BFI's Restoration Of The Great White SIlence Wins Focal Award

The BFI National Archive was awarded Best Archive Restoration Title at the Focal International Awards 2011 for the restoration of The Great White Silence (Herbert Ponting, 1924), which follows Captain Scott's ill-fated Antarctic expedition.
The Best Archival Film Project was awarded to The Chaplin Keystone Project, a venture in which the BFI National Archive partnered with Lobster Films and the Cineteca di Bologna in a truly international collaboration.
One of the most ambitious of recent international archival collaborations, the Keystone project was an eight-year hunt to track down and restore the films that Charles Chaplin made at Keystone Studios during 1914. The 34 surviving films resulting from this remarkable endeavour were released by the BFI in a four-disc DVD box set, Chaplin at Keystone, in December 2010.
The news comes with the launch of a new book from BFI's curator of silent film and curator on both winning projects, Bryony Dixon. Entitled 100 Silent Films, this dedicated introduction to Silent Films will be published by BFI/Palgrave on June 24 2011.
Heather Stewart, Cultural Programme Director for the BFI, said: "Winning two award last night is a hugely important vote of confidence from Focal in the work that the BFI National Archive continues to carry out and really helps to position and underline our role both in the UK and internationally."
(KMcA)