Every now and again a project comes along that really lights up the office and the BFI’s latest ‘Britain on Film’ online collection, Coast and Sea has done just that. With 21 projects and 190 screenings between May and October in some of the most beautiful coastal areas across the UK, working on this has been like a summer holiday.
Unlocking film and TV history for new audiences, ‘Britain on Film’ is a major digitisation project drawn from the BFI National Archive, Regional and National Archives and rights holders from across the UK, revealing new and unseen stories of our lives through the history of film. The BFI Film Audience Networks summer programme of screenings and events has allowed audiences to discover, explore and engage with the UK’s diverse coastline and local stories in their area.
Innovative events like Celluloid Sail; a stunning tall ship, transformed into an outdoor cinema where audiences can climb aboard and explore secret spaces in the bowels of the boat and discover footage about life at sea as light and projection will animate the ship’s sails have made this into a project like no other and allowed us to gain varied features on BBC News and the Irish News amongst others.
Another flagship event comes from STUDIOCANAL; the premiere of a new restoration of Leslie Norman’s classic wartime epic Dunkirk (1958) at Screening on the Beaches on the very beaches of Camber Sands on the South Coast of England where the film was shot later this month. Again, the historical nature of this event allowed us to target different sectors of the press and we have secured coverage in publications such Classic Boat and SAGA.
Scotland played host to another project highlight with the 80th anniversary screening of Michael Powell’s The Edge Of The World at the University of Edinburgh’s remarkable FloWave Ocean Energy Research Facility – a unique circular wave tank.
We have absolutely loved telling people about these amazing events and helping to grow the target audience on a national level but the part of the project that we have particularly enjoyed is working closely with all of the project leads, establishing the communications support that they need and providing them with bespoke resource packages that have enabled them to move forward independently and gain their own regional coverage; it’s been an extremely satisfying experience.
This is project that resonates with us as a team here at Sundae and represents everything we stand for as a company. We all love summer holidays and it’s even better when you get to go on one at work.
