'Bringing it back to the community': One week left to see long-lost Preston film archive in The Harris

A special collaboration between The Harris Museum and the British Film Institute is open for display - and only has a week left before closing its doors.

Inside the Archive is a multimedia installation of films from the BFI’s historic collection, returned for the first time to the city where they were filmed.

Among the films on display is Mitchell and Kenyon’s Edwardian Britain, which was considered lost for at least 80 years before being discovered in a cellar in 1994.

The collection of clips were taken in late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain, and show everyday people around Preston reacting to the camera - likely the first one they would have ever seen in their lives.

“The work that we do in the heritage programmes team is that we try and meet audiences where they are,” said Jemma Buckley, who works for the BFI Heritage Archives.

“The exhibition tells us a bit more about what we do at the archive, but also brings films from Preston from 1910 to 1918.

“It’s really nice to be able to bring the footage of where it was filmed and bring it back to the community, so you can see what life was like just outside The Harris over 100 years ago.”

The Inside the Archive Exhibition kicked off last week with a preview event at The Harris, in which filmmaker Juliana Kasumu showed off her own contribution to the exhibition.

‘Threads of Memory’ uses historic footage from the BFI archive to showcase the influence of West African and Caribbean migration on Black British fashion, and will now be shown around the UK.

“Fashion has been something that even as just a young child, I’ve been very unconsciously passionate about,” Juliana said. “Being raised in a Nigerian household, image is essentially everything. I was always curious about appearance and the appearance of others.

“As I progressed, I really quickly realised that that a lot of the things I was photographing and documenting was about the people around me and my community and my family.”

Threads of Memory was screened to an audience on October 22 as part of The Harris’ Black History Month schedule, shortly before Inside the Archives officially launched.

Juliana hopes that more people seeing the film around the UK will make less people see Black British fashion as its own category, and that the film will contribute to the BFI’s archives for future generations.

“[People look] at Black British fashion as this separate thing, when Black British fashion is British fashion,” she said.

“I was curious about the language that people often used when discussing Black fashion, like it’s a separate thing in some corner. But in my own lived experience of being Black, I see it everywhere. I see how it is being pulled from with these bigger fashion houses. I was like, ‘How can this be as small as it has been?’.

“What I found when I was looking through the archive was that there wasn’t much African-specific material that had been documented. I was curious to weave in that West-African specificity that was part of [fashion] history.

“I’m just hoping that people can come into this space and take away a new bit of knowledge.”

“Juliana had a huge challenge on her hands with Threads of Memory,” Jemma said. “We had in the brief about not using any other sort of footage, we had to do it completely from the archive.

“We’ve obviously moved away from film and tape, and now we’re very much in digital. That’s actually been a challenge for us at the archive, because how do you collect this overwhelming production line of moving image, and also counter this idea that once it’s online, it’s permanent? It’s a big challenge, getting people to realise that in some ways, digital is less safe.

“I think this has allowed people to become aware of the archive and the work we do. It’s very important to be able to platform not only what exists in the archive, but also introduce new voices as well.”

Inside the Archive was made in collaboration between The Harris and the BFI, with Threads of Memory also being created with the help of Creative Lancashire and the British Textile Biennial.

The exhibition is being held on The Harris’ first floor until 9pm on Thursday, November 5.