The BFI London Film Festival has announced this year’s Archive Gala. It is the world premiere of a new BFI National Archive restoration of Arthur Robison’s The Informer from 1929. The Archive Gala will take place at BFI Southbank on Friday 14 October, and will feature a specially commissioned live score by Irish composer Garth Knox with a six piece ensemble.
This rare silent adaptation of Liam O’Flaherty’s famous novel is set among Dublin revolutionaries in the early days of the newly independent Irish Free State, formed in 1922. The new restoration by the BFI will offer a chance to see this powerful and important film in its silent form with newly reinstated atmospheric, lavender tinting. BFI National Archive curator, Bryony Dixon has described it as “one of the finest films produced in a British studio in the 1920s”.
Robin Baker, Head Curator, BFI National Archive says: “The BFI National Archive is delighted to have restored another major British feature film from the silent period and to be premiering it at the BFI London Film Festival. The quality of the restoration is extraordinary, despite some huge challenges that we had to overcome. The noirish cinematography looks spectacular once again, especially the lustrous quality of the inky, velvety shadows achieved by the restoration team.”
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