11/09/2013 - Three-year project starting in January 2014 designed for Londoners to engage with film and share their own home movie records

Film London, through the London’s Screen Archives network, has received a grant of some £500,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund for ‘London: A Bigger Picture’. A three-year project starting in January 2014, it will give people in 15 of London’s Outer Boroughs a chance to see and learn about historic film of their area and encourage them to share their own home movie records of the region’s past.

The project will re-create the popular travelling outdoor cinema of the 1930’s, the ‘KinoVan’, which will tour shopping areas, festivals and schools to screen local footage and offer expert assessment of residents’ home movies. Screenings in local venues will also introduce residents to films that exist in the borough collections. Part of the initiative is the ‘Make Your Own Screen Heritage’ project that will see young people seeking out hidden films in their communities and using them to make their own films reflecting on their local area.

Adrian Wootton, Chief Executive of Film London and the British Film Commission, said, “London is as unique as it is varied, and this project will work to ensure the richness and diversity of this great city is properly documented through film, across the whole of the capital. In addition we want to engage as many Londoners as possible with archive film of their city, giving them insight and ownership of their moving image history.”