Charles Dickens and the Magic Lantern

The earliest films might not have been made until the mid 1890s but that didn't stop people in Victorian Britain enjoying all sorts of visual spectacles and wonders, created using lights, smoke, mirrors - and plenty of imagination. In this short film, 'Professor' Mervyn Heard performs a magic lantern show, while Dr John Plunkett (Exeter University) and Phil Wickham (curator of the Bill Douglas Centre) explore why the stories of Charles Dickens were adapted so often in the pre-cinema age.

With special thanks to the Bill Douglas Centre and Charles Dickens Museum.

For more on the BFI's Dickens on Screen project go to www.bfi.org.uk/dickens

All titles on the BFI Films channel are preserved in the vast collections of the BFI National Archive. To find out more about the Archive visit www.bfi.org.uk/archive-collections