Children from Dunmow St Mary’s Primary School filmed in the 1970s and 1980s, are part of a new archive called Black Britain on Film.

This is the British Film Institute’s new collection of over 150 film and television titles that uncover the heritage of black Britain from the past century.

There are three films from 1974, 1977 and 1986 about an inspirational Ghanaian-born teacher Felix Cobson who taught Essex schoolchildren including pupils from Dunmow St Mary’s Primary school, about traditional African culture.

The collection was launched on Tuesday, November 22 on the BFI Player VOD platform and is part of the BFI’s five-year Britain on Film project to digitise, and make available online, 10,000 films, from the BFI National Archive and the UK’s national and regional film archives, including the East Anglian Film Archive (EAFA), by 2017.

The Black Britain on Film collection features some of the earliest appearances of black Britons in two films by Mitchell and Kenyon from the early 20th century, as well as post-war documentaries, television dramas, contemporary features and films of iconic figures including Paul Robeson, Muhammed Ali, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.

The collection complements the BFI’s new blockbuster season Black Star.

Black Britain on Film collection is available to view on the BFI Player http://player.bfi.org.uk/collections/black-britain-on-film/