Alfred Hitchcock's Silent Films Restored

As part of the London Olympiad, the British Film Institute (BFI) will be screening all 58 surviving Alfred Hitchcock films, including 9 silent films that have been fully restored frame by frame.

Former Hitchcock actors such as Tippi Hedren and Bruce Dern will speak at the screenings while a digital project, 39 Steps to the Genius of Hitchcock, will celebrate his career and influence.

The BFI, who had their funding reduced due to Britain's austerity measures, made a public appeal to fund the restoration project in 2010. They say that about $1.6 million dollars was raised with most coming from The Hollywood Foreign Press Association and American filmmaker Martin Scorsese's The Film Foundation, which specializes in film conservation.

In addition to the restoration work, the BFI has also commissioned scores by contemporary artists for the screenings of four of the 9 remastered films. The are:

- The Pleasure Garden (1926), with a score by Daniel Patrick Cohen.
- Blackmail (1929), with a score by Neil Brand.
- The Ring (1927), with a score by Soweto Kinch.
- The Lodger: A Tale of the London Fog (1926), with a score by Nitin Sawhney.

The project to restore the silent films was the largest ever undertaken by the BFI as each frame (over 100,000 per film) was pored over and restored.