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

Cléopâtre, as the first in the Pathé studio’s Série d’Art, places the queen theatrically at the centre of a resplendent Orientalist tableau filled with pharaonic monuments, lotus leaf pillars, exotic canopies and couches, black slaves, leopard skins and feathered fans, all showcased in stencil colour. Digging into the archaeology of this Egyptian environment played out before a French camera in a cold January exposes its colonialist tropes: the dangerous queen seduces Mark Antony but is overcome by Octavian, the true embodiment of the masculine West. However, the colonial rhetoric of the film turns out to be more complicated when compared with the Pathé film Le caprice du vainqueur with which it had been paired. Here Julius Caesar, as the embodiment of the Western imperialist in Egypt, is cruel and licentious. His demand that an innocent girl dance before him results in an uprising by the Egyptian people who burn down the palace and oust him from it. Overturning the discourses of colonialism, the West is here temporarily defeated by the East. This analysis explores how these two films shape Roman Egypt according to a complex, distinctively French, brand of Orientalism played out within a late nineteenth-century French culture of Egyptomania.

At the turn of the 19th century, Pompeii’s remarkable preservation made it a focal point for exploring and visualising ancient Roman life, particularly in early Italian silent cinema. This essay examines the 1913 Pasquali Film Jone, ovvero Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei, directed by Giovanni Enrico Vidali. The film combines three-dimensional sets with authentic locations and draws extensively on archaeological evidence, nineteenth-century paintings, and literary sources to reconstruct Pompeii’s urban and domestic spaces. Outdoor scenes depict streets, the Forum, and exedra seating, highlighting public life, while interiors, including triclinia, cubicula, and atria, illustrate elite domestic practices, luxury, and social hierarchy. The Villa of Diomed and the Temple of Isis emphasise refinement and exoticism, while amphitheatre sequences, with live animals and staged crowds, underscore spectacle and civic culture. By integrating archaeological accuracy with artistic and cinematic conventions, the Pasquali film transforms Pompeii into both a historical reconstruction and a dramatic stage, allowing audiences to witness daily life, ritual, and catastrophe.

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.

In 1926, architecture students from the University of Liverpool travelled to Rome and documented their journey in the amateur film Road to Rome. On the surface, the film is a playful documentary and travelogue, blending campus humour, and visits to ancient monuments. Yet it also reflects deeper concerns within British architectural education during the interwar period, when classical training and modernist critiques were in tension. Rome, long established as the pinnacle of architectural study through the BSR Rome awards, functioned as both a symbolic and pedagogical destination, where students engaged in rigorous observation, measured drawing, and restoration of classical monuments. By situating Road to Rome alongside archival material from the British School at Rome (reports, correspondence, and scholar assessments), this essay discusses how students like George Albert Butling and Charles Anthony Minoprio navigated these expectations, and examines how notions of success, tradition, and innovation were defined within architectural education. Ultimately, Road to Rome provides both a visual record and an interpretive entry point for understanding interwar architectural training and the lived experience of students negotiating classical ideals in a changing educational landscape.

This article explores Gli Ultimi Giorni di Pompei (1926) as the culmination of silent-era cinematic representations of Pompeii, arguing that the film transforms cinematic fiction into a valuable source for understanding ancient architecture and urban life. By the 1920s, these layers converged in large-scale historical epics, enabling cinema to function as a medium of virtual time travel in which the spectator assumes the role of a beholder-traveller. Through close analysis of scenography, the article examines the reconstruction of streets, the Forum, public buildings, domestic interiors, baths, and the amphitheatre. It demonstrates how spatial organisation, architectural accuracy, decorative detail, and crowd scenes created immersive environments that animated Pompeii as a lived city rather than a static ruin. While acknowledging moments where fictional composition departs from archaeological precision, the article emphasises the film’s exceptional attention to material culture and its partial use of real locations. Ultimately, the study contends that Gli Ultimi Giorni di Pompei (1926) represents both the apex and the conclusion of silent Pompeii cinema, where spectacle, architecture, and narrative converge to produce a cinematic document of enduring archaeological and cultural significance.