The BFI brings classics to the States with a new… | Little White Lies

Incoming

The BFI brings clas­sics to the States with a new stream­ing channel

06 Jun 2019

Words by Charles Bramesco

Glass and steel building with large numbers on the facade, reflecting the sky and clouds. Crowds of people walking in front of the building.
Glass and steel building with large numbers on the facade, reflecting the sky and clouds. Crowds of people walking in front of the building.
The British Film Institute’s ser­vice fea­tures work from Orson Welles, Nico­las Roeg and more.

For too long, Amer­i­cans have had no choice but to book a pri­cy transat­lantic flight and tem­po­rary lodg­ings in Lon­don if they wished to vis­it the British Film Institute’s facil­i­ties on the South­bank. That will all change with today’s announce­ment of a new way that won’t require the indig­ni­ty of watch­ing some­one watch The Great­est Show­man on the back of the next headrest.

The Hol­ly­wood Reporter has today announced the roll­out of BFI Play­er Clas­sics, a new stream­ing chan­nel run by the pre­em­i­nent mov­ing pic­ture author­i­ty in the UK. Their first to be made avail­able inter­na­tion­al­ly, it’s up for down­load on Roku (expand­ing to oth­er stream­ing devices in months to come) for a fee of $5.99 each month.

The ser­vice fea­tures around 140 British-pro­duced films, though UK copro­duc­tions are also fair game. Among them, named in the THR arti­cle: Car­ol Reed’s nihilist noir The Third Man, Nico­las Roegs far-out David Bowie vehi­cle The Man Who Fell to Earth, Robin Hardy’s cult sen­sa­tion The Wick­er Man, and John Boulting’s gang­ster flick par excel­lence Brighton Rock.

The arti­cle goes on to men­tion fur­ther offer­ings from Alfred Hitch­cock, Ken Rus­sell, Lind­say Ander­son, the Pow­ellPress­burg­er team, John Schlesinger, Sal­ly Pot­ter, Rid­ley Scott, and Ter­ence Davies. Though not spec­i­fied, one would assume that the col­lec­tion will swap titles in and out on some fair­ly reg­u­lar basis.

The stream­ing mar­ket gets a lit­tle more crowd­ed with every month, between behe­moths like Net­flix and the many inde­pen­dent bou­tique out­fits skit­ter­ing around under its feet. At the very least, BFI’s new ser­vice has an edge, both by serv­ing a par­tic­u­lar Anglophile niche and open­ing up access to a ready-made, pre-exist­ing stash of movie gold.

You might like