Talks & Workshops

⮚ Silent Antiquity Prints unique to the BFI National Archive

Wednesday 25 June 2025, 15:00 – 16:30 & 17:00 – 18:30

Aula Seminari, DAMsLab, Piazzetta P. P. Pasolini 5/b, 40122 Bologna

These two workshops will include presentations on some silent antiquity prints which we believe to be unique to the BFI National Archive, the screening of substantial clips from them and plenty of time for discussion. The organisers welcome the comments of participants as they further develop their research on these films.

The workshops have been organised by the members of the University College London research project Museum of Dreamworlds: Prof. Maria Wyke (UCL), Dr. Ivo Blom (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam), Dr. Aylin Atacan (UCL) and Bryony Dixon (silent film curator, BFI National Archive), in collaboration with Eye Filmmuseum and other partner archives. The project (2023-2027) focuses on the paradoxically close relationship between the modern medium of silent cinema and the distant worlds of ancient Greece and Rome, using film prints and film-related materials from the collection of the British Film Institute as its point of departure and comparing them with what survives in other archives. 

Session 1

15:00 – 16:30 Research & Restoration 

Maria Wyke (UCL) will introduce the Museum of Dreamworlds project and its ambition systematically to investigate all the silent antiquity prints in the BFI. Bryony Dixon (BFI National Archive) will discuss the history and condition of the BFI antiquity prints and present her current project to restore Bruto (1911, Cines, dir. Enrico Guazzoni).

Synopsis:
Brutus, who has been brought up as a son by Julius Caesar, is persuaded by Cassius to conspire against him. Despite warnings by his wife, Caesar goes to the Senate, where he is murdered by the conspirators. After the funeral, the people of Rome rise up and throw the conspirators out of the city. Brutus manages to escape to the East where he amasses an army. Mark Anthony is sent with a legion to combat him. The night before the battle at Philippi, Brutus is visited by Caesar’s ghost. The next day he is defeated in battle and commits suicide.

Martyrdom Italian style

Ivo Blom (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) will present Santa Cecilia (1911, Cines, dir. Enrique Santos). He will explore its relationship to earlier traditions for the saint (in lantern slides, on postcards, in performance) and how its design is situated in a specifically Italian context.

Synopsis:

Cecilia, gracious daughter of the Cecilii, has embraced the Christian faith without the knowledge of her parents. Beautiful and wealthy, she has, unwittingly, wakened the love of Quintus Lentulus who, seeing himself rebuffed, swears vengeance. In fact, Lentulus discovers that Valerianus, a young tribune, to whom Cecilia has promised her hand in marriage, has been converted to Christianity, and quickly runs to denounce the tribune to the Prefect of Rome. The very day of their wedding and just when the young couple are about to sit down for the wedding feast, Valerianus is arrested, conducted before the Prefect and condemned to death. The body of the martyr, reverently collected by Cecilia and the Christians, is buried in the Catacombs. Soon after, Cecilia is also arrested. Courageously confessing her faith, she is condemned to severe torture and death which, because she is a Roman patrician, she suffers in her own home. She is then buried in the catacombs.

Martyrdom American style

Jon Solomon (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) will present The Way of the Cross (1909, Vitagraph, J. Stuart Blackton). He will consider how the film represents martyrdom in terms of Protestant American conceptions of early Christianity.

Synopsis:

After a banquet of gambling and drinking, the Roman Valerius comes across a Christian meeting in the street and falls in love with a participant, Leah. When the crowd begins to mock the young girl and her followers, Valerius rescues her and takes her to her home. The jealous Gallia, lover of Valerius, instructs her slave to follow them. She gives information to Nero about the Christian girl and Leah is brought to the palace and tormented in the presence of Valerius whom she continues to rebuff. The next day, Gallia ensures that Nero decrees the death of all Christians. In disguise, Valerius visits Leah to warn her of the planned extermination and she goes into hiding in the catacombs with her father and young brother. One week later, in peril of his life, the brother sets out to look for food. He is seen by the Romans and captured. They torture him until he tells them of the hiding place. Valerius offers to help Leah but she refuses, saying that she must stay with her family and the Christians. The soldiers come and take them away. The next day, Leah declares her faith before Nero and is sent to be fed to the lions. In the arena, she is seen by Valerius and again refuses to renounce her faith. Valerius sees a vision of Leah holding a cross and Gallia a glass of wine, and then the Cross itself.  He decides to join Leah in her cell, where she persuades him to give up his sword. Another vision of the Cross appears and, led into the arena accompanied by Valerius, Leah holds her cross aloft.

Session 2 17:00 – 18:30

Martyrdom: gender & irreligion

Maria Wyke will present Martire Pompeiana (1909, Saffi-Comerio, dir. Giuseppe de Liguoro). She will discuss its challenge to more conventional martyrdom films in the way that it focusses on a secular crucifixion and on the courage of women who struggle to support each other within a patriarchal and slave-owning society.

 

Synopsis:

At Pompeii towards evening, the feast of Venus takes place. After the sorceress Sabina’s predictions of a bad future for the celebrants are rebuffed, the men leave and the women gather round to offer incense to the goddess of their dance. Nica and Clyo (slaves of the pimp Ceramico) love each other like sisters. Nica loves the gladiator Icelo who promises to free her from slavery. However, the rich patrician Sava arrives, come to make his selection from among the pimp’s beautiful girls. He chooses Nica who refuses his advances and is therefore flogged and thrown into prison. Clyo, deciding to save her, steals a horse and rushes to tell Icelo at the gladiatorial school. He arrives at the prison, kills the guard and escapes with his beloved while Clyo, protecting the fugitives from capture, loses her life on the cross. As they run away, Nica and Icelo pass the scaffold and, finding the body of Clyo, bury her attended by the girls. The gladiator kills the patrician when he threatens Nica. Nica and Icelo kiss the flowers that have grown over Clyo’s grave, remembering that she was martyred to protect their love.

Sculpture

Ivo Blom (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) will present the newly identified British film Pygmalion & Galatea (1912, Ivy Close Films, dir. Elwin Neame). He will consider cinema’s long-standing interest in the myth of Pygmalion and his sculpture that comes alive.

Synopsis:

Pygmalion is working on his sculpture of Galatea, a perfect female beauty. He scorns the attentions of various real women who distract him from his work with their frivolity. Eventually, he falls in love with his sculpture. The next scene shows a number of women relaxing in gardens along a riverbank. Pygmalion also comes outside and decides to ask Venus to help him bring Galatea to life. At her all-female court, the goddess grants him his request and ignites a flame symbolizing the initiation of life. Returning to his studio, Pygmalion is initially disappointed to find his statue still of stone, but soon the statue comes to life. One of the women witnesses the metamorphosis and calls in the others, who are amazed. All present praise Venus, the goddess of love. 

Architecture & sculpture

Aylin Atacan (UCL) will present L’esclave de Phidias (1917, Gaumont, dir. Léonce Perret). She will use it to explore how the architecture of ancient Greece and of modern France is used to serve a plot about the ancient sculptor and his pursuit of the ideal woman.

Synopsis:

Sculptor Phydias searches for a divine model for a statue of Venus. Callyce, his slave girl, is in love with him, but her advances are rejected until she makes an offering of love flowers to one of the deities. Phydias embraces her, but their passionate encounter is seen by the sculptor’s wife, Quinta. She has Callyce beaten, but Phydias saves her from further punishment. Quinta then steals the sacred gold set aside for the proposed statue of Venus and publicly accuses her husband of the theft. He is arrested. Callyce goes in search of him, playing her lyre. From his prison cell Phydias hears her music. He is sentenced to exile. Quinta meanwhile watches a display of dancing by slave girls. Phydias is led into exile by a mounted guard of soldiers, followed by the faithful Callyce, who succours him when he collapses. At nightfall, by the sea, he bids farewell to Greece and is embraced by Callyce. On a boat, they approach Elide, the road of oblivion.

 

We are very grateful to Professor Paolo Noto and the University of Bologna Dipartimento delle Arti for hosting these two workshops in the university’s DAMSLab.

 

⮚ FOCUS GROUP WORKSHOP Amsterdam

We held our second focus group meeting in Amsterdam, following our first meeting in London.
As the team behind the Museum of Dreamworlds project, we would like to sincerely thank all the attendees of last week’s workshop for their active involvement. Their contributions and discussions were incredibly insightful and much appreciated.
We are especially grateful to our partner, Eye Filmmuseum, and in particular to Maral Mohsenin, Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, Soeluh van den Berg, and Sylke de Heus for their generous support.
Attendees
Andrea Meneghelli, Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, Eric Moormann, Leonardo de Franceschi, Maral Mohsenin, Morgan Corriou, Soeluh van den Berg, Stella Dagna, Stéphanie Salmon, Steven Jacobs, Sylke de Heus, Valentine Robert, Jan Paul Crielaard, Giovanna Fossati.

DAY 1 Thursday 3 April 2025

Introduction to project & workshop: Maral Mohsenin, Director of Collection and Knowledge Sharing, for Eye Filmmuseum and Ivo Blom for MoD Project

Panel 1 – French films: Valentine Robert & Stéphanie Salmon

Panel 2 – Colonial & Postcolonial Perspectives: Leonardo de Franceschi & Morgan Corriou

Panel 3 – Caesar & Cleopatra films: Eric Moormann & Maria Wyke

Panel 4 – BFI Antiquity films & Project Website: Bryony Dixon & Aylin Atacan

DAY 2 Friday 4 April 2025

Panel 1 - Homeric films: Ivo Blom & Aylin Atacan

Panel 2 – Sculpture films: Steven Jacobs & Ivo Blom

Panel 3 – Nero films: Andrea Meneghelli & Stella Dagna

Panel 4 – Teaching resources & Round up: Sylke de Heus & Maria Wyke

Display of relevant Eye printed materials: Soeluh van den Berg, Eye Filmmuseum

 

⮚ Il Cinema Ritrovato 2024

Museum of Dream Worlds ran two workshops at the Cinema Ritrovato film festival in June 2024 on the topic of Ancient Rome as Cinescape, inspired by the film festival’s long-standing interest in screening silent films associated with ancient Greece or Rome.

The first workshop - Reconstructing Ancient Rome - took its lead from the presence in the Cinema Ritrovato programme of Quo vadis (1924), the spectacular epic about Nero’s Rome as a home to vice. Aylin Atacan (University College London) explored the lavish Romanness of the pavilions the architect Armando Brasini had created for a Fascist exhibition, and which were then hired for the film. She considered the influences on Brasini of ancient Roman and Italian Baroque architecture, and the works of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and the influence in turn of this monumental style on cinema. She reflected on the nationalist and imperialist underpinnings of this film aesthetic, and the unfortunate consequence that its extraordinary realism enabled spectators to enter ancient Rome only to find that its Romans and Christians were still acting according to the highly stylised requirements of the nineteenth-century stage. Stella Dagna (Università degli Studi di Milano) raised the question of the relationship between monumental space and the human figure in the ancient Rome of silent cinema. Stark narrative contrasts between Christianity and Paganism, Romanness and the Orient, Republic and Empire are regularly established through symbolic spaces. She focussed on the recently restored film Messalina (1924) and argued that it merges two contrasting film genres – the peplum whose chief attraction is the mise-en-scene and the diva film whose chief attraction is women’s bodies. In Messalina, three different divas (a Christian girl, an Egyptian priestess, and the Roman empress) occupy space in contrasting ways and perform very different types of femininity in it.

The second workshop - Situating Ancient Rome in the Modern City - took its lead from the presence in the Cinema Ritrovato programme of the French travelogues Rome moderne et antique (1904) and Rome antique (1911). Maria Assunta Pimpinelli (Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Rome) explored their strategies for representing the ancient sites of Rome. She framed both films aesthetically within the tradition of the picturesque and considered how that tradition is brought into relation with the modern Italian city for French audiences. She also contrasted two Italian comedies in which ancient Romans come to life in the present and offer a very different way of engaging with the city both ancient and modern. Maria Wyke (University College London) considered how different nations - French, Italian, British – documented the sites of ancient Rome still visible in the modern city. Travelogues, she argued, claim to be representations of the real but they turn the city of Rome and its distant past into myths suitable for different national audiences. Considering the picturesque Italian travelogue, Città eterna (1911), she argued that unlike the French travelogues, it represents the city as powerfully eternal, a place of continual pilgrimage for all. In contrast, the light-hearted amateur production Road to Rome (1926), made by British students of architecture, clearly presents a visit to the city as a journey into time past.

Ivo Blom chaired both sessions with his usual perceptiveness and linguistic flair in Italian and English (among other languages). The project team are very grateful to Professor Paolo Noto and the University of Bologna Dipartimento delle Arti for hosting these two workshops in the university’s DAMSLab.

 

⮚ Workshop: Ancient Rome as Cinescape

 

DAMSlab (Aula Seminari), Piazzetta P. P. Pasolini 5/b, 40122 Bologna

Chairs: Prof. Paolo Noto (Università di Bologna) & Dr. Ivo Blom (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam)

One hundred years on, the 1924 Italian-German coproduction Quo vadis offers viewers fanciful scenes of Roman history that are both magnificent and disturbing. The emperor Nero is played as a satanic grotesque by the German star Emil Jannings. At the opening of the film, we see him lie resplendent on a couch in the grounds of his monumental, richly decorated palace. Through a monocle, he peers with sadistic amusement at a series of victims being thrown into the fountain to fatten his fish for dinner. The pornographic associations of semi-dressed women under attack by eels is brought out by striking shots underwater.

This Quo vadis was designed less as an adaptation to screen of the famous novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz and more as a remake of Enrico Guazzoni’s internationally successful epic of 1913 – a nostalgic return to pre-war filmmaking in the hope of reconquering a now lost global market. Through its long takes, distant framing, deep staging, and cast of thousands, the 1924 film also puts emphasis on mise en scène and spectacle but takes the familiar story to decadent extremes : extravagant banquets; beatings and murder; attempted rapes thwarted by a strongman; the spectacular fire; gladiatorial fighting, chariot racing , and lurid martyrdoms. Throughout all this, Quo vadis emphasises the gaze of the emperor – Nero’s pleasure and horror at looking.

The sunlight imperial palace is a character in itself that triumphs over the city until the Christians emerge from their underground catacombs. The set is the Palazzo dei festeggiamenti (‘Palace of festivities’), a pavilion designed by the architect Armando Brasini as part of a temporary Roman city built in the Villa Borghese to house the Mostra del Lazio (‘The Roman Exhibition of Agriculture, Industry and the Applied Arts’) from 1922 to 1923. The pavilion’s reuse connects the fascist present to Rome’s classical past. Yet its spatial symbolism on screen does not square with the emerging fascist rhetoric of romanità  (that is, modern Italy’s ties to ancient Rome). Civis Romanus sum, Mussolini had infamously declared on 21st April 1924. The imperial city this Quo vadis invites viewers to enter is not yet shaped to suit fascism (as it is in 1937’s Scipione l’Africano). According to the opening intertitles, it is simultaneously mistress of the world and crucible of corruption. One hundred years on, we revisit this cinescape with a mixture of repulsion and fascination.

In connection with the screening of Quo vadis, two workshops will be held on fictional and factual manifestations of ancient Rome as a cinescape of silent films - on June 25 and 26 at 17:00 to 19:00 in the DAMSlab (Aula Seminari). Further details are available in the daily schedule of Ritrovato events.

• Workshop 1 Tuesday June 25 17:00-19:00

Reconstructing Ancient Rome

This workshop takes its lead from the presence of Quo vadis (1924) in the Cinema Ritrovato programme. Aylin Atacan (University College London) will explore the visionary style of the architect Armando Brasini whose designs for the film’s sets and costumes are influenced by a rich amalgam of inspirations, including ancient Roman and Italian Baroque architecture, and the works of Giovanni Battista Piranesi. She will consider the emergence of this influential monumental style, its ideological underpinnings, and its consequences for spectators as an aesthetic that enabled them to traverse time and enter ancient Rome.

Stella Dagna (Università degli Studi di Milano) will reflect on the relationship between monumental space and the human figure in the ancient Rome of Italian silent cinema, with particular attention to female characters. The domination of space by characters such as the Empresses Agrippina and Messalina contrasts with the passivity of the films’ fictional Christian heroines. In Italian pepla, the huge public spaces of ancient Rome and the people who inhabit them also take on a strong symbolic value that changes over time. Both talks will include clips and there will be plenty of time for discussion (using both English and Italian).

• Workshop 2  Wednesday 26 June 17:00-19:00

Situating Ancient Rome in the Modern City

This workshop takes its lead from the presence of Rome moderne et antique (1904) in the Cinema Ritrovato programme. Maria Assunta Pimpinelli (Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Rome) will compare its strategies for representing the ancient sites of Rome with another Pathé actuality from 1911, Roma Antica. She will frame both films aesthetically within the tradition of the picturesque and consider how that tradition is now brought into relation with the modern Italian city. She will contrast two Cines comedies that show ancient Romans coming to life in the present.

Maria Wyke (University College London) will consider how different nations - French, Italian, British - document ancient Rome on film by comparing an elegant and equally picturesque Italian dal vero, Città eterna (1911), and a light-hearted amateur production Road to Rome (1926), in which British students of architecture clearly contrast the modernity of Liverpool with the perceived antiquity of Rome. Both talks will include clips and there will be plenty of time for discussion (using both English and Italian).

We are very grateful to Professor Paolo Noto and the University of Bologna Dipartimento delle Arti for hosting these two workshops in the university’s DAMSLab.

 

⮚ Museum of Dreamworlds Focus Group workshop

18 April 2024 BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE

 

Session 1: Travelogues, Maria Wyke (UCL)

Session 2: Fragmentary epics, Bryony Dixon (BFI) Session 3: Greek material, Pantelis Michelakis (University of Bristol)

Session 4: Database, website & proposed activities

19 April 2024 UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

Session 1: Roman martyrdom, Maria Wyke to present (on behalf of Ivo Blom)

Session 2: Pompeii & architectural interest, Aylin Atacan (UCL)

Session 3: American films, Jon Solomon (University of Illinois)

Session 4: Planning resources & next steps 

 

 

 

⮚ Public Engagement when teachers direct researchers: Optimising public engagement activities by partnering with classroom practitioners

• The Classical Association (Workshop 11): Sunday 24th March 2024
   

This panel showcased examples of public engagement which have been improved by involving classroom teachers at an early stage in project design. Project leaders explained the background to collaboration, the methods of cooperative working, and results. Panelists reflected on the knowledge exchanged and suggested top tips for both researchers and teachers who might like to become involved in similar future projects.

• Case Study 1: Thinking, playing, learning: using LEGO to develop collaborative learning and understanding of the Classical world, Matthew Fitzjohn (University of Liverpool)
• Case Study 2: How teachers and school children shaped the Sex & History project, Rebecca Langlands (University of Exeter)
• Case Study 3: Advocating Classics Education: curry, conferences and curriculum! Arlene Holmes-Henderson (Durham University)
• Case Study 4 and interactive workshop Museum of Dreams: Silent Antiquity Films in the Classroom, Maria Wyke& Aylin Atacan (University College London)

UPCOMING SCREENING

Northern silents

Ben-Hur (1925)

(programme to be announced)

Venue: Morecambe Winter Gardens