British Film Institute
Entry updated 6 January 2026. Tagged: Community, Film, Publisher.
UK film production and distribution company founded in 1933, commonly abbreviated to BFI, which also publishes books and the long running Sight and Sound magazine, administers the world's largest film archive, and runs the BFI Southbank cinemas and BFI Player streaming service. Previous activities included the now defunct Museum of the Moving Image, and the BFI Gallery, showcasing experimental work by video and installation artists.
Among the sf films which have been produced or co-produced by the BFI are: The Falls (1980), Friendship's Death (1987), How I Live Now (2013), Under the Skin (2013), High-Rise (2015), The Lobster (2015), The Girl with All the Gifts (2016), High Life (2018), The Last Days on Mars (2018) directed by Ruairi Robinson, Little Joe (2019), Undergods (2020) directed by Chino Moya, Sky Peals (2023) directed by Moin Hussain and Timestalker (2024) directed by Alice Lowe. In addition, the BFI Film Production Board provided funding for short films by emerging directors; among those who went on to produce notable sf work were Peter Greenaway, Ken Russell and Ridley Scott, among many other soon-to-be eminent filmmakers. An interesting sf short produced by this programme is The Watchers (1969).
Among the relevant books from BFI Publishing are Science Fiction/Horror: A Sight and Sound Reader (2002) edited by Kim Newman; Anime: A History (2013) by Jonathan Clements; Sci-Fi: Days of Fear and Wonder: A BFI Compendium (2014), a tie to a film season at the BFI Southbank, edited by James Bell; and 100 Science Fiction Films (2019) by Barry Keith Grant. Particularly notable is the BFI Film Classics series, each a monograph on a particular film, which was initially split into the main series and BFI Modern Film Classics.
Titles of genre interest, or by authors with entries in this encyclopedia, include: Bride of Frankenstein (1990) by Alberto Manguel; Went the Day Well? (1992) by Penelope Houston; The Wizard of Oz (1992) by Salman Rushdie, about The Wizard of Oz (1939) directed by Victor Fleming; Things to Come (1995) by Christopher Frayling; The Terminator (1996) by Sean French; Blade Runner (1997) by Scott Bukatman; Cat People (1997) by Kim Newman, about the horror fantasy Cat People (1942) directed by Jacques Tourneur; The Thing (1997) by Anne Billson; Independence Day (1998) by Michael Rogin; Crash (1999) by Iain Sinclair, about the film Crash (1996) directed by David Cronenberg and its relation to the novel Crash (1973) by J G Ballard; Metropolis (2000) by Thomas Elsaesser; The Usual Suspects (2001) by Ernest Larson; The Manchurian Candidate (2002) by Greil Marcus; Groundhog Day (2004) by Ryan Gilbey; The Matrix (2007) by Joshua Clover; Star Wars (2009) by Will Brooker; Back to the Future (2010) by Andrew Shail and Robin Stoate; 2001: A Space Odyssey (2010) by Peter Krämer; Pan's Labyrinth (2013) by Mar Diestro-Dópido; Akira (2014) by Michelle Le Blanc and Colin Odelle; Alien (2014) by Roger Luckhurst; Brazil (2014) by Paul McAuley; Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (2014) by Peter Krämer; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2014) by Andrew M Butler; Quatermass and the Pit (2014) by Kim Newman; The Shining (2014) by Roger Luckhurst, about The Shining (1980) directed by Stanley Kubrick; Silent Running (2014) by Mark Kermode; Solaris (2014) by Mark Bould; The War of the Worlds (2014) by Barry Farshaw; Le Jetée (2016) by Chris Darke; Invasion of the Body Snatchers (2019) by Barry Keith Grant; The Empire Strikes Back (2020) by Rebecca Harrison; Near Dark (2020) by Stacey Abbott; Night of the Living Dead (2020) by Ben A Hervey; Rosemary's Baby (2020) by Michael Newton; and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (2024) by Dana Polan.
Relevant titles in the companion series BFI TV Classics are Doctor Who (2005) by Kim Newman and Star Trek (2008) by Ina Rae Hark. The tone of the series varies widely from personal and populist to highly academic, from detailed textual analysis to overviews of the production of individual films, and the overall quality is largely high. [CWa]
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