BFI’s Bryony Dixon honoured with Jean Mitry Award by Pordenone Silent Film Festival

Bryony Dixon was one of two recipients, alongside Mark Paul Meyer, Eye Filmmuseum’s retiring senior curator, of the prestigious Jean Mitry Award at the recent Pordenone Silent Film Festival. Honoured for her achievements in curating, preserving and programming silent film and her significant contribution to silent film appreciation. Dixon is the latest in a long line of silent film luminaries who have been recognised, with previous Jean Mitry Award recipients including major figures such as Kevin Brownlow, Harold Brown, Eileen Bowser, David Francis and Paul Spehr, Pearl Bowser, Elaine Burrows, Ronald Grant and Martin Humphries.

In 1986, four years after the festival was founded, the Pordenone Silent Film Festival introduced the Jean Mitry Award. Initially sponsored by the Province of Pordenone and subsequently by the Fondazione Friuli, the award remembers one of the most important film historians of the twentieth century, a founder of the Cinémathèque Française, and the first Chairman of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. The award celebrates figures and institutions who have distinguished themselves in the field of conservation and study of silent-film history.

At a ceremony on Friday, 11 October Bryony was introduced by Pordenone Silent Film Festival Director Jay Weissberg, and presented with her award by Bruno Malattia, vice president of the Fondazione Friuli.

Marking this special occasion, Arike Oke, Exec Director of Knowledge, Learning and Collections said: “Bryony Dixon is one of the BFI National Archive’s stars. Her depth of knowledge is matched only by her capacity for sharing that knowledge of, and passion for, silent cinema, its players, creators and its social context. Bryony is a worthy recipient of this most prestigious award, and I am so pleased that her body of work, and contributions to the field, have been recognised.”

Jay Weissberg, Pordenone Silent Film Festival Director, adds: “Few names generate an enthusiastic consensus as quickly as Bryony’s, which meant that the only question in people’s minds when giving her this year’s Jean Mitry Award was, “what took so long?” I’ve been in awe of her brilliance for twenty years, relishing the wit and insight she brings to conserving and promoting British silent cinema. Without her unflagging dedication, we’d all be diminished.”

Dixon said: “Working at the BFI National Archive with our silent film collection is a great privilege, presenting films from the archive at the Giornate del Cinema Muto at Pordenone over the years, an absolute pleasure. To then be recognised for it with the Jean Mitry Award, and in such exalted company, is truly overwhelming.”

One of the world’s leading curators of early film, Dixon is a curator at the BFI National Archive, responsible for silent film in the National film collection. She has researched and written on many aspects of early and silent film and programmed for a variety of film festivals and events worldwide.

She is the author of BFI Screen Stories: The Story of Victorian Film (2023), BFI Screen Guide: 100 Silent Films (2011) and has written numerous articles and book chapters on silent cinema and film archiving for publications worldwide. She is a regular contributor to Sight and Sound and the BFI’s DVD BluRay publications. She has been lead curator on a number of the BFI’s film restorations, including Underground (1928), Shooting Stars (1927), The Great White Silence (1924), South (1919), the Silent Hitchcock project, restoring all nine surviving Hitchcock silent films, and most recently on Silent Sherlock, a major BFI restoration project to restore all 45 2-reeler Sherlock Holmes Series episodes and 2 features produced by Stoll Pictures in the 1920s, starring Eille Norwood as the Great Detective.

After holding research and programming positions at the BFI National Archive in London, where she has worked since 1992, she has been curator in charge of silent film collections since 2005 and programmes the monthly Silent Cinema strand at BFI Southbank since 2018.

Since 1998 she has also been co-director (with Laraine Porter) of the British Silent Film Festival — a peripatetic festival (Nottingham, London, Leicester) dedicated to screening British silent films with a strong research element, now complemented by the British Silent Film Symposium with Kings College, University of London.