penfold

You do have to remember that possessing the film prints in the archive does not give you exploitation rights...the owners of the copyright still have that; which is why the two series are looking at footage 80+ years old; copyright has lapsed. All the DVD's and video releases of more recent material from the bfi generally has to go through a long and complex series of rights negotiations - once it is established who owns what, which is not necessarily obvious after decades have elapsed. It's all expensive, and the bfi is cash poor. Hence the co-productions with the beeb..the beeb has the money, the bfi has the material.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

DAVID RAYNER

I watched Dan Cruickshank on television last night in a documentary about Harlech castle in Wales and he did manage to speak up a bit at times…especially when the wind was howling around him and the waves were crashing on the shore directly behind him. So maybe we won’t see him sent to present The Old Grey Whistle Test just yet (if that programme was still on, that is)…although the impression he gave as he wandered inside the ruins of the old castle was that he was keeping his voice down because he shouldn’t really be there and he’d get into serious trouble if he was discovered. Actually, except for himself; the cameraman and sound recordist, I suspect that the castle was completely deserted. I hope he continues to speak in more normal tones in the forthcoming Friese Greene series.

Wetherby Pond

I've had regular dealings with the BFI for nigh-on two decades, and I have a huge amount of sympathy for their position - as you rightly say, they have an amazing treasure trove of material, but just maintaining it in its present condition takes a huge amount of time, effort and money, as even 35mm safety stock is by no means stable. So any serious commercial exploitation requires external funding at the very least, or preferably a full-scale partnership such as the one they've established with the BBC.

There used to be a longstanding joke that the acronym stood for British Films Ignored, but this is largely because the rights to the overwhelming majority of British fiction features from approx. the late 1920s to the mid-1980s are owned by Granada and Studio Canal, and most high-profile titles after that are owned by assorted Hollywood majors (notably Universal, which snapped up the PolyGram/Working Title catalogue).

I'm sure the BFI could do an outstanding job with some of the 1940s Powell & Pressburgers (you have only to look at their quite stunning DVD of The Edge of the World, one of the finest British film discs yet released), but even though they might well have the best-quality 35mm materials they'd have to ask Granada permission to do anything with them over and above arranging one-off private research viewings - and any deal would probably involve the BFI doing most of the work and Granada reaping most of the royalties, which isn't especially attractive from the BFI's perspective.

So the answer to almost any question that begins "Why doesn't the BFI..." should include the word 'copyright' or 'rights'. The sad fact is that European copyright legislation makes it extraordinarily difficult for a film to pass into the public domain (such scenarios are much more common in the US, which has a different system - the British Hitchcock titles are public domain there, which is why there are so many cheap DVDs, but carved up between Granada and Canal here) - even the work of turn-of-the-century pioneers like Cecil Hepworth is technically still in copyright, as he survived until the 1950s.

samkydd

I thought M&K was pretty good and dispelled the myth I always had as a child that people in Victorian/Edwardian times walked and moved their arms and heads a lot quicker than we do today!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

Andrew Percy

Watched tonights showing of the fascinating Mitchell & Kenyon films.
My attention was drawn to the Goudie section, the bank fraudster from Shetland.
I wonder if the researchers Sweet & Kermode knew about his ancestor, Isobel Gowdie. She was burned at the stake 1680 or 90 (sorry, can't recall exact year) by the Wee Free Church, charged with witchcraft.