Road to Restoration

2005
Sound
20m

How the magnificent Mitchell & Kenyon collection was resurrected, thanks to the dedication and skill of the BFI National Archive.

In 1994, hundreds of rolls of film, shot in the earliest years of the 20th century by filmmaking partnership Mitchell and Kenyon, were discovered in a Blackburn basement. This revealing documentary takes you inside the BFI National Archive, throwing light on the epic endeavour to restore this magical footage and return to us an astonishing record of our late-Victorian and Edwardian ancestors.

Featurette about the restoration of the Mitchell & Kenyon collection. Shows the special machinery developed and used to handle the damaged negatives.

Mitchell & Kenyon's Edwardian Britain

A miraculous journey around Britain at the dawn of the 20th Century, courtesy of filmmakers Mitchell and Kenyon.

Welcome to a lost world. These amazing films, lost for at least 80 years, offer something close to time travel. Miraculously discovered in a Blackburn basement in 1994, the films give us stunning images of ordinary life in late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

The films' rediscovery rewrote the story of early film. Blackburn-based duo Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon, we now know, belonged to a thriving local, non-fiction filmmaking scene. Touring northern and central England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, they made films for fairground operators and other showmen to screen to paying audiences, offering punters the chance to 'see yourself as others see you'. Factory workers, churchgoers and schoolchildren, sportsmen and spectators - these relaxed Edwardians laugh, grin and point at the camera. Film brings them all back to life, as no painting or photograph ever could.

Digitisation of this collection was funded by The National Lottery.