I was going to blog today another of the '10 things on my mind' miscellany-type posts (see here and here). I'm intensely curious, for example, about when the BBC is planning to transmit Macbeth (I really don't know). More immediately, I'm fascinated to see who will triumph in Art of Survival which comes to an end in Edinburgh on Saturday. But as I started writing I realised that there's one thing on my mind that at the moment that is elbowing other questions aside. Although it might seem rather parochial, this is the question of how, now, to develop a sustainable business model for a small independent production company committed to the arts.

The coming weeks are film festival season, with Telluride (from 3 September) and Toronto (from 9 September) imminent and Venice opening today. We've already highlighted the presentation in the Orizzonti section at Venice of Patrick Keiller's Robinson in Ruins, the latest Illuminations Films production. Today, I want to flag up another new film at Venice with which Illuminations Films is associated, Jan Svankmayer's Surviving Life. I also want to point you towards the remarkable (but problematic) BFI online channel, where you can view, for free, both of Patrick Keiller's previous features, London and (at least some of) Robinson in Space, a dazzling introduction to Svankmayer's work, and a host of other treats from Derek Jarman, Terence Davies and more.

I do something in the first part of this post that makes me uneasy. I write about an event that I've not been to for almost twenty years. 2010 was another year when I didn't attend the Manchester Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival. Held on the bank holiday weekend during the Edinburgh International Festival, this has been a fixture of the media calendar since 1976 -- and I went to my first one in 1977. This year, I followed the Tweets from home, watched the Guardian's videos and read the paper's reports -- and I've also read John Lloyd's very good round-up for the Financial Times. Which has prompted one or two thoughts that were extended yesterday by a blog post about film festivals from girish shambu. My conclusion (if you can't be bothered to read across the jump)? Why are there not more events, aside from Edinburgh, for the serious discussion of television and its programmes?