Tom Burke    

We always knew the British Film Institute as a cinema by the thames. A place to watch old movies and drink expensive beer.

But we were soon to know it as an entire universe and hidden at its centre we found the world’s largest archive of film and moving image

We were invited to visit the archive. When we arrived we felt as if we were in a cathedral.

The numbers made our heads spin.

We heard stories of light bulbs hotter than the surface of the sun, and beams of light that would blind you in an instant. Stories to match the horrors of the wildest of myths.

And finally senior curator Danny Leigh completed the story by explaining the role of this strange, mystical place:

It was almost like something from a movie.

We developed a two stage strategy to bring these guardians out of hiding, and to open up this narrative as a contested space.

Film makers and musicians who are invited into the archive to create new work out of archive material.

Members of the archive, along with the musicians and artists, then take these works out on tour.

Join us at the British Film Institute on London’s southbank on Art Night, July 3rd 2018 for our first installment.