Oke, BFI executive director of knowledge and collections, said: “Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s bold, original and beautiful films changed cinema, and the potency of their vision still resonates today across the creative worlds of art, design, theatre and dance brought together so sublimely in their productions. Martin Scorsese, Derek Jarman, Kate Bush, Matthew Bourne, Sally Potter, Wes Anderson, Manolo Blahnik – just some of the great artists whose work owes a debt to The Archers’ films. Headily romantic, but also daringly political, the partnership that produced such passionate British productions as ‘A Matter of Life and Death,’ ‘Black Narcissus’ and ‘The Red Shoes’ was rooted in a fusion of the English with the European, of the conservative with the progressive, that demonstrates that the best British film always has diversity at its heart. Theirs was a cinema unbound, which BFI are thrilled to present in as complete a form as possible for audiences across the U.K. to enjoy today, and to help inspire the next generation of fearless creators.”

Thelma Schoonmaker, film editor and widow of Michael Powell, said: “It is my honor to be, alongside Martin Scorsese, the keeper of the legacy of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. And I am indebted to the BFI National Archive, and their expert conservation, preservation and curation teams, who have worked tirelessly for years to restore many of their films and bring this vast project to audiences around the U.K.. Along with The Film Foundation, the BFI have long championed Powell and Pressburger’s work, and it is a joy that audiences now have the opportunity to immerse themselves fully in their creative universes – from rarely seen early works to their unrivalled masterpieces – and I look forward to joining audiences in the U.K. during the season.”

Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell and Pressburger runs Oct. 16-Dec 31. Cinema Unbound is conceived by lead season programmer Robin Baker (BFI National Archive head curator), James Bell (BFI National Archive senior curator of fiction film) and Claire Smith (BFI National Archive senior curator of special collections), featuring work by expert teams from across the BFI.

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Frank Loesser (1910-1969)