The BFI is the UK’s lead organization for film, television and the moving image. It is a cultural charity that restores and distributes films across the globe. It cares for the BFI National Archive, one of the most significant film and television archive in the world.
Directed by Anne-Marie Miéville & Jean-Luc Godard • Documentary • With Michel Piccoli • 1995 • 50 minutes
Jean-Luc Godard produced this ambitious project, directed by his wife, Anne-Marie Miéville. Travelling around six regions (each of which featured in a classic film) he interviews young local...
Directed by Nagisa Oshima • Documentary • With William B. White, Nagisa Oshima • 1996 • 52 minutes
The forces and themes that have shaped his nation's cinema drive Nagisa Oshima's forceful and erudite essay. Based entirely on archive footage, it considers the rediscovery of Daisuke Ito's Chuji's...
Directed by George Miller • Documentary • With George Miller • 1996 • 65 minutes
Mad Max director George Miller explores the tradition of film production in Australia, forging a link between the imported technology of filmmaking and the ancient Aboriginal creation myths. In parallel with tracing...
Directed by Sandhyu Suri • Documentary • 2018 • 72 minutes
Award-winning filmmaker Sandhya Suri (I for India) skillfully weaves together archival footage—including hand colored sequences—with a new score by composer Soumik Datta to create an emotionally resonant story about life across India fro...
Directed by Lindsay Anderson • Documentary • With Alun Owen • 1957 • 40 minutes
Lindsay Anderson followed his Free Cinema debut O Dreamland with this affectionate tribute to working-class life, depicting the hustle and bustle of Covent Garden market. On the back of his renowned Free Cinema film ...
Directed by Laura Mulvey • Documentary • With Miriam Margolyes • 1983 • 29 minutes
This tautly structured documentary sheds light on the work of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and Italian photographer Tina Modotti, women icons of the Mexican Renaissance. The film not only explores the two women's a...
Directed by Patrick Keiller • Documentary • With Paul Scofield • 1994 • 85 minutes
A 'fin-de-siecle' personal portrait of London from an English experimental filmmaker, shot over a period of twelve months, which saw the election of John Major as prime minister, renewed IRA bombings, the 'Black W...
Directed by Bill Morrison • Documentary • 2011 • 52 minutes
The ill-fated coal mining communities in North East England are the subject of this inspired documentary by multi-media artist Bill Morrison. Their story is told entirely without words, yet the film is far from silent: it features a rem...
Directed by Stuart A. Staples • Documentary • With tindersticks • 2016 • 55 minutes
This meditative, immersive film by tindersticks' Stuart A. Staples is a tribute to the astonishing work and achievements of naturalist, inventor and pioneering British filmmaker F. Percy Smith (1880-1945).
Based...
Directed by Karel Reisz & Tony Richardson • Documentary • With Chris Barber, Monty Sunshine, Pat Halcox, Ron Bowden • 1956 • 22 minutes
This lively Free Cinema short captures a night out at the Wood Green Jazz Club, where teenagers jive to trad jazz. Funded by the BFI Experimental Film Fund, it ...
Directed by Basil Charles Wright • Documentary • With Lionel Wendt, Alberto Cavalcanti, John Grierson, Stuart Legg, Basil Charles Wright • 1934 • 38 minutes
The Song of Ceylon was originally commissioned as a series of short travelogues, but spawned an ambitious film transforming travelogue (exo...
Directed by Sue Clayton & Jonathan Curling • Documentary • With Martha Gibson, Geraldine Pilgrim, Anna Mcniff, Liz Myers, Jill Greenhalgh, • 1979 • 135 minutes
The plight of women in the 1840s London rag trade is explored and deconstructed. Informed by experimental film practice and evoking a se...
Directed by Viktor Turin • Documentary • 1929 • 78 minutes
With bold and exhilarating flair, Turksib charts the monumental efforts to build a railway linking the regions of Turkestan and Siberia in 1920s USSR. With its signature use of Soviet montage and a similarly typical portrayal of huge col...
Directed by Stephen Frears & Michael Dibb • Documentary • With Gavin Lambert, Michael Apted, Alan Parker, Stephen Frears, Alexander Mackendrick • 1994 • 74 minutes
Shown on the set of `Mary Reilly', Frears hosts a guided tour through seventy-five years of British cinema from Hitchcock's `Black...
Directed by Karel Reisz • Documentary • With John Rollason, Thomas Ahearne, Patrick Ahearne • 1959 • 53 minutes
Karel Reisz’s honest and sympathetic depiction of South London teens aimed to challenge the media perception of ‘Teddy Boys’, and would be one of the last films to appear under the Fre...
