Archival Footage Sales

Still: The Open Road Archival Footage Sales handles requests from commercial users for extracts from archival material. These include TV production companies, filmmakers, and any other commercial organisations requiring extracts from archival material.

Footage Sales arranges on-site research viewings for commercial clients, and licences BFI-copyright material. Copyright clearance is required for the supply of all third party material.

Hundreds of BFI owned items can also be viewed via the Mediatheques at either BFI Southbank or the BFI National Library in Stephen Street. Click here for an A-Z list of Mediatheque films.

We are the gateway for programme and filmmakers to the BFI National Archive, the world's leading collection of moving image materials. For over 60 years, the BFI National Archive has collected the full range of the UK's moving image heritage, an unrivalled wealth of black and white and colour, silent and sound, documentary and fiction, professional and amateur footage.

The collection chronicles all aspects of life and times since the invention of film in the late nineteenth century. A commitment to increase the range of materials available from this treasure trove of unique images means that rare footage unseen for many years can now be made accessible.

New collections of material are constantly being acquired thus ensuring that Archival Footage Sales continues to be the most diverse source of footage for film and television programme makers.

BFI Archival Footage Sales: BFI; 21 Stephen Street; London, W1T 1LN; Tel: 020 7957 4842; Fax: 020 7436 4014

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Collections of films include:

British Coal Board

Contains Mining Review, the Coal industry's own newsreel, chronicling all aspects of the coal industry from 1947 to 1983.

Watch Review 36th Year No.5 (1983) online.

British Council

'Films of Britain' produced from the 1930s to the present day mainly for distribution abroad.

Watch Student Nurse (1945) online.

British Transport Films

A vast range of transport related films but also a fascinating record of life in British villages, towns and cities.

Watch Elizabethan Express (1954) online.

COI (1929 to present)

The BFI now represents the COI Collection of some 12,000 Public Information Films. From 30s, 40s, and 50s Cinema Trailers to more recent Television Ads they reflect the attitudes, achievements and preoccupations of three generations of British Society.

Watch Your Very Good Health (1948) online.

Educational and Television Films (ETV)

Educational and Television Films' unique and comprehensive collection of socialist films from the UK and the former socialist world.

Watch an extract of Gagarin, World's First Spaceman (1961) online.

Mitchell & Kenyon

Extraordinary and evocative actuality footage of life and society in the first years of the twentieth century.

Watch Mitchell and Kenyon 571: Great Yorkshire Show at Leeds (1902) online.

Now & Then

Over 300 interviews conducted by Bernard Braden between 1967 and 1968 on 16mm film and recently transferred to HD by the BFI. Includes pop stars Tom Jones and Lulu, politicians Enoch Powell and Jeremy Thorpe, comedians Peter Cook and Spike Milligan and film stars Sean Connery and Sammy Davis Jr. Full list of interviewees (PDF)

Watch Bernard Braden interviews Quentin Crisp (1968) online.

Open Road

Outstanding colour footage of a motor tour from Land's End to John O' Groats filmed by Claude Friese-Greene between 1924 and 1926 using his unique natural colour process.

Watch The Open Road (1925) online.