Museum of Dream Worlds
An AHRC-funded project on the modern reception of classical antiquity and the transnational history of silent cinema.
The AHRC-funded project Museum of Dream Worlds: Silent Antiquity Films in the BFI National Archive (2023-27) seeks to establish a better understanding of both the modern reception of classical antiquity and the transnational history of silent cinema. It investigates how, thanks to cinema, classical antiquity was rendered a powerfully immersive democratic dreamworld while, thanks to classical antiquity, cinema laid claim to the status of an educative art - a ‘museum of dreams’.
The project will
- Produce a systematic analysis of the 70+ silent film prints in the British National Film Archive (BFI) that engage with ancient Greece and Rome and, thereby, situate the UK firmly within the global network that produced, exhibited, and consumed the classical antiquity films of the early twentieth century. Here is a list of the silent films concerned with ancient Greece and Rome that the Museum of Dreamworlds project is investigating because the BFI National Archive possesses prints of them. Until summer 2026, digital access to selected prints can only be granted to individuals proposing to submit an abstract for the project’s edited volume. Please contact Aylin Atacan for that purpose. Many of these films are also available from other archives or online.
- Create an online resource that will include direct access to many digitised versions of these films and develop an important future use for them beyond academia and the archive, in cinemas, schools, heritage sites, and museums. The website will launch in June 2026 (www.museumofdreamworlds.org) and will be developed over the course of 2027 and 2028.
The project team comprises PI Maria Wyke (UCL), PDRA Aylin Atacan (UCL), Co-I Ivo Blom (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), and Co-I Bryony Dixon (BFI).
Upcoming Events
- Workshops in Bologna, June 2026: Quo vadis? (1913) and Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei (1926).
- 9 September 2026: Quo Vadis (1913). The film will be screened with Kennington Bioscope at the Cinema Museum. Details to be announced.
- November 2026: Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei (1926). The film will be screened at Bryony Dixon’s regular Silent Cinema strand at BFI Southbank. Details to be announced.
