Photos: BFI switches on film jukebox

The British Film Institute (BFI) has unveiled 14 individual mini-cinemas where the public can view hundreds of rare film and TV titles for free.

The BFI South Bank Mediatheque in London currently holds around 400 films and television shows from the BFI National Archive, with well-known titles alongside less familiar footage and media not currently commercially available on DVD.

Robin Baker, curator of the Mediatheque facility at the BFI, said: "For a long time we wanted to create a space where people would interact with the films we have."

Pictured are some of the workstations the public can use to view footage – from a 25-second film from 1896 of Blackfriars Bridge, to an episode of Little Britain and films such as The Wicker Man.

Visitors use a browser to navigate through lists of available footage and then view it.

Baker said: "The Mediatheque is not like a cinema - once something is available it will remain available forever."

The BFI signed a two-year deal with HP to provide the digital technology to set up the Mediatheque.

The initial storage capacity of the Mediatheque IT infrastructure is two terabytes – which equates to around 200 hours of digitised media content from the original BFI archive.

An estimated 30 hours of footage will be added to Mediatheque's collection every month and, in four years' time, the BFI anticipates the system will hold a total of 16 terabytes of data.

The original BFI archive holds around 750,000 items, Baker added, but this would have cost around £1bn to digitise and make available on the Mediatheque.

Photo credit: BFI and HP