In this introductory essay, we explain the layout and features of the Museum of Dreamworlds website, in order that you can see how to navigate it and make it useful for you. We explain the methods behind our inquiries and survey some of our research findings. We also indicate here some of our project’s other activities and future resources that we will be creating until and beyond the end point of the project in November 2027. We will be developing and extending this introduction as we continue to analyse the antiquity films in the BFI. At this stage, the website is also a work in progress so we would greatly welcome any questions you may have as well as suggestions for corrections, clarifications, additions or improvements, or notification of any malfunctions. We can be reached at: museumofdreamworlducl@gmail.com

Based on ancient sources like Menander and Ovid, in the nineteenth century a heterosexual biography and iconography for the celebrated ancient Greek poetess Sappho emerged in which she fell desperately in love with a handsome fisherman and committed suicide by jumping off a cliff when rejected by him. The Sappho of antiquity who sings of erotic desire within an intimate world of women is replaced by a Sappho more suited to constrained nineteenth-century sensibilities in which she loses her poetic authority and her homoerotic desire. The early Italian film Saffo (Pineschi, 1909) treads in the footsteps of this nineteenth-century convention, but adds an extra dimension by alternating its painted backdrops for interiors with shots for its exteriors of real, albeit often neoclassical, locations, such as the park of Villa Borghese in Rome. This strategy of authenticating the classical by means of the neo-classical has consequences for how, in the film, ancient time and space merge with the modern.

The Slave of Phidias (1917) creates a dialogue between antiquity and early cinema, reimagining the world of the Greek sculptor Phidias. Known for works like the Athena Parthenos and the Zeus at Olympia, Phidias represents ideals of harmony and divine beauty, which the film echoes through its fictionalised portrayal of his workshop and the muse figure Callyce. While informed by archaeological finds, the narrative blends history with creative interpretation. Director Léonce Perret reinforces this classical atmosphere through careful composition, lighting, and use of landscape, with Villa Maryland standing in for ancient Greece. By combining sculpture, architecture, and cinema, the film connects ancient artistic ideals with modern visual storytelling, highlighting the lasting appeal of beauty and creative inspiration.