The BFI @ 75: Appreciation

June-August 2008, Reading Room

Throughout 2008 the Library's displays will reflect on the BFI's contribution to film and TV culture over the last 75 years. Having started with Preservation, we now shift our attention to Education. Starting with a display of the BFI's published output from this millennium, well over 100 titles, we conclude in August with a selective display of the publications of the BFI's Education Department and the work of its staff, such as Stanley Reed, Paddy Whannel, Cary Bazalgette.

The library staff would also like to take this opportunity to thank the great number of students, researchers, and authors that have benefited from our endeavours and added to our collections. We are especially grateful to those who have been kind enough to acknowledge our labours. Here are some of your comments.

Study

"My students really enjoyed their visit to the library on Thursday. They found the experience immensely useful and appreciated the opportunity to visit BFI. I would like to thank you for all your help. I really appreciated the way you looked after us and made research easy and enjoyable for the students."

Katie Tin, Bishop Ramsey School, NW London

"Please pass on our thanksto eveyone whohelped out today.The students loved it. (It only took 2 hours to get back to the IOW !) Hope to see you soon with some more students."

Jamieson Britton, Carisbrooke High School, Isle of Wight

"Just a quickie to say thank you very much for today. The students found it really useful and helpful and will doubtless raise their game."

Sophie McElroy, Stoke Newington Media and Arts School

Research

"The library contained strong contemporary source material(a microfiche on the film, two pressbooks, contemporary newspaper and trade press reports) but then totally surprised me with the existence of this book."

Dr. Keith M. Johnston, April 2008, referring to Saraband for Dead Lovers: the film and its production at Ealing Studios

"I would like to thank the staff at the British Film Institute's library for their resourcefulness and interminable patience."

Kelly Robinson, British International Pictures and the influence of German cinematographers (1927-1936), PhD thesis

"As a repository for material of this kind, the special collection of the bfi Library with its extensive and well-catalogued holdings, inevitably provided vital material for all three of my books on the British cinema. Also incredibly useful were the microfiche collections of press clippings on films and personalities, which have been gathered together over many decades. No where else that I am aware of has such invaluable information been pulled together in this way."

Charles Drazin, researching Alexander Korda

Publish

"I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to those unsung archivists and librarians who make the historian's job so much easier than it would be otherwise. The staff of the National Library of the British Film Institute, [...] have provided unstinting assistance that is entirely characteristic but rarely acknowledged. For their special help, I would like to acknowledge the invaluable assistance provided by Janet Moat and Victoria Hedley of the BFI Special Collections Unit."

James Chapman, Past and present: national identity and the British historical film

"This book would have been a near impossible undertaking without the resources of the British Film Institute Library, in particular the brilliant 'SIFT' database of periodical articles. Long may the Institute continue to recognize the vital importance of research facilities."

Mark Cousins and Kevin MacDonald, Imagining reality: the Faber book of documentary

"I have spent a considerable amount of time in the BFI National Library over the past three years and would like to thank the staff - ... - for their unfailing support in my quest for accurate filmographic and biographical information. Special mention might be made of Sarah Currant, Sean Delaney and David Sharp, who stayed on in an eerily quiet, semi-deserted library after the London bombings of July 2005."

Robert Murphy, (ed.) Directors in British and Irish cinema: a reference companion