Case Study: British Film Institute achieves unified access and large-scale digitisation of its film archive with Axiell

British Film Institute - Customer Case Study

The British Film Institute (BFI) struggled with an organically grown, fragmented archive of some 4.5 million items — films, scripts, posters and more — scattered across homemade databases and multiple systems, making it hard to find, describe and share its collections. To rationalise and make this material accessible, the BFI engaged Axiell and implemented its Adlib moving-image collection management solution tailored to the complexities of film metadata.

Axiell consolidated the BFI’s disparate records into a single, searchable system capable of capturing detailed credits and provenance, which unlocked access across the archive and enabled a major digitisation push. As a measurable outcome, the work supported a £15 million fund to digitise 10,000 films (including titles from 1895), accelerated restorations and broadened public access—demonstrating Axiell’s impact on the BFI’s Film Forever strategy.

British Film Institute

Gabriele Popp

Head of Collections and Information