Sight and Sound Magazine is a distinguished and venerable monthly UK film publication that dates back to the establishment of the British Film Institute (BFI) more than ninety years ago, and remains one of the most important and relied-upon film journals for critics and fans alike.
The magazine was first published in 1932 and described as – given that film was still a fairly new and developing technology – ‘a quarterly review of modern aids to learning published under the auspices of the British Institute of Adult Education’. In 1934 its management was passed to the BFI which still publishes the magazine, and ran as a quarterly for of its existence until the early 1990s when it was merged with another BFI publication, the Monthly Film Bulletin and released monthly. Sight and Sound attempts to review all films in each issue, including indie and art house releases, as opposed to more mainstream film magazines which tend to concentrate on those films with a general release.
Since 1952 the magazine conducts a well-known, once-a-decade 'Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time' that is widely regarded as the most respected and informed vote polls in film criticism. Sight and Sound also publishes a number of sought-after special commemorative or survey-driven issues every year.