BERKHAMSTED, England - In a refrigerated vault outside London filled with old film reels, a team of curators is bringing to life forgotten masterpieces of early cinema history.

A chemical smell hangs in the air at the British Film Institute's National Archive, where some 250,000 wheels of old film are stacked floor-to-ceiling.

"As we're restoring them we're pulling back the veils of history, and we can see much more clearly than we used to," curator Bryony Dixon said on a visit to the archive in the town of Berkhamsted in England this week.