Museum of Dreams: Silent Antiquity Films in the BFI National Archive (2023-2026)

The AHRC-funded project Museum of Dreams: Silent Antiquity Films in the BFI National Archive (2023-26) seeks to establish a better understanding of both the modern reception of classical antiquity and the transnational history of silent cinema. It investigates how, thanks to cinema, classical antiquity was rendered a powerfully immersive democratic dreamworld while, thanks to classical antiquity, cinema laid claim to the status of an educative art - a 'museum of dreams'. The project will produce a systematic analysis of the 70+ silent film prints in the British National Film Archive (BFI) that engage with ancient Greece and Rome and, thereby, situate the UK firmly within the global network that produced, exhibited, and consumed the classical antiquity films of the early twentieth century. It will create an online resource that will include direct access to many digitised versions of these films and develop an important future use for them beyond academia and the archive, in cinemas, schools, heritage sites, and museums. The BFI prints and film related materials will be compared with those in various European film archives (Italy, France, The Netherlands). The project team comprises PI Maria Wyke (UCL), PDRA Aylin Atacan (UCL), Co-I Ivo Blom (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), and Co-I Bryony Dixon (BFI).