Inside the Archive #70: Museum of Dreamworlds and a trip to Blackpool

The catastrophic eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii are embedded in our cultural memory in a way exceeded only, perhaps, by the story of the sinking of the Titanic. It’s a story of great pathos, a city and its unfortunate people buried by metres of volcanic ash, that moment frozen in time, bringing us close to our ancient forbears in a unique way.

The story has been told ever since Pliny the Younger wrote of looking across the Bay of Naples at the eruption in AD 79 through books, musical theatre, paintings, spectacular dioramas and, in time, the world of film inherited that fascination. It produced travelogues, such as that of Charles Urban and George Albert Smith’s Visit to Pompeii (1901), showing the excavations and taking a trip up the famous funicular railway to the top of Vesuvius. Just five years later the filmmakers would not have found the funicular – it was destroyed in the 1906 eruption.

Filmmakers attempted to portray the events of the 1906 eruption with a mixture of location shots and trick photography. And fictional films started even earlier. The first version of Edward Bulwer Lytton’s popular 19th-century novel The Last Days of Pompeii was made in the UK in 1900, and films with increasingly spectacular effects have been made ever since. A recent international exhibition, The Last Days of Pompeii: The Immersive Exhibition, updates the Pompeii spectacular diorama shows of the Victorian age to the immersive world of virtual reality. That enables you to walk round a Pompeiian villa, see the staged battles in the Amphitheatre and experience the eruption.

For the film archivist, the Pompeii story holds extra interest – early film research and archaeology have a lot in common. What we uncover, in film as in archaeological buildings, are often ruins or fragments. Reels of celluloid from the earliest epoch of film frequently lack footage, frames or parts of the frame, colour or titles. The ends of reels were particularly vulnerable in projection and other handling, meaning we often don’t have a main title or ending for identification and dating evidence.

So like archaeologists, faced with the traces of buildings under layers of earth or sand, we have to develop techniques to identify and date our findings. Of course, film is only 130 or so years old and developed in an era of mass media and documentation (how much more difficult it is to understand and communicate to people about ancient ruins of antiquity without reliable records and context). But the principles and techniques for both are broadly the same.

We have also to consider the lacunae – the missing bits. We have learnt over the years not to over-restore, that we need to take care when filling in missing material so it doesn’t end up being pastiche. Sometimes it’s better to let people imagine what might fill the negative space. We should be honest and transparent about what we have done in terms of ‘excavation’ or restoration, and everything we do should be reversible.

Now, an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project is allowing us to explore an interdisciplinary and comparative study of the encounter between classical antiquity and silent cinema. Museum of Dreamworlds, asks how these early cinematic depictions of ancient Greece and Rome have shaped the understanding of both classical antiquity in the modern world and the history of film. Contextualised by experts from University College London (UCL) and academics from around the world, the project will produce a series of new educational resources that will stimulate further discussion and understanding of these historic works.

The project runs until October 2027 and we hope to share further updates soon. In the meantime though, you can experience the last days of Pompeii via a one-off screening of Jone or The Last Days of Pompeii (1913), which will be held in the 500-seat Bloomsbury Theatre on Saturday 9 May 2026. The screening will be accompanied by live piano and percussion performed by the professional silent-film musicians John Sweeney and Jeff Davenport, and will be introduced by the Museum of Dreamworlds team.

– Bryony Dixon, Curator of Silent Film

The Museum of Dreamworlds project is led by Maria Wyke (Professor of Latin, UCL), Bryony Dixon (Curator of Silent Film, BFI National Archive), with Ivo Blom (Lecturer at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) and PhD researcher Aylin Atacan.

Continuing our library tour around the UK, showcasing BFI Replay to local communities, this month we ventured to the Vegas of the North, Blackpool! Arriving at the beautiful Central Library (a Grade II-listed Carnegie library that opened in 1911), we were met by passionate locals with a keen interest in the world of archive film and TV.

Partnering with the North West Film Archive (NWFA), we introduced people to the world of BFI Replay, showcasing material that is freely available to access and enjoy. It was wonderful to see the enthusiasm in the room, from researchers, social groups, local organisations, and those just enjoying a trip down memory lane. Among the NWFA/Replay highlights shared, we all enjoyed a short colour film from 1946 simply entitled Blackpool. Made by Norman Ellis from the Bradford Cine Club, it depicts the Ellis family on their summer holiday to the resort. The family enjoyed beaches, bathing pools, and the pleasure beach before heading off on days out to nearby Fleetwood and Stanley Park. Eighty years on, it was amazing to reflect upon a different era of Blackpool’s story.

As part of the day, we also met with the brilliant Boingboing Foundation, a local organisation leading social justice-led resilience research and practice. This was an opportunity to share the power of accessing archive material in order to explore, inform and reflect on our current world. Using the springboard of Boingboing’s Activist Alliance work, we delved into the Replay collection, Power to the People: Protest and Activism on Video (curated by Assistant Curator Kitty Robertson). Viewing and discussing material ranging from the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp to the miners’ strikes and Rock Against Racism, we reflected on how access to filming and distributing material has changed so radically. We also discussed how this may affect, enhance, or diminish community, and whether or not things have become more or less curated now. Capturing our thoughts visually, it was a creative and inspiring session, giving the participants space to think about what activism they might record today for current and future generations.

We look forward to hitting the road again soon and demonstrating the many treasures BFI Replay has to offer.

– Sinéad Beverland, BFI Replay Engagement Officer

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