Open door policy

Wally Hammond likes what he sees of the impressive new online archive at the BFI Southbank Mediatheque

The Mediatheque

The times they are a-changin’ and so is the BFI. Dave Calhoun recently outlined in these pages the £6m revamp of the sleepy old halls and auditoria of the National Film Theatre. The revolution at BFI Southbank – the new name the British Film Institute’s cultural shock troops have given the NFT to reflect its role as ‘portal’ to its various wares and services – resides not just in the provision of much-needed light, a new café , bookshop, new studio, mediatheque, exhibition, adult-learning and free-screening facilities, but in the institution’s rethinking of its attitude to its ‘customers’ and their changing patterns of consumption.

It needs to. Unfairly or not, the BFI has a reputation for stuffiness, buff-iness and exclusivity. Change costs money and money is short, but it has treasure locked up in Berkhamsted, home of its extraordinary archive of audio-visual works, comprising an astonishing range of film, television, documentary, adverts, promos and art- and home-movies. Numbering some 750,000 titles in all, pristine, restored or crumbling, stacked up in buildings new and ancient, it’s one of our greatest national cultural resources – possibly the finest in the world.

In the past, the archive may have been visited by the odd scholar or a precious old print dusted down for a visit to London (I exaggerate for effect – a bit). The image in the mind’s eye is akin to the door opened on Miss Havisham in ‘Great Expectations’, or the fading, sequestered Norma Desmond being chauffeured to the Universal Studios screening room in ‘Sunset Blvd’. These films need to get out more. And now, thanks to a National Lottery grant of £783,000, they can.

The online archive material includes Hitchcock getting cheeky in the 'Blackmail' screen test...

So far, about 200 hours of the collection have been digitised, rights-cleared and made available to the public, for free, through 14 monitors in the BFI Southbank Mediatheque. Curator Robin Baker says the programming is aimed at a different audience from the ‘traditional-type NFT-goer’ who wants to see films on the big screen, in their optimal conditions. ‘The idea is for people to dip in and out, try things on for size. One of the great things about the way it works is that you move to the next film instantly.’

The stuff I dipped into, sampled and browsed over a two-hour lunchbreak in the Mediatheque’s comfortable, high-backed, trim-upholstered, semi-boothed, Sennheiser-earphoned station was totally absorbing, despite the murmurings of the men fixing the air-conditioning and some punters complaints about scrolling problems and computer crashes.

..'Sunshine in Soho'...

With the attention span of Phoebe in ‘Friends’, I watched 5 minutes of housing problems in my old manor of North Ken in ‘Kensington Calling!’ (1930), quickly checked out the congestion problems on ‘Waterloo Bridge’ in 1978, listened to the cherubic choir of King’s College in Harry Watt’s moving doc ‘Christmas Under Fire’ (1940) and sussed out the film showing at the old Rex cinema in the soundless ‘Morris Dancing at Berkhamsted’ (1950) was ‘Soldiers Three’. I admired Edward Elgar’s walking boots in the 1932 home-movie ‘Harold Brooke with Elgar’ (in the ‘May Highlights’ strand), watched my old boss David Pirie’s innovative 1984 Play for Today ‘Rainy Day Women’ (among the first 30 digitised PFTs – all 270 are to be made available), laughed at Hitchcock’s dirty joke to a giggling Anny Ondra in ‘Blackmail Sound Test Take’ (1927) and lamented the passing of the carnival in ‘Sunshine in Soho’ (1956, in the ‘London Calling’ slot), before I was beaten by the clock checking out the prints of two-dozen full-length features.

'Rainy Day Women'...

‘But that’s only the beginning’, Baker explains. ‘We’re adding to it the whole time. The punk programme opens in June, with films by Captain Zip and the 1979 Arena, ‘Who is Poly Styrene’, for instance. That’s what we’re trying to do the whole time, to mix documentary with feature film, amateur footage. And not pass judgment on what is “the greatest”! Everything presented in the mediatheque has a kind of parity. It also helps people navigate their way around, and make discoveries.’

..and a young Keith Chegwin as an avid cyclist in 1971's 'Bethcher'

How will he pick what stuff to add? ‘I have my own spy in the office. Although I can’t see the user, I can see exactly what films they have clicked on, and I can work out what the most popular films are. I’ll use that to develop the programme – but it will always be about developing the availability of work that people can’t access elsewhere or on DVD.’ If you want to give it a whirl, you don’t have to be a BFI member and can go on spec, but it’s better to book a slot. Why not enjoy a free lunch?

Book a slot at the Mediatheque on 020 7928 3232. Selected highlights from the Mediatheque line-up are also regularly screened in the BFI Southbank Studio.