British Landmark Music videos and the BFI National Archive

Pop promos combine the commercial and artistic extremes of moving image production, capturing and expressing cutting edge contemporary attitudes in succinct and stylish ways. They have been an integral part of the British moving image industry since music video became a viable industry in the early 1980s, yet their place in British film and moving image history remains largely unsung. The British Film Institute (BFI) National Archive holds a varied collection of music videos acquired from the promo industry, TV broadcasters, and individual filmmakers that spans from the mid-1970s to the 2000s. A largely unexplored part of the national collection, it is a body of work ripe for research. This paper outlines various curatorial approaches taken to develop and enrich the archive’s music video collection, including details about the ‘British Landmark Music Video’ collection, curated as part of the ‘Fifty Years of British Music Video’ project.