The BAFTA Archive offers a unique and priceless record of the development of film and television over the last 60 years. It is one of our richest resources and yet one that we have not fully exploited. Until now.

Our project to create digital versions of our historic archive material, and to make them available to all online, is under way in earnest. We have now digitised almost half of our archive audio material and one-third of our photographic stills library, and have begun supplying archive content to external parties at commercial rates.

Visitors to bafta.org may already have sampled some of that material. The 100 Collection, launched in late 2008, offers an online library of 100 handpicked black-and-white images documenting more than 30 years of Awards from 1951 to 1983. It begins with the presentation of the United Nations Award to US director Clarence Brown, and charts the transformation of our Awards ceremonies in scale and grandeur. The one constant is the size of the personalities involved, including Audrey Hepburn, Dirk Bogarde, Bob Hope and Alec Guinness.

Among the other new online archive resources are showcases of the work of Lord Attenborough and Sir David Lean, including stills, Awards and interview clips, tributes and documentary material such as the minutes from the Academy’s first meeting in 1947.

The plan for our archive audio material is to make as many highlights as possible accessible in podcast form. A painstaking restoration process of original recordings, many on humble C90 cassette tapes, has resulted in our first few iTunes downloads, including the Walter Murch lecture from 2003, an Anthony Minghella lecture from 1997 and a collection of Q&As.

A new archive policy now governs the storage of the content we generate, and we are in the early stages of discussing strategic partnerships with other organisations involved with digital archive development and media heritage.

There is a lot more to do to complete the digitisation programme and to realise the value of the material to our audiences. Long term, though, it is our aim to take a leading role in preserving and sharing Britain’s film, television and video games heritage.

Clockwise from top:
1. Richard Attenborough and Audrey Hepburn celebrate their acting awards in 1965
2. Esther Rantzen and Roger Moore, who hosted the joint Film and Television Awards in 1977
3. Sting presents Rowan Atkinson with the Best Light Entertainment Performance BAFTA in 1981
4. Saul Zaentz accepts the Best Film BAFTA for One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest from HRH The Princess Royal in 1977
5. Andrew Sachs presents an award as his Fawlty Towers character Manuel in 1979
Credit: BAFTA Archive