The BFI was founded in 1933 and the BFI National Archive in 1935. It is considered one of the largest collections of film and television in the world. It holds 180,000 fiction and non-fiction films and 750,000 television programmes; and is an inspiring resource for a new generation of young and talented British film makers. The collections held in the archives are a fascinating record of history, culture and the art of film making and TV production.

The team at the BFI, led by Head Curator Robin Baker and Head of Conservation Charles Fairall, are totally dedicated to finding and preserving lost film treasures, not only British film, but from all over the world. Using the latest preservation methods, the conservation team cares for a variety of obsolete formats so that future generations can enjoy the rich heritage of ours and indeed world cinema. Sadly, not all films survive. One of the most important films still missing is Alfred Hitchcock’s Mountain Eagle (1926) which is on the BFI’s ’75 most wanted’ list of lost British films. In 2012 the BFI undertook its largest restoration project to restore ‘the Hitchcock 9’, that is, Hitchcock’s surviving silent movies.

“Preserving films for the future is not just about looking after old movies,” explains Robin Baker. “One of the most rewarding aspects of our work is acquiring the best of contemporary British filmmaking and making sure that it is fully preserved. We live in a digital age, but digits are even more vulnerable than 35mm film. Persuading some filmmakers to donate copies of their work can be challenging, but we need to ensure that their films are safe 200 years from now. If we don’t get them into the archive, who knows what will survive in just a few decades.”

The BFI has also beautifully restored footage filmed in China between 1900 and 1949, making them available to new audiences. An excellent example is the hugely successful project Around China With A Movie Camera. Some of these films may have never been seen in China as it was taken by a series of French and British film makers. Much of the unseen footage was taken by amateurs and early intrepid tourists. One of the most startling and beautiful restored pieces is the film Piccadilly (1929), staring Anna May Wong. In addition, the BFI restored one of the first films of China known to have survived anywhere in the world, Nankin Road, Shanghai, shot in 1901. Not seen for 113 years, a copy of this beautiful film was presented by HRH the Duke of Cambridge to Mr. Ren Zhonglun, Chairman and President of the Shanghai Film Group Co. Ltd and to Mr. Miao Xiaotian, President of the China Film Corporation. This alliance has now led to a landmark film Co-Production Treaty between China and the UK.

When asked about the fun part of the job, Robin Baker comments: “The most exciting part of my job is being in the position to give new life to old films. In 2015 we launched a huge online project called Britain on Film, making available thousands of films that tell the stories of the people and places of Britain. To date they have been watched by over 25 million people. I find it enormously rewarding that film heritage is enjoyed by so many people who want to discover more than just the latest feature films.”

Another extremely exciting find was the discovery, in a chemists shop, of what was thought to have been lost to the nation forever: hundreds of Edwardian films of everyday life in the North and North West of England made bi pioneering filmmakers Mitchell and Kenyon. They would shoot footage of everyday life and then invite the people of the town they had filmed into a circus tent to watch the film footage. These films give us a unique insight into the past and potentially into our ancestors. The BFI Player allows anyone to watch some of the Archive’s film collection online; and thanks to the BFI’s Britain on Film project, over 7,500 films have been added over the past three years. There is an interactive map to click on towns and villages all over the UK, so you could end up watching films from where your family originally came from and God knows what you could discover!
The BFI Archives also contains a wealth of costume designs, such as those designed by Cecil Beaton for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady and his designs for Vivien Leigh in Anna Karenina. It does not stop there, with 30,000 unpublished scripts, movie posters and so much more, it is an Aladdin’s cave of treasures.

Funding is a very important part of the BFI and its National Archives. Restoring film is expensive. The cost depends on whether it is black and white, colour, the conditions it’s in… so costs can vary enormously from £10,000 for a black and white 70 minutes feature up to £200,000 plus for a 2 hour Technicolor film. So funding is truly vital. John Paul Getty Jr was the single most important benefactor in the BFI’s history. By the time of his death in 2003, his generous donations had enabled the opening of a purpose-built conservation centre, as well as securing the BFI’s headquarters in London. In recognition to his generosity, the Archive is now called the BFI John Paul Getty Jr Conservation Centre.

The BFI is a registered charity and funds its activities through a mix of Grant-in-Aid from the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and self-generated income through sponsorship and philanthropy, sales and distribution. Additionally, it gets funding from the National Lottery fund for film across the UK. Companies like IWC Schaffausen and American Express play a key role in helping the BFI finance their work, and enables it to be a leading light in film education, nurturing young and up and coming talent and giving generations to come a continual appreciation and inspirational journey of films from the past and into the future. One of the most glittering events organized to raise funds for the BFI to continue its work is the LUMINOUS gala, held by the BFI every two years, in partnership with IWC Schaffhausen.

This partnership has brought together some of the most recognised stars of stage, film, and TV. Luminous Champions include Dame Judy Dench, Lord Fellows, Tom Ford, Martin Scorsese, Sir Michael Caine, Dame Maggie Smith and the late Sir John Hurt to name but a few. This star studded event has helped raise hundreds of thousands of pounds. In 2015 they raised over 430,000 pounds net. This money financed the restoration and release of epic and powerful films such as Abel Gance’s Napoleon (1927) and Franz Osten’s Shiraz (1928). The nest LUMINOUS Gala will be held at the Guildhall on October 3rd 2017, on the eve of the Opening night of the 61st BFI London Film Festival. The evening will be hosted by Jonathan Ross with Tilda Swinton as guest speaker.

This is also the night that the second IWC Schaffhausen Filmmaker Bursary Award in association with BFI will be presented. This is an award aimed at nurturing the talent of the UK’s new and emerging film makers. Last year’s award went to Hope Dickson Leach, director of the thought-provoking film The Levelling, which premiered at the BFI Film Festival in 2016 and was released to great acclaim. This year’s shortlisted nominees are yet to be announced and the winner will be presented with the bursary at LUMINOUS by Oscar-winning Director Tom Hooper.

Meticulously restored by the BFI National Archive, Franz Osten´s Indian silent epic Shiraz (1928 ) will

screen at the Archive Gala of the 61st BFI London Festival in partnership with American Express on October 14th. This is a stunning piece of cinema, telling the love story of one on India’s most famous princesses, whose beauty inspired the Taj Mahal. The film will be performed live with a newly commissioned film score by the daughter of world famous Ravi Shankar, the multi Grammy-nominated Anoushka Shankar. In partnership with the British Council as part of the UK-India Year of Culture, the BFI plans that Shiraz can once more be shown in the beautiful country where it was originally filmed.
I’ve frequently heard the question ‘Why preserve movies?’ And my answer is always the same: how can we not preserve movies? The cinema is more than our culture – the cinema is us.

Martin Scorsese

As Official Partner of the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games, Longines was proud to welcome the Queen’s Baton to their boutique in London last Thursday August 16th.

Joining the Queens Baton Relay, Longines Ambassador of Elegance Simon Baker, along with Longines Vice President of Marketing Juan-Carlos Capelli, Louise Martin, President of the Commonwealth Games Federation and Ian Metcalfe, Chairman of Commonwealth Games England took part in the relay, bearing the baton which carries a message to the athletes from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The baton travels through all the nations of the Commonwealth until the beginning of the Games in April 2018. The 2018 Commonwealth Games will be held on Australia’s beautiful Gold Coast from 4th to 15th April 2018, a place Simon Baker is more than familiar with.

The Queen’s Baton Relay began its journey in Buckingham Palace in March 1st and is now travelling through the 70 nations or territories of the Commonwealth, covering 230,000 km. The message it carries to the athletes from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will be read out at the Opening Ceremony of the Games.

Longines will work as Official Partner for timing, scoring and results for the 2018 Commonwealth Games and will be known as the Official Timekeeper of this large multi-sport event, as well as the Partner of Athletics (Track & Field), Gymnastics, Rugby Sevens and Table Tennis.

New York – Christie’s announces The Collection of Paul F. Walter will be auctioned across two days of live auctions on September 26-27 with a simultaneous online auction September 21-28. Paul Walter was known as a polymath and scholar, and through collecting and patronage – including leadership roles at MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art among others – he became one of New York’s most respected connoisseurs.

Comprised of 560 lots across a multitude of disciplines including Post-War & Contemporary art, photographs, prints, sculpture, English furniture and decorative art, and Indian Art – the items come from Walter’s Manhattan apartment and his Sag Harbor home. Estimates range from $1,000 to $1,200,000 and the whole collection is expected to realize in excess of $4.5 million total.
Laura Paulson, Vice Chairman of the Christie’s Americas Advisory Board, comments:

“What united Paul’s aesthetic was his true passion for collecting – and it was phenomenal. He would create highly personal environments with great attention to detail and beauty, and this translated into everything he brought into his life.”

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is best known for his declaration that “God is dead”. These words appear in his allegorical master- piece Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a book in which he warned that even though many people no longer believed in Christianity, our moral system was still underpinned by moribund Christian notions of “good” and “evil”. It was thus imperative that we should rethink our values. Nietzsche foresaw a crisis in civilisation as the foundations of a moral system based on Christianity was collapsing. He correctly predicted that after him “there will be wars the like of which have never been seen on earth before”.

Nietzsche believed that life was inevitably about struggle and suffering. But he proposed that instead of trying to diminish pain and unhappiness, or try to avoid it, we should instead embrace strife and woe in order to overcome it. His idealised person, his Übermensch, or “Superman”, is a radical individualist who triumphs over obstacles and difficulties, who liberates himself or herself from religious dogma and secular “herd” mentalities, and who eternally strives to become a better and higher version of themselves. “What does not kill me makes me stronger” is one of his most enduring sayings, as his maxim: “Live Dangerously!” Get Over Yourself takes Nietzsche’s philosophy to understand our society, and takes our society to explain his philosophy. In our age of identity politics, therapy culture, safe spaces, religious fundamentalism, virtue signalling, Twitterstorms, public emoting, dumbing down, digital addiction and  the politics of envy, the book introduces Nietzsche’s philosophy by putting the man in our shoes.

The 21st century has seen the dawn of
the new digital age of hyper-connectivity, censorship on campuses, religious funda- mentalism and political populism against “the elites”. It’s an age in which Nietzsche’s ideas are acutely relevant. He was a radical individualist who scorned the base thinking of groups, who spurned resentment and ideologies. If Nietzsche railed against the “herd” mentality, lamenting the expansion of democracy in his own times, he would today be aghast at the incessant chatter of social media today. “O you poor devils in the great cities of the world, you gifted young men tormented by ambition who consider it your duty to pass some comment on everything that happens”, he wrote in 1881.

In an age of Twitterstorms and trolling,
his words on the dangers of mob-rule are pertinent. He had warned of the “lustful greed, bitter envy, sour vindictiveness” that characterised “mob pride”. He would have agreed that we needed “digital detox”, esteeming as he did quiet and solitude.

“Live dangerously” is a declaration that students of today with their “safe spaces” and books with “trigger warnings” would do well to take heed. Nietzsche wrote about the aggressive morality of self- proclaimed victims, which we should bear in mind when people complain about being “offended” and their feelings being “hurt”, and demand censorship as recompense.

Author: Julia Pasarón

Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) is widely regarded as one of Japan’s most famous and influential artists. He produced works of astonishing quality right up until his death at the age of 90.

“From the age of six, I had a penchant for copying the form of things, and from about fifty, my pictures were frequently published; but until the age of seventy, nothing I drew was worthy of notice.”

Hokusai’s postscript to One Hundred Views of Mt Fuji, vol. 1, 1834.

Born in Edo (present-day Tokyo), Hokusai is best known for his woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mt Fuji (c.1831) which includes the internationally renown The Great Wave off Kanagawa. It was this series, specifically The Great Wave print and Fine Wind, Clear Morning, that secured Hokusai’s fame both in Japan and overseas.

This exhibition leads the visitor on an artistic journey through the last 30 years of Hokusai’s life – a time when he produced some of his most memorable masterpieces. Living in Edo with his daughter artist Ōi, Hokusai painted ceaselessly right up to his death.

Throughout the exhibition, outstanding examples of Hokusai’s work show the artist’s creative breadth and depth. A selection of superb landscapes is introduced with the iconic Great Wave; intimate domestic scenes capture fleeting moments in private lives; exquisite depictions of flora and fauna display an innate skill in representing the natural world. The artist’s imagination is given full rein in the portrayal of supernatural creatures such as ghosts and deities. All of these works give us an insight into Hokusai’s personal beliefs, spiritual and artistic quest of his later years.

The exhibition includes prints, paintings and illustrated books, many of which are on loan from Japan, Europe, and the USA. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see these extraordinary works together.

HOKUSAI: Beyond the Great Wave
British Museum
Until August 13th

Supported by the Mitsubishi Corporation

The Manufacture Girard-Perregaux has chosen to associate with the seventh edition of the famous Only Watch auction dedicated to research on neuromuscular diseases. Held under the high patronage of His Serene Highness Prince Albert II of Monaco, Only Watch is a major charity auction event for which Girard-Perregaux has created a one-of-a-kind interpretation of the famous Laureato.The Manufacture Girard-Perregaux has chosen to associate with the seventh edition of the famous Only Watch auction dedicated to research on neuromuscular diseases. Held under the high patronage of His Serene Highness Prince Albert II of Monaco, Only Watch is a major charity auction event for which Girard-Perregaux has created a one-of-a-kind interpretation of the famous Laureato.

An iconic model born in the 1970s, the Laureato has now been revived in the form of an extremely coherent collection presented at the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie in January 2017. The formidable success encountered by this reinterpreted line has confirmed the aptness of its design as well as the avant-garde nature of the Girard-Perregaux Manufacture.
Based on the natural aura of this inspired and timeless design, as well as its ability to embody values cherished as much by the up-and-coming generation as by this Maison founded in 1791, the company management has chosen to donate a strictly one-of-a-kind version of the Laureato to ONLY WATCH 2017.

The art of daring to be uniqueThe Laureato exclusively offered for bidding at ONLY WATCH, representing an extrapolation of a line of contemporary products with a powerful identity, is a distinctive and ideally proportioned watch. Ensuring a pleasant feel on the wrist with its substantial 42 mm diameter and a thickness of just 10.16 mm, this model loyal to the original spirit of its watchmaking legend is attired on this occasion in a case made of bronze – a noble, artistic and firmly on-trend material – teamed with a chocolate brown alligator leather strap.

This marvellously balanced timepiece with its contemporary casual chic style, thus issued in a one-off edition, is destined to epitomise the generosity of a true aesthete. Exuding an innate power stemming from noble refinement, this model draws its strength from the values that shape the creations bearing the Girard-Perregaux. Unique in terms of its destination, it embodies through its sporting and elegant lines the very essence of the standards of excellence upheld by the Manufacture that has brought it to life.

Laureato Only Watch 2017 Special Edition
Technical Specifications
Case Material: bronzeDiameter: 42 mmThickness: 10.88 mmGlass: glare-proofed sapphire crystalCase-back: sapphire, transferred Only Watch inscriptionDial: slate greyHands: baton-type, enhanced with luminescent substance Water Resistance: 30 metres (3 ATM, 3 bar)
MovementReference: GP01800-0008, mechanical self-windingDiameter: 30 mm (13¼’’’)  Thickness: 3.97 mmFrequency: 28 800 vph. (4 Hz)Number of components: 191Jewels: 28Power reserve: 54 hoursFunctions: hours, minutes, sweep-seconds hand, date StrapLeather strap: chocolate brown alligator leather with topstitchingClasp: titanium triple folding clasp
Reference: 81010-35-1734BBBA

About Girard-Perregaux Girard-Perregaux is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer that traces its origins to 1791. The history of the Brand is marked by legendary watches that combine sharp design with innovative artisanship such as the renowned Tourbillon with Three Gold Bridges, presented by Constant Girard-Perregaux in 1889 at the Paris Universal Exhibition, where it was awarded a gold medal.

With more than 90 registered patents, Girard-Perregaux is devoted to the creation of state-of-the-art Haute Horlogerie and is one of the few watchmakers to unite all the skills of design and manufacture under the same roof — including the forging of the “heart” of the watch, the movement. In 2013, Girard-Perregaux received numerous prizes for its groundbreaking Constant Escapement L.M. timepiece, including the most prestigious one: The Aiguille d’Or of the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève.Girard-Perregaux is part of the Kering Group, a world leader in apparel and accessories, which develops an ensemble of powerful Luxury and Sport & Lifestyle brands.

www.girard-perregaux.com

One of the most unique experiences that London has to offer in the summer time is Masterpiece, where the finest antiquities, ancient and contemporary art, jewellery and design from all over the world come together under one roof.

The main space feels grand and spacious, the nude colour shades decor and flower arrangements give a serene, elegant and peaceful atmosphere. I swooned around, feeling inspired and at times touched by the exquisite artefacts on display. It’s pure joy to zig zag from one beautiful curated stand to another. This year I visited the fair 3 times and in each of them I discovered a new gem. That is what I love the most, learning about a new gallery or brand I have never heard of. This year, there was a large-scale neon fluorescent installation which I found hypnotising: the Impenetrable Room by the renowned artist Iván Navarro. Another work of art that took my breath away was Rossetti’s Proserpine (1878), by brought to Masterpiece by Agnews.

The fair showcased some of the world’s foremost dealers and specialists with exhibitors including: Robin Katz Fine Art, Offer Waterman & Co, Perrin Fine Art, Galerie G. Sarti, Tomasso Brothers Fine Art, Richard Green, Colnaghi, Van Cleef & Arpels, David Aaron, Stoppenbach & Delestre, Dickinson, Wallace Chan, Thomas Gibson Fine Art, Axel Vervoordt, Agnew’s, Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert, Rupert Wace Ancient Art, Hemmerle, New Art Centre, Osborne Samuel, Tornabuoni, Steinitz and Robilant + Voena, amongst others.

After a long tour, the only thing left to do is visit one of the in-house restaurants; a sip of Perrier-Jouët and a bite at Scott’s or Caprice.  With so much beauty around, one needs a little break, or two. I always think of the hard work that goes on backstage, not only for the organisers but for the exhibitors too; months of meticulous planning, dealing with complicated logistical export and import issues to get their most precious and valuable stock to and from the fair, the large manpower needed, the long hours … not to mention the huge costs involved. It’s a big investment to make for any brand, and all for one week worth of exposure.

The fair attracts a global UHNW audience, international institutions, private collectors, buyers, connoisseurs, the curious, the media and the famous. It is and an incredible opportunity for a business to showcase what they do best to a desirable target audience.  If you start thinking about the astronomical rents in key areas for fine goods and arts such as Bond Street, where galleries are quiet and empty for the most part of the year, then suddenly it starts making sense. The fair is busy every day, with a constant flow of visitors coming through the stands. Moreover,  the fair is open until 9 pm during weekdays and 7 pm at weekends, something that sadly often goes amiss elsewhere in the capital.

However, selling is not the only focus. The exhibitors understand the value of making you a fan of what they do and so, they share with visitors brand talks, tales about their founders, anecdotes from he past and passionate descriptions of their finest pieces. Whether you are visiting a large or a small gallery, you can count on an excellent customer journey and service. It is very pleasing to have found out that on closing day, Masterpiece confirmed they drew a record of 44,000 visitors and declared strong sales across all disciplines.

www.masterpiecefair.com