Luminous is the British Film Institute‘s biannual fundraising gala to raise money for the national film archive. It is a celebration of British film and British film talent and highlights the vital role of the BFI in preserving our film heritage.

The 2015 event was held at London’s Guildhall on the 6th October. The theme for the evening was “love” which we explored through material gathered from almost 200 film titles from the BFI‘s archive and Film Fund commissions. From this material we built an audio visual narrative through the night exploring the different stages of a relationship. Scenes of flirting, kissing, passion and loss from nearly 100 years of archive were woven together with a collection of abstract macro studies of attraction. For the drinks reception we created a special visual set drawn from newly restored black and white film prints and early film archive material from the BFI’s collections along side a special visual set for a live performance from folk-pop group The Staves.

The first ever fundraising gala in aid of the BFI was held at the 8 Northumberland Avenue Hotel in London in October 2013. Working closely with the BFI‘s head curator Robin Baker, we selected the archive’s gems and gathered a long list of contemporary examples of British talent on screen, that took us from the beginning of film making right up to the present day. The creative production for this inaugural event involved several location shoots at the BFI archive in Berkhamsted, where we documented their restoration processes and the cavernous acetate vaults which hold thousands of feet of our history on film. Over several months the many hours of footage were carefully edited down and woven into two special audio visual experiences; an immersive forest of analogue and digital projections for the drinks reception in the venue’s basement Billiard Room, and an immersive, 360 degree visual that mapped the walls of the hotels Ballroom space, featuring a specially created seven minute audio visual finale entitled “SOLILOQUY“.

2015 Event Production

Creative Directoin:Christopher Thomas Allen and Tim Cowie
Producer:Christopher Thomas Allen
Editor:Christopher Thomas Allen and Tim Cowie
Assistant editor:Cuan Roche
Camera:Christopher Thomas Allen
Animator:Dave Baum
Event Camera:Christopher Thomas Allen, Joe Catchpole and Cuan Roche
Documentation Editor:Tim Cowie

2013 Event Production