Stills, Posters and Designs

bfi Stills, Posters and Designs is the world's most comprehensive collection of international film and television images.

For more information please contact Stills, Posters and Designs with your research request.

Please list the international film or television titles and/or personality names that you are interested in sourcing.

Stills

The BFI's unique collection of photographs and illustrations from cinema and television is based at the bfi office in Stephen Street. The collection contains over 2,500,000 stills and colour transparencies from over 80,000 films and TV programmes.

Capturing on and off screen moments, the material features not only portraits of the world's most famous stars - and those behind the camera who made them famous - but shots of studios, cinemas and special events. The collection covers the birth of cinema, with stills from as early as 1896, to recent releases and includes cinema from all around the world.

The TV stills collection alone contains around 750,000 images and in addition to programme stills provides a comprehensive visual history of television from its inception to the present day.

As well as a strong collection of classic British titles, bfi Stills also holds excellent material on Recent Releases, Television, International Cinema and Behind-the-Scenes Production.

Posters

The collection has approximately 15,000 film posters from Britain, the USA and around the world, which are housed in a purpose built, temperature and humidity controlled store outside London. The posters range from the early 1900s to the present day and include newsreel posters and cinema events (there is also a small collection of television posters).

Designs

The Production and Costume Design Collection consists of over 3,000 original designs from artists renowned in this field such as Julie Harris, Alfred Junge, Hein Heckroth and Paul Leni. The collection also includes animation cels, storyboards and sketches. Film and TV represented by this material covers such diverse titles as The Red Shoes, Superman, Spellbound and Captain Pugwash.

Galleries

You can see some of our collections in a series of specially curated online galleries.