Free resources from the BFI Player
We’re very grateful to the BFI Player team, who have very kindly sponsored the Network’s recent prize draw to celebrate the Network reaching 1,000 members signed up to our newsletter.
The membership prize will give one teacher access to the Player’s subscription titles, but the BFI Player also includes a wealth of free materials to share with students or to inspire your teaching. Here’s some of them below, which might be particularly useful if you are refreshing your materials for the start of the year:
Short Films
Students don’t watch enough short films! The BFI Player is a great place to signpost them to, with sub-collections including:
selected short films from the London Indian Film Festival, BFI NETWORK supported shorts, Black Eyes, Black Lives and Film Academy Shorts
students who have film festival ambitions could look at the Award Winning Shorts collection
And if you teach experimental film, the Film London Jarman Awards collection
Film Analysis
Most entry-level interviews for film/tv jobs will include some version of the question ‘what do you love watching?’, and this can be a deceptively hard one to answer. Employers will be assessing how passionate applicants are, whether they engage with industry trends, and their capacity for critical thinking. A useful inspiration to practice answering this kind of question, or for students who struggle with film analysis more broadly is the New Perspectives collection, where past members of the BFI’s Young Curators programme discuss some of their favourite films.
Inside Film
This collection includes a range of interviews and masterclasses with film practitioners about their process, and includes recordings from the BFI’s Screen Talks, BFI London Film Festival Q&As, BAFTA & BFI Screenwriter Lectures. This might be particularly useful if you teach film production or development, or to signpost students to for inspiration/research: https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/inside-film.
Recording which may be relevant include:
If you teach The Angel’s Share on OCR A Level Film, there is a screenwriting lecture with Paul Laverty and a masterclass with director Ken Loach. And, if you teach Gone Too Far! on the same spec, there is a recorded intro of the film from director Destiny Ekaragha.
If you teach CCEA Moving Image Arts, the Film Production talks and Masterclasses recordings may be useful for students researching their practitioner study
For Media Studies, if you teach the male gaze as part of your spec, there is a recorded Q&A with Laura Mulvey
Media Studies
Also useful for media studies is the Online Video collection, which includes BFI National Archive material on a range of online content, from viral meme to video essays
And to get students researching content about their local area, the very cool BFI Replay map is worth perusing. It includes material such as newsreels, archival footage, etc.
Representation
Most L2/L3 film and media specs will include the topic of representation, and the following collections may also be useful:
We Crip Film is the BFI’s intersectional disability advocacy group, and have run the annual We Crip Film Festival since 2025. Selected shorts from the Festival are available in the We Crip Film Festival collection
Black Lives - Portraits of public and private lives against the shifting social climate of 20th century Britain
The Camera Is Ours: Women Documentary Filmmakers - also useful for anyone teaching documentary
All the above content is free to access, but The BFI can also provide BFI Player subscriptions to FE and HE, offering hundreds of the best British, world and classic cinema titles handpicked by their curators. Subscriptions can be university-wide, school or department-specific. Films can be embedded in curriculum, with many universities opting to also contribute to wellbeing and student experience. If you're interested in exploring BFI Player access for your students and staff contact: enterprise@bfi.org.uk
