Free multimedia exhibition of historic films from the BFI National Archive, including 'Edwardian Britain', returned to Preston.
Inside the Archive is running at The Harris Museum & Art Gallery on the first floor, from 23 October to 5 November. It's a multimedia installation built from the BFI National Archive, one of the largest and most important collections of film and television in the world, and it's bringing some of that archive back to the city where it was first filmed.
At the centre of the exhibition is Edwardian Britain, a collection of films by Mitchell & Kenyon. They were thought lost for at least 80 years until they were discovered in a cellar in 1994, and they show factory workers, churchgoers, schoolchildren and sportsmen in late-Victorian and Edwardian Preston. The BFI is returning them to the city for the first time since they were made, so you'll be seeing people from Preston's own past on screen. Alongside them is Threads of Memory, a 17-minute 50-second film by Juliana Kasumu, released in 2025.
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The exhibition was made with the support of Creative Lancashire and the British Textile Biennial, and is funded by the BFI Screen Heritage Fund. It's free to enter, and it runs until 5 November, so there's only a short window to catch it. You'll find it on the first floor of The Harris (PR1 2PP) in Preston.
