Make Film History: Opening up the BBC Archives to Young Filmmakers

Supported by research network funding from AHRC and the Irish Research Council, since 2020, the Make Film History project has made available over 200 films from BBC Archive, the British and Irish Film Institutes, Northern Ireland Screen and the London Community Video Archive for creative reuse by young filmmakers in schools, film training and higher education across the UK and Ireland. Once licensed by an educational institution, over 200 films can be downloaded by tutors for use in the classroom, on campus or online.

Students browse our website, choose an archive film to respond to and request download access to the film, integrating clips of up to two minutes into their own documentaries.

This call provides an exciting opportunity to build on our existing research and research network, working with a project partner, BBC Archive, at the heart of the BBC's centenary events.

BBC Archive currently provides young filmmakers with access to 70 documentaries through the Make Film History project, but we have recently curated a further 80 films to add to the collection on the themes of the Environment, Mental Health and Neurodiversity, and Diversity. Other programmes in the collection focus on the early years of community broadcasting, changing modes of documentary storytelling and production, teenage life and youth culture, career prospects, stories of immigration and the Black British experience.

Our proposed project will ask young filmmakers aged 16-30 across the UK to choose a BBC programme from the Make Film History collection and create a short film in response to it.

After initial engagement events in Belfast, Glasgow, Leeds/Bradford and London, young filmmakers will respond to a call for proposals on this theme and fifty participants will be selected to receive mentoring from a professional filmmaker to make their films across these four locations.

The selected filmmakers will shoot new material inspired by the archive film they choose and can include up to two minutes of the archive work in their film. Through creative reuse of the BBC's audio-visual heritage, participants will illuminate the past and reinterpret key moments from BBC history through the lens of a new generation, making it relevant to their lives and communities today, filmed and edited their way.

These fifty new short films will uncover the forgotten histories of underrepresented communities and reflect the full diversity of the UK, engaging local and regional filmmakers and audiences. Much of our public memory is enshrined in BBC programme-making. Now these programmes can be recontextualised by young filmmakers and shared with their communities.

We will follow the successful workshop model we have developed over the past two years and work with existing partners in the Make Film History research network of film festivals, training organisations, research centres and cinemas in Belfast, Glasgow, Leeds and London, as described below.

This project builds on our existing research into the creative reuse of audio-visual heritage in education. Copyright and clearance restrictions and the cost of commercial licensing have previously imposed barriers to creatively reusing audio-visual heritage. By working with our project partners, we have removed these barriers and created a new model for creative reuse by young filmmakers for non-commercial, educational use. 75 higher education institutions and a dozen film festivals and training organisations now access this archival resource.

This an ambitious but very feasible project, built on an innovative, tried and tested research model of creative reuse in education. The audio-visual history of the BBC is at the heart of the project, giving young creatives a manageable selection of films to browse and respond to, creating fifty new short films which reimagine key moments from television history through the eyes of a new generation of filmmakers.