THE screen flickers with sooty black and chalky images that are familiar and yet belong to an age as distant as the Aztecs.

The film illustrates familiar places in Liverpool city centre: there's St George's Hall and Lime Street station. Yet this is 1897, with the British Empire and its second city in full pomp.

These buildings and streets are peopled by a race very different to that which swirls around these same buildings today.

What we see on the screen is a glimpse of a fascinating two-year project being launched by the University of Liverpool. It seems so obvious. Get together all the moving images of Liverpool - modern and historical - and put them together in one big, publicly accessible archive.

Not only has this not been done before in Liverpool, but it's not been attempted anywhere else. Such is the excitement that postgraduate applicants from around Europe are vying for the chance to work as the two researchers on the City in Film project.

There is already an historical international dimension. In 1897 the Lumiere Brothers, the world renowned pioneering French film makers, photographed moving picture scenes in Liverpool.

Incredibly, these included the first panning shot ever filmed. This was taken from the innovative, electrically-powered Liverpool Overhead Railway, then just three years old, thereby combining two of the latest technologies.

In February of the same year the city hosted its first public cinema event, just two years after the first recorded showing in Paris. The Lumiere Brothers just happened to be in Liverpool, en route to New York, but found the city worthy of their talents - hence the priceless film footage they shot.

Other archive footage of Liverpool's changing landscape located so far by the project encompasses a 1923 Cunard Line film promoting the joys of emigrating to Canada, the Blitz, US Army and Air Force dance bands appearing at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall in 1944 and the city in the 1960s, including its music scene and the Cavern Club.

Crucially, City in Film will explore the relationship between the city's architecture and the moving image, which is how funding for the project was secured.

It aims to create an online database of Liverpool films for cinema-goers, producers and researchers. The public will be able to view a sample of these treasures at a screening on Thursday.

The project leaders are Dr Julia Hallam, from Liverpool University's School of Politics and Communication Studies, and Prof Robert Kronenburg, from the School of Architecture.

Included among the footage collected is material by other film pioneers such as Mitchell and Kenyon in the late 19th and early 20th century, and the Alexander Archive (both archives restored by the BBC), besides a range of amateur and independent films up to the present day.

Dr Hallam said: "Some of the 19th century footage we have looked at reflects an age when films were developed to showcase new technology.

"The Lumiere Brothers are an excellent example of this. In effect, they used the Overhead Railway coach as a giant 'dolley', a moving platform for the camera. "We have 1930s Overhead

Railway film that makes Liverpool look like Chicago. Later footage, from 1970s local film and video workshop movements in the 1970s covers neighbourhood action and community groups.

"Particularly poignant to the city's forthcoming 800th birthday celebrations, is amateur footage of people by the Mersey in 1907 celebrating Liverpool's 700th year with a huge pageant of floats and revellers dressed to represent events in the city's history."

One wonders if the city has the skills to replicate anything like the spectacle of these events for 2007 and 2008.

Prof Kronenburg says: "Architecturally, we will look at how Liverpool's urban space was used. The span is fantastic. By having the Lumiere Brothers footage we start at the beginning

of moving film. Then there's a wealth of material covering everything from the Blitz to Liverpool Football Club's Champion's League winning celebrations.

"Film showing Liverpool before the Royal Liver, Cunard and Port of Liverpool Buildings is very interesting as the landscape is largely uncontained. "Instead it is the water and large ships that provide a point of focus, not huge landmark buildings.

"The atmosphere of the city was hugely altered when the Three Graces were erected, giving shape to the water front. Yet these are 20th century buildings that aren't even a century old.

"Other films reflect just how much the urban landscape was used. This is pedestrian power in action. In one still frame we see horses and carts, people on foot, cars and bikes occupying every inch of the space given to them in a variety of ways.

"Film is a fantastic way of capturing these moments, allowing us to examine closely how the city was used and how the buildings shaped this activity."

Dr Hallam says: "I'd always wanted to undertake this project, but bidding for research money it was very difficult, as the city is well represented on film.

"When Robert Kronenburg contacted me from architecture, it changed the angle on approaching the funding agencies.

"When you talk about how the city has been projected through its buildings the project is far more innovative, rather than just

discussing abstractly why Liverpool had a bad press in the 1980s. "We have a much wider brief to look at the image and character of the city and how this was built into its development."

Film is the best way of looking at a city. It is the most complete experience a person ever gets of an architectural environment without being there, believes Dr Hallam.

"Streets change or disappear, or you have streets that look exactly the same, but the conditions and the way in which they're used can be completely different to now," says Dr Hallam.

"You look at the Lumiere's Dockland pan, which is so wonderful. They took the film from the Liverpool Overhead Railway and it shows every dock filled with sailing ships up to Garston.

"That sense of the 19th century city is very apparent. All the streets come right down to the dock-front, such as Princes Dock. There is a real sense of the city being the docks, not being cut-off from the waterfront as it is today by the Strand expressway."

The project will be exploring the shift away from the city's dock culture, which began with the Overhead Railway's demolition in the late 1950s.

Prof Robert Kronenburg says: "One of the things we're trying to do is look at architecture to show the shape and form of the city and how it is used. We get a far stronger sense of how people are using the space.

"The project also makes a contribution to the future, by showing the way this city and others are used by people and the way we can make them better. Although this is specifically about Liverpool, it sets an example to the rest of the world. No other study like this has been done before."

Dr Hallam adds: "We've limited ourselves to just documentary films and footage at present because there are so many feature films that use Liverpool as a location. With feature films included the projects grow enormously and it depends on how much time we've got.

"We know there are films scattered all over the place and we want to bring the information together. I think that anyone who experiences the project will realise what a fantastic cultural landmark this is for Liverpool."

* The North West Film Archive website is at


The ideal location for international backdrops >>>

The ideal location for international backdrops>

LIVERPOOL'S versatility as a film location has allowed it to stand in for a wide range of locations, including Chicago, Dublin, London, New York, Moscow and Paris.

This has been in a wide range of feature fiction films including Chariots of Fire, The Hunt for Red October and In the Name of the Father, plus television dramas, such as The Forsythe Saga, The Hound of the Baskervilles and David Copperfield.

Public screenings, seminars and lectures of Liverpool archive footage will be announced throughout the year at

The North West Film Archive at Manchester Metropolitan University holds an extensive collection of moving image material documenting life in the

North West of England. The Archive has been funded by North West Vision to work in Merseyside on a survey to establish how much material is at risk in the county, and to make recommendations for its preservation and accessibility.

Previously, an argument about budgets between North West Film Archive and Liverpool City Council meant that

the archive stopped collecting films from the Merseyside area from the early 1980s.

Dr Hallam says: "These films just stayed on shelves in libraries, universities, transport depots, factories and houses. In the past year the NWFA gathered around 5,000 films together from Merseyside.

* LIVERPOOL'S City in Film project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, will be officially launched at a public screening of rare film footage, presented by North West Film Archive, on Thursday, March 2, at 7pm, at the School of Architecture's Budden Theatre, on the corner of Abercromby Square.

Free tickets are available, tel: 0151 794 2888; or email:

A wealth of amateur history >>>

A wealth of amateur history>

THAT so much rare and historical film footage about Merseyside has survived is thanks to the like of enthusiasts like Angus Tilston.

Dr Julia Hallam says: "Angus is key to this project and has already gathered together a lot of material which we can utilitise, as he has some 700 films in his own archive.

"There were two amateur cinema clubs from the late 1950s into the 1970s when the amateur cine movement was big on Merseyside, and one was called,

I think, the Swan Cine Club. There must be so much local interest film about Liverpool hidden away in people's homes. We're very keen for anyone who believes they have cine footage or any other kind of moving film to get in touch with me to help build up the archive."

If you have any film shot before up until today in Liverpool and would interested in submitting it to the project, please contact Dr Julia Hallam on tel: 0151 794 2888. The project website is: