25/10/2012 - BFI and BBC to digitise The Royal Collection

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II visited BFI Southbank today, on an occasion marking 60 years of the cinema. In this, her Jubilee year, The Queen unveiled a commemorative 60th anniversary plaque and met a range of BFI staff, local school children and special guests from the world of film, including The King’s Speech [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tom Hooper
film profile] director Tom Hooper and Richard Ayoade, director of Submarine [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

The BFI also announced today that it is working with the BBC to digitise The Royal Collection. The BFI National Archive has looked after the Royal Collection since the late 1960’s and is a mixture of films presented to the Royal Household including newsreels and private family films that are unique to the Collection and date back to the late 1920’s. Some of the content is already available to the public and some more will be made so, for future generations, through digitisation.

Greg Dyke, BFI Chair said, “Given that the moving image wasn’t invented until the end of the 19th century I find it extraordinary to think that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has been on the throne for more than half the time that film has been in existence.

When we built BFI Southbank, it was a temporary structure in a less than ideal location under Waterloo Bridge. Who could have predicted then that, 60 years on, film would become one of the world’s greatest and most accessible art forms, supporting a huge industry? And no one would have predicted we’d still be under the bridge!

Today’s visit from The Queen represents a milestone where we look towards the time when we can build a new Film Centre here on the Southbank that has the scale and magnitude worthy of representing the British film industry.”