Dr Nicolas Pillai, Academic Lead at UCD at Creative Futures Academy, introduced a special Lighthouse Cinema screening of Silent Sherlock: Three Classic Cases in December 2025, marking the first Irish screening of the films since 1923. The event celebrated the BFI’s major restoration of the Eille Norwood Sherlock Holmes films, regarded as the most significant silent adaptations of Conan Doyle’s detective stories.

Work by the experts at the BFI National Archive involved inspection of surviving print materials and original paper documentation – stills, press books and promotional material from the period – as well as studying Conan Doyle’s source material, the stories themselves, to assess what restoration work was needed to reorder and reconstruct the films.

Dr Pillai said: “The Eille Norwood Sherlock Holmes films are extraordinary and it was an honour to introduce them on their first screening in Ireland since 1923. Long before Benedict Cumberbatch, these films updated Conan Doyle’s stories to a contemporary setting and BFI’s wonderful restoration provides us with a treat for both the eyes and ears: cleaned up and tinted from the original nitrate film stock, with newly commissioned scores performed by the Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble. The rerelease of these films cements Norwood’s reputation as the definitive silent Sherlock Holmes.”

Nicolas Pillai’s book on Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes will be published later this year by Bloomsbury in the prestigious BFI Film Classics series.