History of the BMA film competition
Since its inception in 1957 the BMA's annual film competition has fulfilled three roles - promoting the effective use of film and video in medical education, encouraging the production of high quality audio-visual material and helping to increase the holdings of its film library. The BMA awards recognise programmes for their clinical accuracy, educational value and creative use of the medium.
As early as 1938 BMA Council approved the formation of a central medical film library following a showing of medical films at the annual meeting in Plymouth. World War II, however, intervened. A post-war revival of interest in the use of film in medical teaching lead to the appointment of a committee on 3 April 1946 to "enquire into the scope and use of films in postgraduate and undergraduate medical education." In their report to Council in June the following year, the committee recommended that the Association establish a medical film library, to loan current films through the BMA branches and to act as an archive, and to set up a medical film bureau both as an information and advisory service and to run film shows.
The film committee set up to manage the library and the bureau developed the idea of a film competition in response to their recognition that the library's holdings needed to be developed. The minutes of the committee's meeting for 1951 stated the competition's original intention as being "for the purpose of encouraging the production of medical films suitable for addition to the Association's Film Library." The competition and the activities of the film library have always run in parallel.
In 1966 an autonomous Department for Audio Visual Communication under the directorship of Charles Engel was formed with financial support from the Life Officers Association and the Association of Scottish Life Officers. At the same time the BMA Board of Science and Education was set up with overall control of the new Department. The Department aimed to improve education through technology by expanding the film collection, developing the library for reference and information and the distribution of material for teaching and learning and by developing effective methods of teaching and learning with audio-visual material.
Increased funding in 1972 lead to the formation of the Centre for Individual Learning Materials in Medical Education as a World Health Organisation collaborative institution and in 1975 the Department for Audio Visual Communication became the British Life Assurance Trust for Health and Medical Education (or BLAT). Funding for the then British Life Insurance Trust for Health Education (BLITHE) was withdrawn in 1989 and the administration of the film library and the competition passed back to the BMA.
The first competition in 1957 attracted 69 films. The winning titles were The Human Blood Fluke from the Wellcome Foundation and Treatment of Paraplegia Due to Fracture Dislocation of the Dorso-Lumbar Spine from United Sheffield Hospitals. Both prize winners received 50 guineas. Submissions then declined and they did not surpass the original number until 1968. Until the mid 1980s, the average number of entries was 70. They then increased, peaking with 233 in 1993.
Entries were originally divided into two categories for commercial and non-commercial productions. They became three in 1963 for films "commercially sponsored and professionally produced"; "produced by a medical institution", and "amateur". In 1966 a fourth category for short teaching films or research reports of less than five minute's duration was introduced. These categories were abandoned in 1974 when the competition became fully open. This was because "it was felt that excellence in relation to accuracy of subject matter, imagination in its treatment and creativity in the use of the medium can be attained irrespective of whether professional, institutional or amateur film makers are involved in the production." The competition remains open today, now embracing health education and broadcast television programmes and multimedia packages.
In 1985 the film competition received its first entries purely on video format. The last 16 mm film to be entered into the competition was Reconstructive Surgery in Leprosy: the nose from the Poona District Leprosy Commission in 1994. In the early years of the competition gold medals were presented but certificates replaced these in 1962. Special awards began in 1969 with the BLAT Trophy for films for outstanding educational merit. Between 1975 and 1983 the Harold E Lewis Award for Research Films was presented "to encourage the development of new film techniques in the service of medical research." The first recipient was the Westminster Hospital Medical School for their film Extraction of Anaesthetic Gases from Operative Theatres.
In 1991 the Medicine in the Media awards were introduced for broadcast programmes deemed "to have promoted to a mass audience an important health or medical topic [and/or] to have made accessible to the general public a topic of current medical interest." The first winner was BBC Television for Quit and Win. The Charles Fletcher Award for Medical Broadcaster of the Year is to mark an individual's outstanding contribution to the public understanding of health or medicine. The inaugural award was presented to Joan Bakewell by Professor Fletcher in 1994. Over the last 40 years the annual BMA film competition has helped to foster an interest in medical education among health professionals and has increasingly reflected the general public's concern over health issues. It is hoped that the competition will continue to bring to a wider audience developments in medical technology.
Updated 13 November 2000
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