Museum of Dreams: Silent Antiquity Films in the BFI National Archive

梦想博物馆：BFI 国家档案馆中的无声古代电影

• 批准号: AH/X012808/1
• 负责人: Maria Wyke
• 金额: $ 77.76万
• 依托单位: University College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FX012808%2F1
• 关键词: Museum; Dreams; Silent; Antiquity; Films

Classical antiquity (the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome) provided cinema from its inception with a powerfully privileged site for the exploration of a past perceived to be the origins and cultural heritage of the Western world. Silent cinema (encompassing a period from the 1890s to the 1920s) played a fundamental role in the modern creation and dissemination of knowledge about that past within and across national, cultural and linguistic boundaries. Cinema offered its global audiences a radically new, astonishingly creative, and swiftly iconic way of experiencing classical antiquity that was related to, but distinct from, its reconstruction in high cultural forms (such as the novel, theatre, opera, painting, dance and sculpture). The classical past was brought into the present day moving in time and space, embodied by actors, and emotionally coded by colour and musical accompaniment. Thanks to cinema, classical antiquity was rendered a powerfully immersive democratic dreamworld while, thanks to classical antiquity, cinema could lay claim to the status of an educative art - a 'museum of dreams' as in the project's title.Museum of Dreams will produce a cohesive, interdisciplinary and comparative study of the encounter between classical antiquity and silent cinema. The project will ask how that encounter shaped both the cultural memory of classical antiquity in the modern world and the history of cinema as a global medium. It will investigate silent films concerning classical antiquity as aesthetic works, commercial forms of entertainment and instruments of mass education - an education that, in its frequent imaginative focus on women and slaves and address to audiences diverse in gender, ethnicity and class, appeared to challenge the authority of elite cultural institutions like the public school or museum. The project will use as a representative and manageable corpus the largest (yet least well-served) collection of surviving films, those in the British Film Institute's National Archive. At least 70 catalogued prints have ancient Greece or Rome as their focus and range widely in date, genre and country of origin. The project will be the first systematically to investigate these unparalleled holdings as engagements with classical antiquity. By these means, Museum of Dreams will establish a better understanding of both the modern reception of classical antiquity and the transnational history and cultural status of silent cinema. By focusing on the BFI holdings, the project will also situate the UK firmly within the global network that produced, exhibited, consumed, and curated the classical antiquity films of the early twentieth century, and establish for those films an important educational legacy in the twenty-first century. Museum of Dreams will considerably enrich understanding of the role of classical antiquity in British culture in the early twentieth century compared to other countries and the process whereby access to it was democratised. It will provide deeper knowledge of the cultural function ascribed to silent cinema, its national characteristics, transnational exhibition and localised consumption. By presenting its findings in a linked-data research website that will also provide easy access to at least 30 digitised prints, and through other publications, workshops and screenings, the project will bring attention to the importance of the BFI holdings and stimulate further research into them and, more broadly, into how the distant past can be recalled through modern media. The project's interdisciplinary and comparative approach will directly benefit the international community of film archivists as well as multiple constituencies of scholars. Engagement in the project of professional stakeholders (architects, teachers, museum curators, and media practitioners) will better enable the creation of educational resources - and a legacy for these films that will last well beyond the lifetime of the project.

古典时代（古希腊和罗马文化）从一开始就为电影提供了一个强大的特权场所，可以探索被视为西方世界起源和文化遗产的过去。无声电影（涵盖19世纪90年代至1920年代的时期）在现代创作和传播有关过去的知识方面发挥了根本性作用，无论是在国家、文化和语言的边界内还是跨边界。电影为全球观众提供了一种全新的、极具创造力的、快速的、标志性的体验古典古代的方式，这种方式与其在高级文化形式（如小说、戏剧、歌剧、绘画、舞蹈和雕塑）中的重建有关，但又有所不同。古典的过去被带到了今天，在时间和空间中移动，由演员体现，并通过颜色和音乐伴奏进行情感编码。由于电影的存在，古典时代被赋予了一个强大的沉浸式民主梦幻世界，而由于古典时代，电影可以声称自己是一种教育艺术-正如项目名称所示的“梦想博物馆”。梦想博物馆将对古典时代和无声电影之间的相遇进行有凝聚力的，跨学科的和比较的研究。该项目将探讨这场邂逅如何塑造现代世界的古典文化记忆以及电影作为全球媒介的历史。它将研究作为美学作品、商业娱乐形式和大众教育工具的古典时期无声电影-这种教育经常以妇女和奴隶为想象焦点，面向不同性别、种族和阶级的观众，似乎是对公立学校或博物馆等精英文化机构权威的挑战。该项目将使用英国电影协会国家档案馆中最大（但服务最差）的幸存电影集作为代表性和可管理的语料库。至少有70个编目版画有古希腊或罗马作为他们的重点和范围广泛的日期，流派和原产国。该项目将是第一个系统地调查这些无与伦比的财产与古典文物的约定。通过这些方式，梦想博物馆将建立一个更好地了解现代接受古典古代和跨国历史和无声电影的文化地位。通过专注于BFI的资产，该项目还将使英国牢牢地融入制作、展示、消费和策划20世纪早期古典电影的全球网络，并为这些电影建立21世纪重要的教育遗产。梦想博物馆将大大丰富对古典文物在英国文化中的作用的理解在世纪初相比，其他国家和过程，其中获得它是民主化。它将提供对无声电影的文化功能，其民族特色，跨国展览和本地化消费的更深入的了解。通过在一个链接数据研究网站上展示其研究结果，该网站还将提供至少30个数字化印刷品，并通过其他出版物，研讨会和放映，该项目将引起人们对BFI资产重要性的关注，并刺激对它们的进一步研究，更广泛地说，如何通过现代媒体回忆遥远的过去。该项目的跨学科和比较的方法将直接受益于电影档案管理员的国际社会以及学者的多个选区。专业利益相关者（建筑师、教师、博物馆馆长和媒体从业者）参与项目将更好地创造教育资源--以及这些电影的遗产，这些遗产将远远超过项目的生命周期。