Film archive chronicling region receives £300,000

More than £300,000 has been put towards preserving a film collection that documents more than 130 years of life across the East of England.

The National Lottery has funded a project worth £374,697 to help the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the East Anglian Film Archive (EAFA) prepare to move the collection to a new building on the university's campus.

The EAFA is the UK's first regional film archive and has documented the area's social and cultural history.

Prof Catherine Richardson, the pro vice-chancellor of arts and humanities at UEA, said the funding enabled the collection to be available to wider audiences, adding: "There are some real hidden gems in there."

The British Film Institute (BFI) Screen Heritage Fund awarded National Lottery Good Cause funding for the project.

The collection made headlines in 2003 when the EAFA put together a selection of films to celebrate the early days of cinema in the region.

The film was called Let's Wait and See the Pictures, and gave local film fans the experience of the early days of cinema by replicating what a night out looked like for people in the East of England in the early 1900s.

A spokesperson for the university said the relocation of the archives represents a "landmark moment" for the campus and has opened up new opportunities for collaboration, learning and public engagement.

Funding will also be used to digitalise vulnerable videotape materials and improve the collection's management systems.

Nick Warr, the director of EAFA, said: "At its heart, the East Anglian Film Archive is an archive of creativity, and this support from the BFI for our move back to UEA campus will help us continue to develop creative and innovative ways of making the archive more accessible and opening up participation in our work."

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