David Farnor | On 05, Mar 2014

What do Nymphomaniac, The Elephant Man and Seven Samurai have in common? Nothing kinky: all of them have been added to the BFI Player this month.

The BFI’s video on-demand service, which launched in October 2013, has established itself as a platform for smaller – and British – productions, featuring day and date releases for The Selfish Giant, The Epic of Everest, 8 Minutes Idle and Claire Denis’ Bastards.

The service divides its content into seven channels, from must-see cinema and silent classics to festival-related content, Q&As and rare footage from the national film archive. Impressively, the majority of the content (roughly 60 per cent) is available for free, meaning that the public have been able to easily access the BFI archives since October 2013 for the first time.

Now, though, the BFI’s beefing up its paid content with a typical mix of old and new content added at the start of March 2014. New releases include Lars Von Trier’s controversial Nymphomaniac double-bill, Akira Kurosawa’s classic Seven Samurai, Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk Abotu Kevin, David Lynch’s The Elephant Man and – fresh from Oscar win on Sunday night – Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty.

The BFI Player uses a web-based player, which means its content is available to watch on your computer, iPad, tablet and phone. Just in case you want to get some weird looks on the bus while you stream Nymphomaniac.

For more on the BFI Player, read our interview with BFI Digital Director Edward Humphrey.

Add to Watchlist