Reel History of Britain is a unique collaboration between the BBC and the British Film Institute, plus other national and regional archives.
The BBC programmes include material from the BFI National Archive, the Imperial War Museum, the screen archives at the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales, the nine regional film archives of England and the BBC's own archive.
Established in 1935, the BFI National Film & Television Archive preserves one of the largest and most significant moving image collections in the world.
The collections are of national and international importance as a record of the history and culture of film-making and television production, and as a record of the contemporary life of the UK from the late 19th century to the present.
As well as our own BBC website, the BFI is running its own separate site during the series - available at beta.bfi.org.uk/reelhistory. Footage used in the series is selected from among the hundreds of thousands of films and programmes preserved in Britain's film and television archives. Each episode of Reel History of Britain will use at least one key film from this archive to explore a subject from the 20th century in more detail, and many of the films are available to view online in their entirety along with expert comments from archive curators. Many of the key films have also been extensively restored and are being shown in public for the very first time as part of the series.
