BFI Player and BFI to launch Film subscription service.

October 28, 2015

The BFI, the UK’s lead organisation for film, today launches its brand new subscription service, BFI Player+.

Costing just £4.99 a month, with a 30-day free trial for all users, BFI Player+ offers audiences some of the best classic and critically-acclaimed films.

· Hand-picked, expertly-selected film collections bring 100s of cinematic greats to subscribers

· Mark Kermode picks his BFI Player+ ‘film of the week’, each with exclusive filmed introductions

· All this for less than a bucket of popcorn: £4.99 per month, no contract, and with a 30-day free trial for all

Subscribers can dive into collections of hand-selected films curated by the BFI’s world-leading experts, enjoying must-see British films alongside the best of world cinema. In short: BFI Player+ is a subscription service like no other. Now, it’s easy for audiences to discover and enjoy the essential classics, all without the need for a contract.

User-feedback helped shape BFI Player+, and as a result it complements the mainstream services in the UK to meet the demand for a service celebrating the best of a century of cinema.

Edward Humphrey, Digital Director at the BFI said: “We are passionate about bringing great cinema to audiences – it’s at the core of everything the BFI does – and BFI Player+ does exactly that. We bring a unique approach to subscription services: expertly curated cinema that takes audiences on a journey through the very best of film, from its early masterpieces through to contemporary greats. It’s brilliant that leading critic, Mark Kermode is as passionate about BFI Player+ as we are, and will be introducing a key film each week to help our subscribers discover outstanding cinematic gems.”

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From launch, BFI Player+ will have in the region of 300 carefully selected titles available to stream, with films grouped to make browsing around genres, collections and directors an enjoyable, informative and intuitive experience for subscribers. Launch collections include British Classics, Horror, Indie, Documentaries, Family, plus films that were the toast of the red carpets inAward-Winning, those that are near-impossible to see anywhere else in Unavailable on DVD, and extraordinary examples of artist’s film and video work in Experimenta.

BFI Player+ is also focused on reflecting the cultural output of the BFI, the UK’s lead organisation for film, with collections also grouped around BFI festivals such as the UK’s largest film festival, the BFI London Film Festival, and also BFI Flare LGBT film festival, as well as major projects such as 2014’s SCI-FI or 2015’s LOVE blockbuster seasons. The collections, which will expand and grow with new titles added on an ongoing basis, are designed to have a broad appeal for anyone who loves film.

As part of its unique approach to curated cinema, every Friday BFI Player+ will feature an exclusive weekly video recommendation from one of the UK’s most respected film critics, Mark Kermode. Each week Mark will select a key title from the BFI Player+ collections and show why it’s a film not to be missed. The series commences on Friday 30 October, with Mark’s introduction to Alfred Hitchcock’s classic The Lodger, which features a specially-created score composed by acclaimed musician, producer and composer, Nitin Sawhney in 2012.

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The new BFI Player+ service will sit within the existing BFI Player – home of the go-to VoD service for new pay-per-view independent film releases and the BFI’s hugely popular Britain on Film archive collection. Britain on Film has received over 4 million views since launching in July.

BFI Player+ is available however people choose to view, be that via computer or, with the presence of the BFI Player app, across tablets and smartphones and with a fantastic roster of titles to come. A significant number of new titles – all hand-picked – will be added in coming months.

BFI Player+ is available now here: http://player.bfi.org.uk/bfi-player-plus/

Around 300 titles are available right now, examples of which include:

Sergei M. Eisenstein – Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Alfred Hitchcock – The Lodger (1927)

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger – The Red Shoes (1948)

Akira Kurosawa – Seven Samurai (1954)

Ishirô Honda – Godzilla (1954)

Sidney J. Furie – The Ipcress File (1965)

David Cronenberg – Dead Ringers (1988)

Joanna Hogg – Unrelated (2007)

Abbas Kiarostami – Shirin (2008)

Alexei Popogrebsky – How I Ended this Summer (2010)