Queen Nazi salute film: Royal footage leak puts focus on BFI film digitisation project

It is yet to be established how the footage came into the hands of The Sun

A photo from 1937 of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor meeting with German leader Adolf Hitler in Munich (PA)

The British Film Institute (BFI) has confirmed it has been digitising some of the Royal Family’s home movies as investigations continue into the leaking of the Queen’s Nazi salute footage.

Buckingham Palace, the Royal Collection Trust and the BFI are trying to establish how the 17-second black and white film, showing the Queen as a child performing a Nazi salute with her family, came into the hands of The Sun newspaper.

In October of 2012, her Diamond Jubilee year, the Queen visited BFI Southbank in London on the day the organisation announced it would be working with the BBC to digitise a collection of royal footage, which the BFI National Archive has looked after since the late 1960s.

It includes a mixture of films presented to the Royal Household including newsreels and private family movies which are unique to the collection and date back to the 1920s.

Despite no updates about the project since 2012, a BFI spokeswoman confirmed that “work is being done”.

It is not known where the footage showing the Nazi salute originated, but the BFI spokeswoman said the organisation was continuing to “investigate”.

It is understood that depending on the outcome of the investigation, Buckingham Palace will be looking at issues of copyright and possible criminality.