BFI is celebrating BAFTA-nominated filmmaker, academic and equality campaigner Tina Gharavi with a major archival milestone and a dedicated season. As part of the January programme “Beyond the Frame: Women Filmmakers and their Archives” at BFI Southbank, Gharavi has donated her personal paper and digital collections to the BFI National Archive. This creates a new resource for understanding women’s screen work and the migrant experience.
Tina Gharavi is best known for her BAFTA-nominated feature “I Am Nasrine” (2013). She is celebrated for films that centre migration, representation, and community storytelling. She has now entrusted her personal archive to the BFI. Her latest film, “Night and Day” is an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel.
Cast
It stars Haley Bennett, Elyas M’Barek, Jennifer Saunders, Lily Allen, Jack Whitehall and Timothy Spall and is due for release later this year. Her next project is “Forough: Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season”. This film is a biopic of Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad. It is executive produced by Wes Anderson and is set to shoot in Italy and the UK.
Beyond the Frame
The BFI Southbank season “Beyond the Frame” (19–30 January), curated by Wendy Russell and Grace Johnston, features the work of Gharavi. Besides, it also highlights the contributions of fellow filmmaker Gurinder Chadha through their personal archives. Screenings and events explore what it means to be a Global Majority woman filmmaker in today’s industry. There will be an in conversation with Gharavi on 23 January as well as these events also examine how their careers are shaped by identity, gender, and politics.
What the Tina Gharavi collection contains
Gharavi’s donation, which arrived at the BFI National Archive in 2024, comprises 16 bankers boxes of paper materials and artefacts. The collection spans her work as a filmmaker based primarily in the North East of England and her community-focused projects. It includes:
- Production papers, notes, scripts, storyboards, funding applications, correspondence, photographs, research and press cuttings for works such as “People Like Us” (2016), “I Am Nasrine” (2012), “Kings of South Shields” (2008), “Mother/Country” (2003), “Closer” (2001) and TV series “Queen Cleopatra” (2023)
- Personal notebooks covering around 25 years of creativity, from the late 1990s onwards, filled with drawings, paintings, collages and reflections on her academic and film work
- Materials from unrealised projects and documentation of funding bids – including rejections – which Gharavi has deliberately preserved to show how much of a filmmaker’s practice exists beyond the finished films
The Archive
Moreover, the archive also documents her community media work. In 1998, she founded the production company Bridge + Tunnel in Newcastle upon Tyne. Her aim was to make mainstream projects. These projects focused on education, activism, and community engagement at their core. Papers from the Kooch Cinema Group are also included. It is a media training project established in 2001 for asylum seekers and refugees from the Middle East living in the North of England.
Why this donation matters
Reflecting on the donation, Tina Gharavi notes that women artists often have “so little” produced, in fact, this is compared to the volume of work they actually create, meanwhile, Rejections and barriers shape their careers as much as successes. For her, placing the archive with the BFI is a way to:
- show the process behind the films
- record “what it was like to be a filmmaker at this moment, from this background”
- help clear a path for other diverse and non‑traditional filmmakers, ensuring that these stories and struggles are preserved rather than erased
BFI National Archive archivist and season co‑curator Wendy Russell describes the collection as a vital insight into Gharavi’s creative process. It also highlights her persistence in trying to fund and realise projects. At its heart, she notes, the archive reveals Gharavi’s sustained commitment to the migrant experience. It also shows her dedication to the craft of filmmaking. These are brought together with unusual care.
More to visit
The Tina Gharavi collection will sit alongside the Gurinder Chadha collection at the BFI National Archive. Both are being researched and catalogued as part of two major initiatives:
- Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible (funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council), designed to make women’s film work and archives more discoverable
- Our Screen Heritage (supported by the BFI Screen Heritage Fund and National Lottery funding), which explores how to capture and preserve filmmakers’ digital archives for current and future audiences
Together, these projects and Gharavi’s donation reinforce the BFI’s commitment. They ensure that women’s creative labour, especially from Global Majority filmmakers, is documented, visible, and accessible for generations to come.
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