The Archive on DVD and Blu-Ray
From pioneering British documentaries through to extraordinary lost cult films of 60s and 70s, the BFI has made a rich and diverse array of previously unseen films from the BFI National Archive available on DVD and Blu-ray. The following is a selection of some of our most popular Archive releases.
British Transport Films
Following the postwar thirst for visual teaching and educational entertainment and the nationalisation of transport in 1948, the British Transport Commission set up its own in-house film production and distribution unit in 1949. Over a period of 37 years until its closure in 1986, British Transport Films made over 700 films promoting travel on Britain's railways or providing technical instruction.
The films not only represent the highest professional craftsmanship but provide a unique insight into the changing social history of Britain from the 1950s to the 80s. Across nine volumes and an 18-disc box set, the BFI has made available a whopping 38 hours and 125 films of previously unavailable BTF available on DVD. Each film has been digitally re-mastered from the best available film elements and presented with a fully illustrated booklet, with extensive notes and credits.
The COI Collection
Established in 1946, the Central Office of Information (COI) was a successor to the wartime Ministry of Information. In the course of its history it has produced thousands of films on behalf of government departments and official bodies, films which reflect the changing face, culture and concerns of the nation. The COI employed many forms and techniques to deliver its messages. Story documentaries, short public information films, commercials, recruitment and training films, cinemagazines, etc. In addition, many directors have honed their skills making films for the COI - among them Lindsay Anderson, Hugh Hudson and Peter Greenaway - and there have been quite a few 'before they were famous' appearances from today's well known acting faces.
In July 2010 the BFI releases the third volume in in its COI Collection, They Stand Ready, which targets Britain's armed forces and paints a positive picture of life in the Services through morale boosting documentaries, propaganda items and numerous recruitment films. Volume one: Police and Thieves features films on the themes of crime, policing, juvenile delinquency and the justice system. Volume two: Design for Today surveys design, fashion and architecture in all its myriad forms. More volumes are planned on subjects as diverse as: official safety films; the office and the factory; childhood and parenting; rural and village life; and science and engineering.
The Flipside
The BFI's Flipside DVD & Blu-ray strand has made an extraordinary selection of weird and wonderful films drawn from the National Archive available to audiences for the first time. Developed from the popular monthly screening slot at BFI Southbank, the Flipside project revisits and reappraise British films that have slipped through the cracks of cinema history - films that were overlooked, marginalised, or undervalued at the original time of release. Recent releases include Guy Hamilton's once-banned The Party's Over (1963) and Gerry O'Hara's cult drama The Pleasure Girls (1965). The Flipside also provides a context for publishing some of the most brilliant short films (fiction and/or documentary), by directors such as James Hill (Black Beauty) and John Irvin (Raw Deal) for the first time since they were made.
The GPO Film Unit
Created 75 years ago out of the ashes of the Empire Marketing Board Film Unit, the General Post Office Film Unit was one of the most remarkable creative institutions Britain has ever produced. A hotbed of creative energy and talent, it provided a springboard for many of the most eminent figures in the British Documentary Movement. John Grierson, Alberto Cavalcanti, Humphrey Jennings, Basil Wright, Harry Watt, Edgar Anstey and Arthur Elton and innovators and experimentalists such as Len Lye and Norman McLaren are among those whose GPO work embraced public information films, drama-documentary, social reportage, animation and advertising.
The BFI has released three deluxe double-disc box sets presenting all the key films of the GPO Film Unit on DVD for the first time. Volume 1: Addressing The Nation contains 15 films from the period 1933-1935 and provides a fascinating exploration of the unit's early experimentation with sound. Volume 2: We Live in Two Worlds coveres the period 1936 -1938 and represents the GPO at its creative height. Volume 3: If War Should Come covers 1939-1941, the last years of the GPO Film Unit before it evolved into Crown Film Unit.
Land of Promise
"Many of these 40 short films are wonderful in their own right but, more important than that, they should be compulsory viewing in every school and town hall in the country. Every minister from the PM downwards, and every politician who has any ambition to be a policy- or decision-maker should spend Christmas watching the entire set, and be required to reflect on where Britain has been, and where we ought to have the ambition to take it." (David Puttnam)
A landmark BFI collection, and the first major retrospective of the documentary film movement during its period of greatest influence. These films - many of which are being made available here for the first time since their original release - capture the spirit and strength, concerns and resolve of Britain and its people before, during and after the Second World War.
These diverse and compelling films are fascinating historical documents, bearing witness to the social and industrial changes of the rapidly changing world. Yet they are also striking in their different approach to the form. Using poetry, dramatic reconstruction, the techniques of modernism and explicit propaganda, the filmmakers found fresh, new ways to get their message across.
Mitchell & Kenyon
Probably the most exciting film discovery of recent times, the films of Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon were commissioned by travelling exhibitors at the dawn of the twentieth century for screening in town halls, at village ftes or local fairs. Advertised as 'local films for local people', the audience paid to see their neighbours, children, family and themselves on the screen, glimpsed at local football matches, leaving work, marching in civic processions or enjoying the annual works holidays.
Four Mitchell & Kenyon collections have been released on DVD to date. The Lost World of Mitchell & Kenyon contains the landmark BBC series that first introduced the films to an enthralled British public. Electric Edwardians offers a general overview of the collection, while more specialised subjects are covered by Edwardian Sports and Mitchell & Kenyon in Ireland.
Piccadilly
One of the pinnacles of British silent cinema, Piccadilly is a sumptuous showbiz melodrama seething with sexual and racial tension. The Chinese-American screen goddess Anna May Wong stars as Shosho, a scullery maid in a fashionable London nightclub whose sensuous tabletop dance catches the eye of suave club owner Valentine Wilmot. She rises to become the toast of London and the object of his erotic obsession - to the bitter jealousy of Mabel, his former lover and star dancer (played by Ziegfeld Follies star Gilda Gray).
Piccadilly has now been beautifully restored by the BFI National Film & Television Archive, complete with amber and blue tinting copied from an original 1929 silent release print. The BFI also commissioned a new score from Neil Brand, internationally acclaimed as a master of improvised silent film accompaniment.
Portrait of a Miner
"It's a tour de force collection of unusual and recently archived documentaries about the industry... All the films in this five-hour collection are so good they ache for repeated viewing." (Ken Russell)
Elemental, visual, dramatic: coal mining is not only deeply cinematic, but as a huge part of British life for centuries, has profoundly shaped our society. This collection showcases and celebrates the extraordinary work of the National Coal Board Film Unit - operating between 1947-1984 - producing films to inform, entertain and galvanise working people across the country.
From intimate drama-documentaries and sublime cartoons to the sheer pleasure of topical tales from the Mining Review cinemagazine, this collection is a beguiling invitation into the domestic, community and working life of miners and their families. With stories from coal-fields across Scotland, Wales and England - from pit ponies to brass bands, cutter loaders to the five-day week - this set presents over 5 hours of remastered material, and contains an extensive booklet featuring newly commissioned contributions from Lee Hall (writer of Billy Elliot), the BFI's curators and other researchers.
R.W. Paul
Robert W Paul is justly celebrated as the leading pioneer of British film and one of the founders of world cinema. Concentrating first on actuality films, he soon branched out, pioneering almost every kind of film from documentary to fiction and fantasy. This unique DVD collection of 62 films, many preserved by the BFI National Archive, represents an attempt to bring together for the first time the collected output of R W Paul and his studio.
In addition to popular comedies, dramas, and elaborate trick films, this collection contains one of only two surviving films of the disaster caused by the launch of HMS Albion; some of the first films shot in Spain, Portugal, Egypt and Sweden, including frontline reporting from the Anglo-Boer War; Paul's famous record of the 1896 Derby and extensive coverage of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee procession. These, and the numerous actuality films that Paul made, show day-to-day life in Victorian London. These rare films are presented with a brand new musical accompaniment by celebrated pianist Stephen Horne and an optional commentary by film historian Ian Christie.
Secrets of Nature
The natural world has always inspired fascination. In 1922, Secrets of Nature, a pioneering series exploring animal, plant and insect life, made wondrous worlds and natural processes visible for the first time: sweet peas unfurl in the sunlight, white owls swoop on their prey, sea life lurks on the ocean floor and moths patiently spin their cocoons.
These rarely-seen films were made by enterprising men and women such as Percy Smith and Mary Field, at the forefront of science and nature filmmaking, who developed groundbreaking techniques of time-lapse, microscopic and underwater cinematography.
Paving the way for the natural history programmes that millions know and love today, these Secrets, with intriguing titles like The Strangler, Magic Myxies and Floral Co-operative Societies, offer an entertaining, absorbing, and very special glimpse into the mysteries of the natural world.
Other non-fiction
Other notable non-fiction BFI DVD releases containing films drawn from the National Archive include The Joy of Sex Education, an entertaining and informative history of British sexual health and hygiene films, and the three-disc collection Free Cinema, which compiles an extraordinary flowering of then-new British talent (including Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson, who would become major figures in 1960s British cinema) through the low-budget, often experimental short films that they made from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s.
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