British Film Institute visit on 10th February by members of the Film Interest Group.
Twenty-two of us attended the BFI on London’s Southbank for an informative visit hosted by Ian O’Sullivan in the Reuben library. We then spent time on the Mediatheque online resource.
A 55-minute presentation by Ian traced the founding of the organisation under Royal Charter in 1933, describing how over the past 92 years, the BFI has grown in its role as a cultural charity, maintaining the world’s largest film archive, including 55,000 fiction films – mainly British, over 100,000 documentary titles and information films, a vast collection of books and magazines within the library which are freely available to the public, all of the BBC’s recorded library, maintains the Parliamentary sound & vision records, under contract to Ofcom for real-time recording of all mainstream TV channels, operating four cinemas seven days a week, providing a relay of in-house film festivals, a continuing programme of talks and student accessibility, overseeing vast storage facilities under its control at Berkhamsted & Warwick, as well being the distributor of National Lottery funds to filmmakers and as the UK Government's lead body for film and the moving image.
