Inside the Archive #54: British stunt performers and a trip to Rome

A lucky group of BFI National Archive staff were recently able to escape the British weather and head to Rome for the International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA) World Conference, hosted by the legendary Cinecittà Studios.

The conference is a key date in the calendar for the BFI, which is the designated National Television Archive and holds one of the largest accessible collections of British TV programmes in the world. It is an important opportunity to meet colleagues, learn about the latest developments in research, preservation and access, and the exchange ideas for tackling the most pressing challenges facing holders of televisual material.

The theme for the 2025 conference was, “Everything is possible and nothing is true?”, which inspired numerous interesting and thought-provoking presentations, particularly around key topics of the moment, such tackling misinformation and the use of AI. A presentation highlight was learning about how the GBH Archive is working with the US Library of Congress to preserve and make available at-risk media content from public broadcasters across America through the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. Other fascinating subjects included hearing about the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation’s approach to handling the ethical and contextual issues that arise when opening up an archive to public access, how archivists and professors are working together to analyse the impact of image reuse on meaning, and the challenges of digitising Reuters news rushes held on tape at bureaus across the world.

The BFI’s Senior Curator of Television, Lisa Kerrigan, and Collections Development Manager, Dylan Cave, gave their own presentation about the preservation of titles produced through the Young Audience’s Content Fund (YACF). The YACF was a government sponsored National Lottery fund which supported programming for children and young people, including the award-winning Big Boys (2022-2025), Sol (2020) and Milo (2021). The presentation outlined how the BFI National Archive worked with the fund to preserve all completed programmes (over 1000 titles) in the BFI National Archive, including using open-source tools to archive the interactive accessibility features of the fund’s final series, Mixmups (2023).

BFI Videotape and Engineering Advisor, Charles Fairall, lent his considerable expertise to sessions across the conference, and co-chaired a panel discussing the race to save material currently held on obsolete formats. The panel brought together people from across the sector, including archive owners, service providers and equipment manufacturers. Their fascinating discussion covered the need to make playback and digitisation equipment available more equitably across archives and institutions, whether there is enough impetus in the commercial market to develop new machinery or methods to read obsolete formats, and growing role of AI and cybersecurity in conversations around digital preservation.

The team also enjoyed catching up with some of our partner UK regions and Nations Film Archives, including the team from Northern Ireland Screen who presented on how their material is used creatively by filmmakers to reach new audiences, and the Yorkshire and North East Film Archive whose short film In the Veins (2025) was nominated for the Excellence in Archive Production award.

Beyond the panels, presentation and meetings, the team enjoyed exploring Cinecittà Studios. We were able to see the Ancient Rome set (complete with amphitheatre, mini Pantheon and Arch of Constantine) and the sound stages which once hosted Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini, among many others. We even managed to squeeze in a little sightseeing around the Eternal City and some predictably excellent pasta!

Many thanks to FIAT/IFTA, Cinecittà Studios and the city of Rome for welcoming and looking after us so well. Arrivederci!

– Ella Ferguson (Heritage Programmes Coordinator)

In February 2025, the BFI Reuben Library acquired a copy of the British Stunt Arrangers and Performers Register from 1973. It is one of four in existence and a vital part of British film history.

Think of the Stunt Arrangers and Performers Register as a brochure for elite stunt performers! Each page consists of a portrait of the performer with their physical stats, skill set (such as horse-riding, scuba diving, sword fighting) and credits on the reverse. The register is a true time capsule with portraits that capture the essence of 1970s style in wonderfully nostalgic detail! Yet its greatest significance lies in the record it provides of the stunt arrangers and performers active during that era, many of whom went uncredited at the time. These performers contributed to some of the biggest film and television productions of the period, leaving an indelible mark on screen history.

The copy we acquired belonged to Peter Brayham (1936-2006) a legendary stunt performer and coordinator who set the standard for many of the stunts that are commonplace today. Peter’s wife, and fellow stunt performer Dani Biernat, donated the register in Peter’s memory and in recognition of the essential work of stunt people in the film and television industry.

In November, we invited 10 surviving members of the 1973 Stunt Arrangers and Performers Register to visit the BFI National Archive at Berkhamsted to see where the register will be housed and preserved. The group toured the various departments, engaging with curators and archivists to learn more about their work, many delighted to discover that their own contributions are preserved within our collection. They were stunned by the breadth of the BFI’s activities and the sheer scale of the preservation efforts taking place every day.

At lunch, we gathered in the boardroom to chat and that’s when the stories started.

Stuart Fell (actor and stunt performer) recounted a story of his time in Dr Who, “I was in Dr Who as a Cyberman. Because I was 5ft 7, I had this special suit where the cyberman head was on top of mine, so I always played the Cyberman that gets its head shot off. We had to be bolted into the costumes, and you couldn’t get out by yourself. Anyway, this one time, I got my head shot off and the fake smoke started leaking into my suit, suffocating me. I was thrashing about and couldn’t hear the director shout cut. When they opened the suit, I could barely breathe and had a sore throat for two weeks after!”

Jim Dowdall (actor and stunt performer) regaled us with a story about a near miss he experienced, “I was working on Force 10 from Navarone (1978) and had to leap off a ledge which would explode. We did the jump, and the director says we went too soon, that it didn’t look good. So, I turn around and show him how the explosion burnt the back out of my jacket and shirt, and said, ‘we were close enough!’”

The stunt register has been digitised, catalogued and placed in a protective enclosure. It is part of the BFI Reuben Library’s Ariston collection (Greek for excellent) and benefits from the wonderful surviving members signing their individual pages, making the register a totally unique artefact. It sits alongside part of our Pre-Cinema collection (a fascinating donation of books on the origins of cinema from the late 1800s) together with a unique publication of Alan Parker’s artworks. Remarkably, Parker published this book privately, and it remains the only copy in existence. What excellent shelf-fellows.

– Eleanor Watkins (Collection Projects Librarian) and Katie Reddington (Senior Librarian)

The Inside the Archive blog is supported by the BFI Screen Heritage Fund, awarding National Lottery funding.