[3] The BFI was established in 1933 to encourage the development of the arts of film, television and the moving image throughout the United Kingdom, to promote their use as a record of contemporary life and manners, to promote education about film, television and the moving image generally, and their impact on society, to promote access to and appreciation of the widest possible range of British and world cinema and to establish, care for and develop collections reflecting the moving image history and heritage of the United Kingdom.

The programme of the gallery resulted in several new commissions by leading artists, including projects which engaged directly with the BFI National Archive, among which are Patrick Keiller's 'The City of the Future', Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard's 'RadioMania: An Abandoned Work' and Deimantas Narkevicious' 'Into the Unknown'.

The Gallery also initiated projects by film-makers such as Michael Snow, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Jane and Louise Wilson and John Akomfrah.

[16] Despite its foundation resulting from a recommendation in a report on Film in National Life, at that time the institute was a private company, though it has received public money throughout its history.

The institute was restructured following the Radcliffe Report of 1948, which recommended that it should concentrate on developing the appreciation of filmic art, rather than creating film itself.

This was updated in 2000, and in the same year the newly established UK Film Council took responsibility for providing the BFI's annual grant-in-aid (government subsidy).

MOMI was acclaimed internationally and set new standards for education through entertainment, but it did not receive the high levels of continuing investment that might have enabled it to keep pace with technological developments and ever-rising audience expectations.

[citation needed] As well as its work on film, the BFI also devotes a large amount of its time to the preservation and study of British television programming and its history.

[citation needed] The delayed redevelopment of the National Film Theatre finally took place in 2007, creating in the rebranded "BFI Southbank" new education spaces, a contemporary art gallery dedicated to the moving image[19] (the BFI Gallery), and a pioneering mediatheque which for the first time enabled the public to gain access, free of charge, to some of the otherwise inaccessible treasures in the National Film & Television Archive.

[citation needed] An announcement of a £25 million capital investment in the Strategy for UK Screen Heritage was made by Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport at the opening night of the 2007 London Film Festival.

The bulk of this money paid for long overdue development of the BFI National Archive facilities in Hertfordshire and Warwickshire.

On 29 November 2016, the BFI announced that over 100,000 television programmes are to be digitised before the video tapes, which currently have an estimated five-to-six-year shelf life, become unusable.

[20] The BFI announced in February 2021 that it is teaming up with American diversity and inclusion program #StartWith8Hollywood founded by Thuc Doan Nguyen to make it global.