The British National Film and Television Archive collects, preserves, restores and then shares the films and television programmes which have helped to shape and record British life and times since cinema was invented in the late nineteenth century.

The collections themselves are accommodated on several sites. The J.Paul Getty, Jr. Conservation Centre in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, named after its benefactor, is the base for much of the work, while approximately 140 million feet of flammable nitrate film is kept separately at a bfi storage site at Gaydon in Warwickshire.

Film preservation is an ongoing project among filmmakers, historians, archivists, museums, and non-profit organizations to rescue aging film stock and preserve recorded images. The collections held at the NFTVA, part of the British Film Institute, were started over sixty years ago and now comprise over 275,000 feature, non-fiction and short films (dating from 1894) and 210,000 television programmes. In recent years the Conservation Centre has completed a number of much anticipated restorations of a diverse range of film titles. This has included the Mitchell and Kenyon collection, which consists almost entirely of actuality films commissioned by travelling fairground operators for showing at local fairgrounds or other venues across the UK in the early part of this century.

Films and television programmes are acquired mainly by donation or, in the case of independent television, via funding direct from the TV companies. Emphasis is placed on British productions but whenever possible important and popular movies from overseas are also acquired.

External links

• British Film Institute (http://www.bfi.org.uk/)
• National Film and Television Archive (http://www.bfi.org.uk/collections/preservation/index.html)