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

Selling the Italian epic Cabiria (1914) to British audiences in and beyond 1914, given its colonial rescue fantasy and its spectacular celebration of a nationalist war of empire in Africa, was a significant challenge. Cabiria was purchased for British consumption in April 1914 but not shown in the UK until more than a year later. British programmes that survive in the BFI National Archive and contemporary press reports demonstrate that Cabiria was successfully screened across the country only from 1915 to 1916. Its advertising to British audiences and its consumption across this period of the Great War is situated in stark contrast to its circulation in Italy. It is now recognised that exclusive focus on national cinemas and the specific history of their film production and exhibition overlooks the dynamic, transnational character of the silent era. This essay aims to put the United Kingdom more firmly on the map of Cabiria’s cultural geography and demonstrate that, in the cultural context of cinema-going in Britian during the first world war, Cabiria becomes almost a different film from the one shown in Italy or in other Anglophone cultures and takes on quite distinct meanings.

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.