Film London To Invest In Film Gems 


Film London and London's Screen Archives: the regional network have announced they have secured £247,000 to care for and improve access to film heritage in London.
The funding is part of the UK Screen Heritage Programme – a substantial nation-wide investment by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to preserve and promote film heritage.
It will finance an 18-month project in which London's moving image archives/collections will be given the tools and support to enhance their assets and improve public access to them.
The rare and diverse materials kept in the capital's archives have an ability to reconnect people with the history of their city and neighbourhoods in a vivid way and to reveal unknown or forgotten passages of London life.
The new investment will primarily focus on film and video material that has the most significance to the region and its communities, with the funds being shared across approximately 70 publicly accessible archives, libraries and museums.
The project will include the delivery of the first comprehensive inventory of London's holdings, creating descriptive cataloguing information, devising a central storage solution for fragile film and video, a collections care toolkit and digital access copies of around 20 hours of 'unseen' material.
This work will also link into an exciting project to create a union catalogue for all moving image archive material across the UK and provide an online showcase for some of the nation’s film archive treasures for the first time.
A strategic priority for the new investment will be to unearth and revitalise rich materials kept within the archives in the London Boroughs. Previous mapping activities show local collections contain a wealth of unseen treasures which reveal key elements of the social, political and cultural history of the capital. The new injection of funding will preserve these gems for future generations through conservation and long-term storage solutions and will make them more accessible thanks to extensive digitisation and searchable catalogues.
Dr Cathy Ross, Chair of London's Screen Archives, commented: "The new investment is a great leap forward for London's heritage generally. Film and moving images are becoming ever more important to the way we understand the past and communicate it to future generations. This funding will provide a much-needed focus for the region's museums, libraries and archives, allowing us all to start unlocking the cultural riches that our film holdings represent."
Adrian Wootton, Chief Executive Officer of Film London added: "The new funding will improve significantly the infrastructure required for a wide audience to discover archive treasures. Londoners are keen to explore the history of their city and communities on film.
"This is seen in the success of events supported by Film London and London’s Screen Archives, such as the public screenings in Trafalgar Square as part of the London Film Festival which are attended by thousands every year, whatever the weather. Projects like this demonstrate how valuable film heritage is for community-building and to generate a sense of place and we are delighted to support the local collections to continue this crucial work."
(BMcN/GK)