A short and sweet Topical Budget newsreel from 1923 that reveals that despite the Weimar Republic’s financial troubles, they were still keen on bringing German football up to scratch.

This was one of the first clips published on the BFI’s YouTube channel, but the encoding left a lot to be desired – so here’s a replacement that does justice to the luminous cinematography of one of Britain’s last great silent films.

This week’s YouTube treat marks the 30th anniversary of this John Betjeman-presented British Transport Film, lamenting the passing of steam travel.

When I started exploring the BFI’s new Blu-ray release of Peter Greenaway’s A Zed and Two Noughts, I found this wonderfully bonkers surprise nestling in the extras (it wasn’t included on the DVD), and had to publish some of it on YouTube. It’s nominally a serious COI-funded documentary about various aspects of Britain’s coastline, but you’d guess its director and composer (Michael Nyman) in seconds.

A snappy little comedy from 1897 by George Albert Smith, one of the first important British (and world) film pioneers. The special effects could hardly be cruder – Georges Méliès had only discovered the transformative power of the jump cut the previous year – but they work beautifully in context. I wrote it up in more detail for Screenonline here.

I’ve just been appointed editor of the BFI’s YouTube channel, charged with uploading at least one piece of archive film every week.

So here’s the first instalment, an extract from British Transport Films’ Northumberland travelogue Any Man’s Kingdom (1956), which I wrote up for Screenonline in more detail here.