In October 2025, London becomes more than a festival city — it becomes a vital crossroads of past and future for cinema. The 69th BFI London Film Festival (8–19 October) is not just premiering the latest titles; it’s also a moment when the craft of celluloid, restoration, and analogue revival reclaims its place in the limelight.
For organizations like CPC London, Black Hangar Studios, and ORWO Studios, this year’s festival offers more than screenings: it’s a cultural moment that underscores why sound stages, film labs, and rejuvenated film stock matter.
Film-on-Film: the show within the show
One of the festival’s most compelling sub-programmes is BFI’s “Film on Film Festival”, a curated mini-festival dedicated to screenings from original film prints. In 2025, it returns to BFI Southbank and BFI IMAX with 35 mm and 70 mm treasures — among them a rare original 1977 print of Star Wars, and classic 70 mm prints of Amadeus and Empire of the Sun. (BFI)
These screenings are not nostalgia trips: they connect audiences with the tactile, imperfect, resonant qualities only achievable through projection from real film stock. Scratches, grain, and halation become part of the experience — artifacts of a medium lived through time.
For ORWO Studios, which supports a new generation of film stock, and for Black Hangar Studios, hosting shoots that can exploit texture, this is validation: audiences still crave—and respond to—original materials.
Restoration & preservation on the festival agenda
The 2025 festival includes focused events on film preservation and heritage. On 18 October, the Film Heritage Foundation joins forces with BFI to present a Film Preservation session at BFI Southbank. (Instagram) This builds on the festival’s long interest in the mechanics of the moving image, not just its stories.
Restored prints and archival screenings are woven into the programme — acting as live statements of care for cinema’s lineage. These are the moments when labs and scanning houses come into focus: negotiation of frame lines, density, color fidelity, and the tension between “fixing” and preserving.
CPC London, with its expertise in processing, scanning, and restoration, is uniquely grounded in this tension. The festival’s heritage strand reminds us that every newly premiered film rests upon a foundation of past frames, remastering, and archival advocacy.
New films, old materials — and the hybrid balance
Though many festival titles are shot digitally, the undercurrents of analogue still run deep. This year’s Opening Gala belongs to Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, the latest Rian Johnson entry, while the Cunard Gala showcases the UK premiere of Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly. (Screen Daily)
Even when digital dominates principal photography, the visual texture of film still exerts influence — whether through film-out finishing, grain overlay, or hybrid capture workflows. For filmmakers who prefer the tonal irregularities of celluloid, planning involves not just the camera but also the downstream lab, colour pipeline, and scan fidelity.
Black Hangar Studios, as a facility hosting location and stage work, becomes part of that pipeline when filming is planned — particularly for directors and cinematographers insisting on film workflows.
Emerging voices and works-in-progress… with analogue potential
The festival’s LFF Works-in-Progress Showcase highlights new feature films in development. One of them, Out There (a Welsh sci-fi project featuring Michael Sheen), is among eight selected for this year. (Screen Daily) These projects represent the next wave of cinema — and it's here where labs, film stock suppliers, and studios can proactively shape visions before they are locked into digital-only formats.
Simultaneously, the BFI NETWORK@LFF programme supports 15 emerging filmmakers (writers, directors, producers) who bring fresh perspectives to London’s festival footprint. (British Cinematographer) These voices often mix experimental aesthetics and hybrid media — fertile ground for film-based experiments.
When a young director asks, “Could we do a sequence on 35 mm?” the presence of labs like CPC London, co-operative campuses like ORWO Studios, and sound stages like Black Hangar Studios can convert that possibility into a practical reality.
Why the festival moment matters for labs, studios, and film revival
- Visibility for analogue craft: Having original film prints on screen highlights that celluloid isn’t a museum piece but an expressive choice. The Film on Film Festival shows that audiences engage when the medium speaks for itself.
- Network and cross-pollination: Festival panels, conservation talks, and works-in-progress sessions supply direct access to filmmakers, archivists, curators and technologists — the very communities labs and studios seek to serve and ally with.
- Pre-empting workflow needs: As filmmakers plan new projects, festivals like LFF guide their creative choices. Being able to promise “we can support 35mm, scanning, archival printing” becomes a competitive differentiator for CPC London, ORWO, and Black Hangar.
- Cultural legitimacy and funding leverage: When festivals include preservation strands, it underscores institutional commitment to film heritage — which in turn supports grant funding, archival partnerships, and public awareness.