Archives and Auteurs

Canyon Cinema - the impact of the digital on film access and preservation

2012-02-19T23:09:00.000Z

Home from a weekend back in Scotland today I was saddened that the first e-mail I read was from the AMIA (Association of Moving Image Archivists) list saying that Canyon Cinema is under threat. Canyon Cinema is a film collective based in California who provide over 3,500 film titles for rental, sale and distribution on film and DVD, though mostly on film - Super 8, 16 and 35mm. I first heard of Canyon Cinema at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in LA in March 2010 where I attended a panel - 'Celebrating Chick Strand through screenings and discussions'. The co-operative started in the 1950s and their website gives an account of their history which just makes you wish you'd been there in the beginning! Chick Strand is one of a huge number of the film makers who are represented by Canyon - other famous names include Len Lye, Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger.

The story of the threat to Canyon Cinema of course ties in with the ever increasing news coverage being given to the impact of digital on the film world, in terms of preservation and availability of 35mm prints for viewing. The New York Times article which was highlighted on the AMIA list refers to the growth of digital film as the main reason for the large drop in profits from renting, selling and distributing films. The article quotes Dominic Angerame, Executive Director of Canyon Cinema, as saying that about 70% of their film titles are not digitised and that its annual film rental income has dropped from $133,000 in 2004 to about $90,000 now. The suggestion is that they would need to digitise the majority of their film titles in order to survive, and the cost of this is so prohibitive as to make it impossible.

Now I know that nothing stays the same forever and that technologies have to change but I am just so saddened by the implications of the take-over of digital film. The thought of never seeing a film on 35mm in a cinema again, of the ever-increasing difficulty which film archives, film schools, and individual film lovers are going to have in getting hold of and maintaining the equipment needed to project and repair films. All this makes me so sad and I really don't think that change is always a good thing.Of course digitising all the film titles in their collection would increase their accessibility but I just don't see that digitisation is the solution to everything - many of these films were made by the artists to be experience in the particular medium they were made in. Not to mention that there are still many viewers who want to experience the films in their original format. However I'm not a Luddite either and I get that there are lots of benefits to digital over film - I just don't want to have the new over the old - can't they co-exist?

Interestingly the article also says that the money problems of Canyon Cinema have been around for a while and that in 2009 they got $100,00 from Stanford University for selling them their paper archive. I did wonder why the paper records weren't actually held at Canyon - I thought maybe the didn't have the space, the staff, or the time to make them accessible. It hadn't occurred to me that this would be a way of trying to ensure survival of the film collection. Again, although I understand it is rarely practical to house entire paper collections with the film collections they relate to - different preservation needs, storage conditions, different archive specialisms to name but a few issues that spring to mind - in an ideal world I'd love it if more archives did contain the films themselves alongside the paper records relating to their creation, even better if it was all catalogued on the one database - ah well, it's nice to have archive dreams!

I was glad to read in the article that they do have some options and ideas for how to ensure the survival of the film co-operative. The proposition is that by turning themselves into a non-profit they would have a much higher chance of survival - well, I hope this turns out to be true.

A Useful Life - a love letter to film and film preservation

2012-02-15T17:53:00.001Z

Well, I've been slightly lax with blog posting since the start of the New Year, partly because I've been doing more posts on my work blog. However I thought I should post this while there's still a possibility for readers to catch this film in the cinema. The reason being the film is a love letter to cinema, 35mm, and as a result of that, the work of film archivists.
My first cinema trip of 2012 was on January 2nd to the BFI to see Manhattan but this is not the subject of this post. One of the trailers I saw was for A Useful Life - a Uruguayan film set in a cinematheque with shots of the cinematheque's film archive in the trailer - how could I resist!

The film is the story of Jorge, the projectionist of the Cinemateca, an art house cinema in Montevido. It’s a sad story in many ways, the seemingly inevitable decline of a cinema which can’t or won’t adapt to new ways of working, the drop in the number of visitors coming to see the films, the increase in the costs faced by independent cinemas – all these issues are played out in the film. However it’s also an incredibly heart-warming story as it’s the story of Jorge, the projectionist, as he moves from being a part of the decaying cinema to creating a life for himself outside of, but definitely not apart from, his cineaste identity.

There are so many wonderful moments in the film – the discussion about money between the members of the cinematheque team, Jorge fixing the seats in the cinema, the radio interview he does for his radio show, and of course the shots of the projection room and the film store! It’s a film that’s full of love – love for the cinema, for film itself, and I thought for the work of film preservationists. Well it turns out I wasn’t just projecting my own views on that last point as the director Federico Veiroj not only worked at cinematheques but also at the Spanish Film Archives. I can’t recommend this film highly enough – it still makes me smile when I think about it. There’s an interesting interview with Federico Veiroj reprinted on Mubi here where he talks about his love of film and film archives/archivists.

On reading other people's letters

2012-02-01T16:22:00.000Z

The joys of cataloguing correspondence - I'm sure I've gone on about it plenty on this blog, and on my work blog so apologies if you're bored of it by now. There's a real feeling of privilege I get when reading someone else's correspondence. I hasten to add this doesn't mean I steal people's mail or anything like that - I 'm very lucky in that I get to read other people's mail as part of my job! I also enjoy reading edited collections of correspondence such as The Raymond Chandler Papers.

[photo by me]

The letters can be quite hard-going sometimes, particularly when he's suffering from writer's block or has finished up working on a film script. Like with any collection of letters, you really get the sense that you're getting to know the individual, and for me, they also give a real sense of the richness of archives - but then I'm slightly archive-obsessed!

One of my favourite exchange of letters so far has been about Farewell, my Lovely. The title of the book was the cause of some disagreement. In a letter to fellow writer George Harmon Coxe on 27 June 1940 Chandler explains that the publishers wanted to call his second novel The Second Murderer. Chandler goes on to say 'when I turned the manuscript in they howled like hell about the title, which is not at all a mystery title, but they gave in. We'll see. I think the title is an asset. They think it is a liability'. Apparently this book was largely ignored by the critics and the publishers blamed this, at least partly, on the title. I really enjoyed Farewell, my Lovely when I read it recently but I've yet to see the film - I can't imagine anyone else but Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe!

The book includes some non-fiction writing alongside the letters and, as it's topical at the moment I thought I'd include a piece he wrote on the Oscars. In 1946 Chandler, fed up and jaded from working for Hollywood studios, had moved to La Jolla to focus on his own writing. However, he returned to Los Angeles to report for 'The Atlantic Monthly' on the 1946 Oscar ceremony. Here are some of my personal highlights from his report:

‘in the motion picture business we possess an art medium whose glories are not all behind us. It has already produced great work, and if, comparatively and proportionately, far too little of that great work has been in achieved in Hollywood, I think that’s all the most reason why in its annual tribal dance of the stars and big-shot producers Hollywood should contrive a little quiet awareness of the fact. Of course it won’t. I’m just daydreaming.’

‘If you can go past those awful idiot faces on the bleachers outside the theatre without a sense of collapse of the human intelligence; if you can stand the hailstorm of flash bulbs popping at the poor patient actors who, like kings and queens, have never the right to look bored; if you can glance out over this gathered assemblage to what is supposed to be the elite of Hollywood and say to yourself without a sinking feeling, ‘in these hands lie the destinies of the only original art form the modern world has ever conceived’; if you can laugh, and you probably will, at the cast-off jokes from the comedians on the stage, stuff that wasn’t good enough to use on their radio shows... if you can do all these things with grace and pleasure, and not have a wild and forsaken horror at the thought that most of these people actually take this shoddy performance seriously ... if you can do all these things and still feel the next morning that the picture business is worth the attention of one single intelligent, artistic mind, then in the picture business you certainly belong.”

It doesn't really sound like a whole lot has changed in Hollywood, or at the Oscars, does it?!

Evangelist of Happiness

2012-01-24T22:12:00.003Z

'Evangelist of Happiness' - this phrase was used to describe Pipilotti Rist by the New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl, I saw this written in a review of her recent London show at the Hayward Gallery and couldn't think of a better or more apt description for 'Eyeball Massage' - her recently-finished show at the Hayward Gallery.

[photo by me]

The first thing you see when you go in to the exhibition is Massachusetts Chandelier - a light-hearted start to the show and a nice way to begin. The underwear was donated from her family and friends and in the booklet accompanying the exhibition she refers to underpants as 'the temple of our abdomen' and goes on to say 'this part of the body is very sacred, as it is the site of our entrance into the world, the centre of sexual pleasure and the location of the exits for the body's garbage'. So straight away you get one of the main themes of the exhibition - the celebration of the human body.

My photos are, to put it bluntly, crap! However the video review at the bottom was filmed in the exhibition so watch that if you want to see more of the films. The photo I've included here (below) is of 'I'm not the girl who misses much', made whilst Rist was a student. It shows her singing the words of the title (a line from the Beatles song Happiness is a Warm Gun') while dancing around topless. This was really weird as you had to stick your head up through holes in a wooden board in order to see the film - it felt like watching a peep show, but with other people as there were quite a few holes - even weirder! Both image and sound were at varying speeds and there was a definite air of hysteria to it, but still a real element of fun as well. There were lots of films shown on the floor, in the floor, in seashells, in handbags - so innovative! My absolute favourite, and the one I could have spent all day in was 'Lobe of the Lung'. This was projects on three screens, a slightly different film on each one, with lots of cushions for folk to sit and watch it on. It was like a cocoon, with hypnotic music as well. When we were in there were children in, dancing about and enjoying it and lots of people lying about on the cushions. The colours in this film were totally saturated - I remember lots of shots of rotting fruit, water lillies, a girl underwater, a wild pig eating grass shown at the same time as the girl eating an apple.

[photo by me]

In his audio review Peter Schjeldahl says “She resolves no critical problems of contemporary art. She just makes you forget that there are any”. This isn't meant as a criticism at all as he begins by saying she is one of his favourite artists. I don't know much about the critical problems of contemporary art but this exhibition didn't make me forget issues in contemporary art and art history which I think are important. This show really made me think about the way that women are often portrayed in art, of the absence of women throughout the history of art (not a complete absence just a distinct lack of). I would also say that in the positive depiction of sensuality and of the human body in all it's shapes and sizes, the theme of reconnecting us with nature, with animal instincts, makes it in a sense very political. And, as Schjeldahl said, 'it made being a member of society seem like a great idea'.

Another description of the show, which sums up how I felt when I walked out - happy, dazed, calm, on a bit of a high, in love with the world - comes from Adrian Searle in the video shown below. His description? 'You come out and the world feels better'. Thank you Pipilotti Rist for making my world a better place on Saturday January 7th.

Cinema in a suitcase

2012-01-11T22:02:00.001Z

I'm not sure if I can count this as my January fulfilment of Resolution No.4 'Try and visit a new-to-me Cinema/film screening venue once a month' as I've been to the ICA bar before and their cinema, however it was the first time I've seen a film screened in their bar. Also the first time ever I've seen film I've 'made' screened!

So, I better back up and start at the beginning. When my friend Sarah said she was coming down for the weekend and did I want to meet up I said of course! I happily cancelled my plans for, well, having no plans and staying in, and went out to meet up with Sarah and Bob instead. We headed down to the ICA for the launch night of the London Short Film Festival as Sarah had spotted that Suitcase Cinema were going to be doing an event/workshop in the ICA bar.

Now I had never heard of Suitcase Cinema before but one look at their website and I knew I wanted to go. Suitcase Cinema are all about the celluloid and for this particular event this meant salvaged 16mm films they had found in skips and at flea markets. Here was the event information from the LSFF website:
write and draw directly onto transparent film, or deface a strip of their flea market found film by bleaching, scratching, rewriting and re-imagining. When your work is done, they’ll thread it up and feed it straight into their projector, so you can see your images instantly transformed into moving, living beings.

choosing my tools, Suitcase Cinema event, 06/01/2012

What an amazing opportunity to try making a piece of film (however short it was - as it turned out very short due to my previous lack of understanding of how quickly the piece of film I'd drawn, scraped & bleached on would move through the projector!). Also looking at it very simplistically it's the very antithesis of my professional work - defacing and altering something rather than preserving it as it is. My only previous experience of working with film was running it through a Steenbeck and using a splicer to repair film.


Me and Sarah, at work/play!

As the films were salvaged and bought second-hand this was film strip with content and a story already on it. We were given pens, scrapers, paint and bleach to alter/deface this film and create our own images and ideas on top of it. The effect of the bleach on the film was pretty dramatic and I liked using the scraper as well to create lines and patterns. Sarah pointed out to me that any patterns would have to be continued over a number of frames in order to show up when projected - I hadn't realised how much so until I saw the tiny bit of film I'd worked on projected - it was pretty much a case of 'blink and you'd miss it'. It really made me appreciate just how much work must go into any experimental film - Norman Mclaren's work immediately sprang to mind - not, I hasten to add, out of any parallels I drew between his work and my own meagre attempt - just in terms of drawing straight onto film.

I had so much fun at this event and I really think that the experience of making films - even just playing about with it a wee bit like we did - would do so much to enrich the experience of film preservation. I'm sure that most archivists working in film preservation also have experience of film making, definitely of film projection but for me it was a first-time of film-making (however short-lived and fleeting it was). All in all, I'm so glad we went (thanks Sarah, for bringing the event to my attention - and for coming down as I probably wouldn't have gone alone!). And of course a big thanks to Suitcase Cinema, and to the LSFF and the ICA for hosting the event - what a fun and creative way to spend a Friday night.
Long live Celluloid!!

Resolution time - Happy New Year!

2012-01-08T20:45:00.002Z

Happy New Year to everyone! Well, I'm already falling a bit short on my first resolution - to organise my time better. Where has this first week gone?!

My first full year living in London - it's been fun, it's been busy, it's been overwhelming at times but on the whole I'm loving it! It took both me and Oliver a while to settle in to London life - at first we felt like we had to be busy all the time as there's so much to do, but now we've realised there's always going to be lots to do and it can't all be done as time is needed to relax too - this was a hard lesson for me to learn as I'm not very good at relaxing!

I didn't write any resolutions last year so I thought I'd write some this year - here goes!

New Year Resolutions

Organise my time better, at home and at work
Sign up for the Archives & Records Association Registration Scheme
Get back to reading more non-fiction
Try and visit a new-to-me Cinema/film screening venue once a month
Keep a record of all the films I watch and books I read
Buy less clothes/get back to learning to sew
Introduce the idea of Analog Sunday's as I saw it on a blog I recently found 'Someday. by Avalonne Hall' Try and have at least 2 a month

1. hmmn, not quite sure how easy this will (see above)
2. I think I'll leave this till February as I've got quite a lot on at work this month already and I don't want to spend all my time when I'm not in my work still doing archive-related work. I went to a Registration Scheme workshop so I need to a. find my notes from this then b. write them up for the London region newsletter - this will be my first step towards signing up for registration.

3. I have lots of non-fiction sitting on my shelves just waiting to be read so time and motivation are the only constraints here.
4. Can't see any problems with this one!
5. I used to keep scrapbooks that I would fill with all my gig, cinema and exhibition tickets. I'd like to get back to doing this but make it a bit more personal by trying to add in short notes on the films/books/gigs.
6. Ahem, well motivation is the main one here, as well as organisation of course. I could have done some sewing today but instead filled my day with housework, cooking and watching 'The Philadelphia Story' for the third or fourth time!

7. Well, apart from today that is! I would like to try and have more days without opening my laptop. It might be harder not to check Twitter on my phone though! Over the Christmas holidays we were back in Scotland for 9 days and only went on a computer once. I really enjoyed the break, and even though I checked Twitter I didn't really engage with it at all over the holidays. So yes, I'd like to make an effort to have computer/Internet free days. I didn't add 'No television' to mine as I enjoy watching films on a Sunday. Similarly I phone my Gran most Sunday's so I certainly couldn't make Sunday a phone-free day!

So, let's see how these go. I don't think I've set myself anything groundbreaking or to difficult so hopefully I can stick to them all!

Made to be destroyed

2011-12-04T11:40:00.003Z

I've had the BFI Screen Epiphanies book by Geoffrey Macnab for a few years now and although I've read most of it I still dip in and out of it and discover new things. Most recently I was reading the chapter with Atom Egoyan and came across some interesting information relating to Lindsay Anderson's In Celebration.

Still from the filming of In Celebration ©Stirling University Archives

Atom Egoyan is a Canadian film maker. In the chapter in this book he talks about his early love of the theatre and this leads him on to talking about The American Film Theatre. This was a series devised by Ely Landau, a film producer with a strong interest in adapting plays for the cinema. He invited different film directors to do just that and the result was fourteen very different films with varying degrees of success and popularity. The first of the series Egoyan saw was Peter Hall's version of The Homecoming and he explains his excitement in realising that he could bring together his love of the theatre with his love of modern film makers.

What was interesting to me is that Egoyan says that the idea behind the American Film Theatre series was "that these films would travel to various cities that would never get the play. After the projections, the prints would be destroyed. that was the theory. It would preserve the ephemeral nature of the experience." He goes on to explain that this never took place, and we know that as all fourteen films are now available on DVD. There's so much current talk all over the web, and on film archive discussion boards and mailing lists, about the 'death of film' so it was interesting to read of a series of films who, according to Egoyan, were not supposed to be preserved but were in fact made with their impending destruction in mind. Can anyone corroborate this? I can't find anything online about Ely Landau's intending to destroy the films and I don't remember seeing anything about it in the Lindsay Anderson Archive either. All I remember from that is Anderson's frustrations with the lack on advertising and publicity which he felt his film was getting (if you're interested you can search the Lindsay Anderson Archive here).

Power cuts and paper research

2011-11-18T13:34:00.002Z

We had a power cut this morning in work - boy does it make you realise how reliant on computers we are! However luckily I had some paper based work I could get on with. I was searching through 'The Woman Teacher' (the journal of the National Union of Women Teachers) for a report from a women teacher who moved to Italy in 1946/1947. I found what I was looking for (a blog post on this will follow shortly on the NUWT blog) and I also found lots of other interesting information, particularly relating to film and children. The NUWT were very concerned with the impact of increased cinema attendance on children and the types of films they were seeing. They were also quite pioneering in their promotion of the use of film as an educational tool in the classroom. However as you can see from the report below, some of them might have been slightly lacking in a sense of humour when it came to films and cinema!

image from 'The Woman Teacher', NUWT Collection ref: UWT/H/1/41 ©Institute of Education Archive

This is from the 27 September 1946 edition of 'The Woman Teacher' and the notice is called 'At the Academy Cinema'. It begins by talking about a film being shown at the Academy cinema which they did think was worthwhile, a film Children on trial made by the Crown Film Unit. This film was about three children in their teens who have drifted into crime being given the chance to become 'good citizens'. Now I can understand that from their viewpoint this would be a good educational film to show children but really you'd think they'd still have been able to take Zero de Conduite as the 'satirical phantasy' they describe it as rather than being so humourless about it. I mean really -
'one cannot help wondering what kind of audience could find it even amusing'
- well I can imagine that most children watching would find it highly amusing as would a great many adults, thinking back to their school days.

I wonder what they'd have made of Lindsay Anderson's If.... then (influenced by Zero de Conduite) - where the children gun down their parents and teachers in an epic attack from the school roof.

Wednesday wonders - webinar on website editing training

2011-11-16T21:07:00.000Z

So the wonder is.. it worked! Call me pessimistic but an online training session which required 3 different types of software and which would be 'attended' by people of varying levels of techy knowledge, well let's just say I wasn't convinced it would work. However, I am happy to admit I was wrong. The session went really well, we could all hear each other and see the screen of the trainer, Fiona Beckett.

I recently took up the voluntary post of Web Officer for the London Region of the Archives and Records Association (previously the Society of Archivists) and the training session was to help all the web and communication officers use the new ARA website.

This is how the London region homepage looks at the moment - nothing really wrong with it but it could do with a few images maybe? I've edited webpages before and obviously use blogger, as well as Wordpress for work, so uploading images and attachments isn't a problem. However what I didn't know was that when adding images and attachments to this website we also add them to the content management system so now I know how to do that properly so the information is stored sensibly and is easily located in the future.

There was lots of useful information that will hopefully help with encouraging more members to use the community section and I'm looking forward to getting on with updating and changing the web pages. I guess the issue is trying to make logging in and using the London region pages worthwhile - that means starting debates and discussions, posting interesting information on events, photographs of previous events and, well anything else that would be useful to archivists in London. Anyone got any suggestions?

So, now I can go and experiment with the London region webpages - I'll keep you posted!

Flickr and the future of photography - new exhibition

2011-11-15T11:51:00.000Z

I'm just back from a great trip to Berlin (more of that in later posts!) and took lots of photos whilst I was there. I was uploading them all to Flickr and it made me think about the nature of photographs and how much it has changed in the digital age. So when I read about a new exhibition in Amsterdam 'What's next?' exploring the future of photography it caught my interest.

There's such a proliferation of photographs - from people we know and people we don't know. I quite happily share my photos via Twitter and Flickr, and now on Instagram. I guess most people are nosy anyway and digital photos have just made it a lot easier to indulge in the habit of peeking into people's lives. I'm certainly not complaining as I love seeing where my friend's have been, catching up on what friend's who don't live nearby are doing, and also seeing new places through the photos I see from people I don't know on Twitter and blogs.

It made me think about the value of photographs. Does the huge number of photographs mean that we value them less? does the fact that we only develop a small percentage of what we take, if any at all, automatically mean we value them less? or is that just me being retro and old-fashioned?

The exhibition features four 'guest curators' and the one that jumped out at me was Erik Kessels with his investigation in to 'Photography in abundance'

installation by Erik Kessells at Foam, Amsterdam image courtesy of Creative Review

"We're exposed to an overload of images nowadays," says Kessels. "This glut is in large part the result of image-sharing sites like Flickr, networking sites like Facebook, and picture-based search engines. Their content mingles public and private, with the very personal being openly and un-selfconsciously displayed. By printing all the images uploaded in a 24-hour period, I visualise the feeling of drowning in representations of other peoples' experiences." taken from the Creative Review website, 15/11/2011
There's no way I'd ever develop all the photos I've stuck up on Flickr, because to be honest I don't think a lot of them are good enough. However when I used to use a film camera I'd take loads of poor quality photographs and they'd be developed without me knowing how they'd turned out until I went to pick the film up. Although my lack of skill as a photographer did mean I never hold out any great expectations of what my photographs will be like - digital or film! Just looking at these images of the vast quantity of photos taken and uploaded in one day has made me think that I should maybe try and exercise a bit more control, or 'curation' as the buzzword is, over which images I put up. I already do this when I get digital photos developed, select my favourites or the ones that are most representative of the holiday.

Foam is the acronym for 'The Future of Photography Museum' and going by this exhibition it sounds like an interesting place to visit.

From the X-Men to Charade - designing title sequences

2011-11-14T20:25:00.000Z

I was just looking at my Twitter feed and clicked on a link from @thenfb - the Twitter feed for the National Film Board of Canada and it led me back to Charade, the Stanley Dolan film starring Audrey Hepburn and Carey Grant which I saw for the first time on Saturday night. I find all these types of coincidences quite entertaining so I thought I'd share this one. The twitter caption read
"I'm in a design mood today. Check out the Maurice Binder-esque credits to one of my fav films of this year: http://watchthetitles.com/articles/00223-X_Men_First_Class"

So I duly clicked on the link and watched the title sequence as I still haven't seen the new X-Men film (I wish I'd got to see it when it was still at the cinema but it'll need to be on DVD now unfortunately). The title sequence is great, very sixties, and my first thought was 'that's really similar to the title sequence to Charade'. Then I wondered if I was only thinking that because that was the last film I watched (if you haven't seen Charade I can highly recommend it - a Hitchcock-esque thriller, with lots of humour, and amazing outfits from Audrey Hepburn of course!). As I read down I saw that the designer, Simon Clowes, was influenced by Maurice Binder so I looked him up and sure enough, he designed the title sequence to Charade - spooky!

Ok, maybe I 'm a geek for getting so excited about little connections like that but I just love when connections appear where you don't expect it. I also just looked up Charade as I was sure there must be a new print of it out as the reason I watched it was because I'd read about it recently somewhere. There is a new restored high definition print just released by Park Circus films but you can also watch it online. I watched it for free with our Lovefilm subscription and I noticed it's also available in the UK through Mubi.

'Looking up - the big screen'

2011-11-12T15:30:00.003Z

'Looking Up - Arguments in favor of bigness' by Michael Koresky and Jess Reichert

I've never been to the Museum of the Moving Image in New York but it is definitely on my list of top places to go on my next visit to New York (some time in a mythical future where I can afford such trips). To celebrate the opening of their new film theatre they invited the editors of Reverse Shot to contribute a video essay and text on the wonders of film in the cinema, that is on the big screen.

They talk about a lot of the issues that have been on my mind recently when going to the cinema - why do I prefer the cinema to watching a film at home? what do I go to the cinema for? what do I want out the film - entertainment, escapism, thought-provoking? When I went to see Wanda recently I certainly wouldn't call it a comfortable cinema-going experience in the sense that I didn't go in, relax and disappear into the film for a few hours. It wasn't that kind of film, it made me think, made me uncomfortable at many points, but ultimately it was still me leaving my world and entering another. I loved it but equally I love the complete escapism of going to see something silly like the latest X-men film where you can completely surrender to the fantasy world of the film, not have to think, and emerge a few hours later back into the real world.

Whatever type of film I'm in the mood for seeing though I'd pretty much always prefer going to the cinema to see it. There's something so magical to me about 'the big screen' and the experience of going to the cinema so i really enjoyed listening to Michael Koresky and Jess Reichert ruminating on why this is. Some of the things they said that jumped out at me - 'if we see it big we also want to be small' 'we want to be in thrall to something larger, something greater'.

However, I'd certainly never want to give up the variety of ways that we have of viewing films - right now I'm so happy to have turned the TV on to find Singing in the Rain - only half an hour in, perfect Saturday afternoon viewing and I don't even need to leave the couch!

Treasures from the Archives - Wanda

2011-10-23T12:05:00.004+01:00

On looking through the London Film Festival brochure all the films that immediately appealed to me were from, yes, you've guessed it the 'Treasures from the Archives' strand. Then, when the reality of my bank balance hit I had to whittle down what I was going to see to a select few, well a select one actually - Wanda.

Barbara Loden, director, writer and star of Wanda. Image courtesy of BFI website

I hadn't heard of the female director Barbara Loden before but the description in the brochure really appealed to me - a 'neo-realist gem... a rural Pennsylvanian housewife embarked on a flight to nowhere.. Wanda floats through her own life as if witness to it'. After recently rewatching Lindsay Anderson's The White Bus with Patricia Healey's depiction of another girl passively watching her own life drift past, I was intrigued by Wanda and am pleased to say my curiosity was well rewarded!

I obviously hadn't read the brochure properly as I didn't notice that Ross Lipman, who restored the film at UCLA, would be introducing the film. This was such a nice surprise as he gave a brilliant description of the problems facing him with the restoration of a film which was originally meant to look lo-fi and gritty. The story with Wanda is one that I've heard so many times before sadly, a film lab was closing down and called UCLA to ask if they wanted a look before the stock all went in a skip. Lipman found the reels for Wanda a day before they were due to be chucked and lost forever. In an article about the film from the Guardian (17/10/201) Lipman told the story of his discovery of the reels, marked 'Wanda', "Unspooling them on my workbench I quickly realised they were the original camera rolls, and that was only the beginning. The film was shot on a beautiful, unfaded Ektachrome reversal stock: any potential restoration would perhaps look better than even the original release. One day more and the original would have gone to landfill."

I realised when Ross Lipman got up on the stage that I recognised him and when he started talking about other American neo-realist films 'Killer of Sheep' and 'The Exiles' I remembered - I'd heard him talking about the preservation of The Exiles when I went to see it at UCLA (which I never actually got round to writing about, except here, before I went). He explained how until relatively recently there wasn't much talk of American neo-realism as so many of these films had disappeared into obscurity - citing The Exiles and The Killer of Sheep as two other examples (I was lucky enough to have seen Killer of Sheep at the GFT, turns out I'm a bit of a UCLA film preservation unit groupie!). These films were pretty obscure upon release, Wanda for example was actually made, according to Lipman, as a tax write-off and although it achieved critical success this didn't translate into commercial success for Loden. It made me wonder what Lindsay Anderson would have made of them, I wonder if he ever saw any of them?It's weird that even a year after moving from Stirling and leaving the Lindsay Anderson Collection behind I still wonder what he would have made of certain films, or film makers. I guess to me, that's one of the wonderful things about being an archivist - getting all bound up with the work you're cataloguing and making connections with the people and events you're cataloguing.

On to Wanda itself - what an incredible film! It has stuck with me for days and I imagine it will do long into the future. When I first read the description I thought of The White Bus, I also thought of more recent female-directed and female-focused films such as Wendy and Lucy and Winter's Bone and in many ways there are similarities. The lack of any soundtrack - all the noises, music and silences are part of the real life of the film, there is no artificial soundtrack. I love this in films, it can be quite disconcerting at first, it makes it a lot harder to watch in a way as you can't escape into it in the same way, instead you're forced to confront the reality of the situation the characters live in. The opening scenes of Wanda are completely silent from what I can remember, maybe a few noises of feet walking on gravel but no music, no talking, and it's all the more powerful for it.

Very early on in the film there's a scene where Wanda is walking across coal fields and the camera follows her in real time, painfully slow as she walks across this barren landscape, walking to meet someone but really going nowhere. As Wanda gets caught up in the crimes of a man she meets on the road she drifts from one situation to another, alienate, alone and hopeless. It really made me think about what it would be like to be born into that kind of poverty with no hope of any alternative, any way out, as did Wendy and Lucy and even more so Winter's Bone. Wanda was expected to be a housewife, raise a family and bring more children into the same cycle of poverty she grew up in - it's no wonder she wanted something different, she just didn't know what. I liked that there's no great realisation, she's not a heroine in the sense that she changes her life round and moves onwards and upwards, she just changes her life because the alternative was to grim for her to bear. I would love the chance to see this film again, and thanks to the work of Ross Lipman

Return to the Pleasure Garden

2011-10-06T15:23:00.000+01:00

I haven't been writing so much on this blog recently as I've been doing most of my blog posts on my work blog about the project I'm working on cataloguing the records of the National Union of Women Teachers. I was recently cataloguing more boxes of 'cinema' material in my job cataloguing the records of the National Union of Women Teachers. I've been really astonished by just how many different subjects and causes the women of the NUWT were involved in, cinema being just one of many. These boxes in question included material on the use of films in education as well as discussion of the type of films suitable for children's viewing. At the back of one of the files is a collection of invitations to film screenings and to my surprise it included one to a film which I'd catalogued lots of material about before, in my job at Stirling University cataloguing the Lindsay Anderson Archive. The film was not directed by Lindsay Anderson, rather he starred in it, and it was directed by his friend, James Broughton. The Pleasure Garden is set in Crystal Palace in London and was described by Broughton as a 'midsummer afternoon's day-dream' (taken from the notes provided for the screening). It's a really joyful film, about the triumph of love and freedom over rules and restrictions.

The Lindsay Anderson Collection at Stirling contains correspondence with James Broughton, information about the development and filming of The Pleasure Garden and a great photo album which Lindsay Anderson made of the filming of The Pleasure Garden. You can see one of the pages from it below (I originally blogged about this last year here). You can search the Anderson Archive for James Broughton and find more information on the film here.

Page from photograph album LA/6/2/1/5
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives

Finding Norman

2011-07-27T12:37:00.000+01:00

Staying on the subject of Norman McLaren. I just remembered about a Student Radio Broadcast project which my colleagues and friends Karl Magee and Sarah Neely had been part of whilst I was at Stirling, called 'Finding Norman'. You can listen to the broadcast on the Stirling Film, Media and Journalism YouTube page. The narrator, a student at Stirling Uni is talking about 'Norman' a show I was lucky enough to see at the MacRobert Arts Centre in Stirling - I wrote a wee preview of the show here.

Karl Magee gives some background about Norman McLaren and does a bit of promotion for the archive! There is an excerpt of Norman McLaren talking in the radio broadcast and he says that 'if all his films had to be destroyed except one I would choose Neighbours'. Of course, I wouldn't want any of his films to be destroyed but I think it's interesting he chose Neighbours. It's a superb film and the anti-war message is put across so brilliantly - maybe they should show this film to world leaders who are all too eager to start fights and wars with each other!

Watch Me Move

2011-07-27T07:51:00.002+01:00

This is me playing a bit of catch up again but I was thinking about it this morning when I woke up so thought it was time to post about 'Watch me Move: the Animation Show' - an exhibition currently showing at the Barbican in London. It's on until the 11th September and I'm really hoping I'll have time to go back and see it again as I found out after that there were things I missed, and lots I'd like to see again.

Although the first section downstairs was maybe a bit too busy in terms of the number and proximity of the screens at the same time I think it was necessary to give an overview of the development of animation over time. As a few of the reviews mentioned, I too liked that equal space was given to many of the early pioneers as to the biggies like Pixar, Studio Ghibli, Steven Spielberg etc. Then upstairs, oh wow, upstairs is just a complete treat for the senses! So many amazing artists are represented - one's that stick out in my memory were: -

Chuck Jones Duck Amuck, 1953 - this was so funny! Everyone in the room watching it when I was there were laughing the whole way through, it left you with a nice warm fuzzy feeling. It also reminded me of the anticipation as a small child of watching the Disney show at the weekends, or knowing that when we went to stay over at our Gran's house she would have compilations tapes of cartoons for us to watch, which we would watch and laugh at, over and over again.
Len Lye (I can't remember which one it was sorry)
Tim Burton - a fantastic short called 'Vincent' which I watched through twice, it was so good
Stan Brakhage The Dante Quartet, 1987 - shown on 16mm - always a treat in itself to see!
And last, but by no means least, Neighbours by Normal McLaren. I feel so privileged to have had the opportunity to look through his archive when I was working at Stirling University Archive. To see his paintings and print work and his beautiful handwritten and sometimes hand illustrated letters home to his parents was a real treat. I know I could watch Neighbours on YouTube whenever I want but it doesn't compare to seeing it for real, even when it is shown on a scereen in the corridor, as it was here.

There was a Harry Smith film too but I managed to miss that somehow - definetly need to try and squeeze in another visit to this before it finishes!

Sunday morning reading

2011-07-17T11:00:00.003+01:00

Sunday morning and I'm not reading the Sunday papers yet, no siree, I'm reading my newly arrived (yesterday) copy of ARC. ARC is the monthly magazine published by the Archives and Records Association in the UK. Although I love archives I wouldn't usually be reading this on a Sunday morning, honest!

The July issue is a Film, Sound and Photography Special, edited by my last boss, David Lee, Archivist and Manager of the Wessex Film and Sound Archive. I'd have been really interested in reading it anyway but even more so because yours truly has an article in it - woop! The article is a joint one written by me and Zoe about our experience of cataloguing the films for the Revitalising the Regions project. We concentrated on two of the film-makers, well three really - Frank and Nancy Bealing and Eda Moore. Nancy Bealing and Eda Moore just really captured both our imaginations and we were very privileged to get the chance to go and speak to Nancy Bealing about the films which her husband made, the one which we made, and the ways she helped with his filmmaking. I wrote a bit about a visit we paid to Salisbury to do some research about Eda Moore here.

Nancy Bealing in the nursery owned by her & her husband, Frank ©Wessex Film & Sound Archive

The current issue of ARC is not available digitally on the website yet, and even when it is it's only available to members so at the moment I can only give you these images off my camera.

Right, now I'm off to read all the other interesting articles in the magazine!

I had to call up the ARA Office to request another copy be sent out, and an extra for Zoe, as mine hadn't arrived (first time I've had anything published in it and first time it's never arrived!)

Eda Moore with her bolex camera in Salisbury ©Wessex Film & Sound Archive

You can watch some clips from Frank Bealing's and Eda Moore's films on the WFSA Flickr.

Exciting new blog from Stirling University Archives

2011-07-16T10:07:00.001+01:00

Well hello there! Sorry this blog's been a bit quiet since last month. it's not that I haven't been thinking about archives and film - I've just been working, and playing hard, and not had much time to write things up!

On Monday night last I was at my first Archives & Records Management London region meeting (I still can't get used to not calling it the Society of Archivists). It was lovely to meet more archivists in London and I have now signed up to be the web officer for the London region website - so now I need to figure out how to do that!

I've been on two sewing courses - both so much fun and I learned a lot from both. I've also been away in Castle Douglas last weekend where I had so much fun catching up with Zoe from McGill Duncan Gallery. Amazingly I managed to come away without buying anything from the gallery - which is a real feat as there are so many beautiful works of art!

Well, last night I had a lazy night home along, enjoying watching a silly romcom, drinking some tasty Fleurie, and also checking out the new blog from Stirling University Archives.

All those who read this blog will know already but for anyone new here I used to work at Stirling University Archives. I worked there for 3 years on a project to catalogue the Lindsay Anderson Collection. Of course I absolutely loved it and it's an amazing collection but it's really nice for me to see on this new blog the other collections in the Archive, particularly the new ones which arrived after, or as, I was leaving. So far there's talk of the Musicians Union Archive - oh how I'd have loved the chance to work on that! - and also the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games Collection. The latest post talks about another film collection held at Stirling, the Archive of John Grierson. It's so exciting to see them in blogland - welcome Stirling University Archives!!

Wednesday wonders - BFI Southbank

2011-06-22T19:27:00.000+01:00

I have always loved visiting the Southbank when I was visiting London and that hasn't changed any since I moved here. I remember the first time I got the bus back over Waterloo Bridge at night time after work, I saw all the lights along the river and got such a thrill, and I still feel that, sometimes I still have to pinch myself that I'm living in London! So I thought as my Wednesday wonder this week I would pay tribute to one of my favourite places on the Southbank, the British Film Institute! Now technically of course one of my favourites parts of the BFI, the Library and Archive, isn't on Southbank at all but on Stephen Street. However the last time I went down to the Southbank there was a great display on the upstairs corridor of 'Recent acquisitions at the BFI National Archive'

The exhibition showed archive material (they call it Special Collections to differentiate it from the Film Archive) from a number of people including Karel Reisz (film director) and Ralph Cooper (a publicist).
The first photo includes a scrapbook on Merle Oberon compiled by Deborah Kerr and telegrams from Sophia Loren! In the second photo are letters from Rachel Roberts and an annotated script for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. I was very excited by the Karel Reisz material as I'd heard they got his archive whilst I was working in the Lindsay Anderson Archive. Anderson and Reisz were friends and were both part of the Free Cinema movement so there was a good deal of material by and about Reisz and I always find it exciting to see material from other archives about individuals or organisations I've worked on!

Both the bars in the BFI are great, though I have noticed the Benugo Bar staff can be pretty rude - this is balanced out though by the friendly waiting staff, the good drinks and bar snacks, and the lovely surroundings!

And then, there's the exhibition room.. I've been to so many great exhibitions in the exhibition room - most memorable perhaps was the Jane and Louise Wilson 'Unfolding the Aryan Papers' which I blogged about here. There's been rumours that this is where the Library and Archive will be moving too but I really hope that's not true, for a number of reasons. Firstly it's great having an exhibition space at the Southbank site and I'd miss it if it went but FAR more importantly, it's a tiny site compared to the current library which would mean staffing cuts (though from the sounds of it these are unfortunately inevitable) and I just can't imagine there's enough space there for all the wonderful resources in Stephen Street.

The BFI Southbank is also home to the fabulous Mediatheque - where you can go to watch a huge selection of films and television shows, for free! I still have to go in to watch Blue Black Permanent - Margaret Tait's only feature film, hmm maybe something to do this weekend if the rain keeps up!

So if anyone is in London this weekend and wondering what to do? You couldn't go wrong with a visit to the BFI.

Wednesday Wonders - Together in Electric Dreams - Emancipation from Drudgery'

2011-06-15T16:46:00.000+01:00

"As long ago as November, 1924, a small group of clear-sighted women foresaw rapid development of the use of electricity in domestic spheres, and from their belief that it was destined to become the most valuable factor in modern home life, developed the Electrical Association for Women".

Image from EAW pamphlet, NUWT Collection, ref no UWT/D/55/17 © Institute of Education

I don't quite know why but when I first read this on the cover of one of their pamphlets I read it as if I was reading the Star Wars credits and imagined the words rolling down the screen - a long, long time ago, etc. It's not quite that dramatic but it was still very striking to me that something which we now take so much for granted was then such a novelty. I have to confess to having little, i.e. no, idea how electricity works, I just accept that I walk into a room and turn the light on, that my washing machine works, that I can plug in a hoover and clean our tiny flat in under 10 minutes etc. In 1924 though, electricity in the home was only beginning. The aim of the EAW was 'to eliminate from housekeeping the drudgery which the dirt and grime of mechanical process has brought into it' - sounds good eh?! Their slogan was 'Emancipation from Drudgery' and their purpose was twofold - 1. ensure that all women knew about electricity, how they could get it , and how best to make use of it 2. to put forward women's views on electrical matters.

Now I am not getting all rose-tinted glasses sentimental about the past here - the more equal sharing of household work now - cleaning and cooking - is something which I am all for of course! What this file of correspondence and pamphlets made me remember was how much harder it must have been before electricity. It also reminded me that the assumption of these kinds of comforts is of course sadly still limited and in no way equal throughout the world.

Something else which comes up a lot in the correspondence is the use of questionnaires and experiments with women to test the safety and ease of use of electrical appliances. Then, and probably still now given the ratio of men to women engineers, electrical appliances for the home would be designed by men, but in the 1920s at least, used almost exclusively by women. The tests they would carry out would measure things like what height of oven is the most convenient to use, how to make electric hobs safer around children, right through to how to change a fuse and how to wire a plug.

I've included a few more images from one of the EAW publications - the Electrical Housecraft School is where a lot of the testing and training was carried out. The bottom illustrations I just included because the pamphlet was full of them and I thought they were lovely!

Image from EAW pamphlet, NUWT Collection, ref no UWT/D/55/17 © Institute of Education

N.B. The Institute of Engineering and Technology holds extensive archives on the EAW -

EAW logo, from NUWT Collection, ref no UWT/D/55/17 © Institute of Education

New archive blog discovery

2011-06-14T20:43:00.002+01:00

I recently discovered a new blog, well new to me that is, the blog has been going since May 2010. I've been enjoying having a sift through their old posts and would thoroughly recommend it as a 'follow'! It's called Reclamation and Representation - the boundaries of the literary archive. Much like this blog was started as part of a project Reclamation and Representation was started to continue discussion and links that were part of the conference of the same name at the University of Exeter.

They help a really interesting sounding day at the University Archive yesterday 'In the Archive with Daphne Du Maurier' - an opportunity to see manuscripts of her most famous works including Rebecca and Jamaica Inn, led by Acting Head of Special Collections and Reclamation panelist Christine Faunch.

They've just posted a nice summary of some of the questions asked on #AskArchivists day. I wish I could have taken part but we were moving office that day so I didn't think I could really give it the time it deserved. I've really enjoyed catching up on the questions asked though. One that is mentioned in Reclamation and Representation's summary is below:

Q: Is there a book or blog to explain how to use archives? E.g. when I don't know what box to order bec. I only know the topic.
A: Best way: look @ catalogue if available or email for advice - see our Special Collections catalogues & Special Collections 'Planning a Visit' for more info (Answer from the Bodlein)

It reminded me of problems I've had as a user of catalogues, only a few years ago it took me ages to work out the right reference numbers for items I wanted to reserve at the National Library of Scotland. Now I'm sure a large part of my problem was purely impatience, yes, even me an archivist used to using archive catalogues, still expects everything set out for me, google style. So in turn this reminded me now that we have to do everything we can to make our catalogues as easy to use as possible as - worst case scenario - people will just stop using if they can't find what they're looking for. Although I think what a lot of people do, and what I did when faced with the same problems, was e-mail the archivist or special collections librarian and ask their help. I think that #AskArchivists day is a fantastic way of showing that we're not intimidating, that we're 'here to help'!

Wednesday wonders - the mysteries of the lonesome letter

2011-06-08T14:31:00.001+01:00

I can't quite believe my last post was a week ago - the time has just flown past! We're moving office this week, to a larger archive office with more room for us and more room for researchers (yay!), so it's been a busy time at work. This week's wonder is a letter from a very thin folder called 'Women's International News'. This folder did indeed contain correspondence about said paper but in addition to this is one letter, and a response, from the 'Womans Newspaper' to the Secretary of the NUWT. The letter content is pretty basic, just informing the NUWT of the aims and objectives of the newspaper and asking for news for the NUWT for content for the paper. The reply is even more brief, thanking them for the information and asking if they have a printed circular with information o 'Womans Newspaper' which could be distributed to the NUWT Council.

So I'm sure you can guess what attracted me to this letter - yes, t'was the lovely design at the top of the letter-headed notepaper. I absolutely love line drawings and graphic design and spent ages pouring over the Aubrey Beardsley drawing at the Cult of Beauty exhibition recently so the design on this letter just really appealed to me. I have tried google for information on the publication (yes, lazy I know but surely in reality this is everyone's first port of call?!). When that brought up no results I tried searching feminist library catalogues and various London archive and library catalogues but so far the search has brought up nothing. So, if anyone knows anything about this publication I'd love to know!

Wednesday Wonders

2011-06-01T16:41:00.002+01:00

I thought that, in conjunction with my, still relatively, new job cataloguing the records of the National Union of Women Teachers I would start my first 'series' on this blog. So, 'Wednesday Wonders' it is! I still get so excited by some of the things I come across when cataloguing - in fact, all archivists I know do - it's one of the major perks of the job. The best thing for me now is that I'm sharing an office so not only can I share my finds in blog land I can also share them instantly with real live people! That's not to belittle sharing things in blogland, far from it, I love reading about the archive work going on in Archives in far off lands and I hope that archivists elsewhere get as much pleasure from reading my blog, and of course, that non-archivists enjoy it too!

This week's Wednesday Wonder was one of those moments when you really do just go 'hey you'll never guess what I've just found' and hope your colleagues share your enthusiasm. It was the lovely colours of the headed notepaper that first caught my attention. The green and purple is lovely, and I thought, hmmn, this looks slightly familiar. Then I looked closer, it was letter headed notepaper from the Women's Social and Political Union!

Letter from Rose Lamartine Yates, ref UWT/D/47/1, © Institute of Education

The WSPU was founded by Emmeline Pankhurst and her three daughters Emmeline, Adela and Christabel Pankhurst. It was founded in 1903, one year before the NUWT, and they were founded out of frustration with what they saw as a lack of action in terms of obtaining the vote for women. Their motto 'Deeds, not Words' reflects their stance. The Women's Library website has a great summary of the WSPU so I won't repeat it all here.

As you can see this letter is a bit later, from 1933. Rose Lamartine Yates (1875 - 1954) was born in Brixton to French parents. She studied in the UK and in France. In 1909 she joined the Wimbledon branch of the WSPU and by 1910 she was the Treasurer and Organising Secretary of the Branch. In the letter she thanks Ethel Froud (the General Secretary of the NUWT at that time) for inviting her to attend NUWT conference but explains that she was too busy [she was] 'needed here', and was also ill, so she could not make it. It's really interesting that this letter is dated 1933 as the WSPU ceased to exist in 1919 - maybe Rose Lamartine Yates just had an excess of headed notepaper! The WSPU were very much about publicising the cause wherever possible and the collection of WSPU items at the Museum of London illustrates this - they have WSPU green and purple tea pots, badges, sashes, and WSPU stockings!

So thank you for reading, it's been nice to share! Any archivists out there have any favourite finds from their cataloguing work? What about in other professions? Any unusual finds?

N.B. For more information on the content of the NUWT Archive you can search the catalogue here. I also post about the NUWT project on the Institute of Education Library and Archive blog, Newsam News.

We are what we eat? - 'The Edible Archive'

2011-05-30T12:58:00.000+01:00

I just got an e-mail through on the Archives NRA list from the Scottish Council on Archives. As part of the Culture and Diversity 'What's your story?' theme of Archives Awareness 2011 the SCA have decided to create an archival cookbook. Intrigued? -

The idea is that the general public, archives users, and archives, will contribute recipes from personal cookbooks and from the archives. These recipes will be compiled and used to create a cookbook. Going on the belief that the food we eat reflects who we are, where we've been and where we live, the cookbook will reveal aspects of our family and our national history and culture. "We're hopeful that The Edible Archive will represent the diversity of the regions, communities and archival collections across Scotland."

I love the idea of compiling a cookbook based on a mixture of contributions from people's personal cookbooks and from archives! If I looked at the type of food that me and my husband cook then I'm not sure what it says much about our national history and culture as most of the food we cook is Mexican, Pan-Asian or Italian. Although maybe that's me having far too limited an idea of national culture and history. Maybe what our cooking says about us is a more general reflection of the internationalism and globalisation of our way of life - the wonderful chances we have to use ingredients from all over the world, to eat out in restaurants from all around the world. I know for other friends what they cook now often reflects what they grow, or what they can buy that's in season - another reflection of attitudes of the time. So yes, actually, on reflection I can see that the more thought I put into it the more things I could come up with that show how our cooking represents ideas of national history and culture. Also there are still many recipes I cook, even if only very occasionally, that remind me of my family for example mince & tatties, scotch pancakes, macaroni cheese, chickpea & tomato curry, Cullen skink - all these have so many associated memories for me that even if I only cook the occasionally they still bring the memories flooding back.

Now I'm just wondering if you have to live in Scotland to participate? Could expats be included?!

The SCA are also planning to have feasts using all the recipes chosen for the cookbook - sounds fantastic! So if you live in Scotland please get involved! Whether you work in an archive and have a favourite recipe in a collection, or whether you have a favourite personal recipe, from a cookbook or passed down through the generations, then you can e-mail them to info@scoarch.org.uk (they also ask that if you have any information about the history of the recipe, or an image, then to include that).

Submissions to be in by 1 July 2011.

Keep a one-day diary day - tomorrow!

2011-05-11T09:40:00.002+01:00

Tomorrow the Mass Observation Archive are repeating their call for people from all parts of the UK to keep a one-day diary recording their day from waking up to going to bed. The original Mass Observation Day was on 12 May 1937 and is part of the larger Mass Observation social research organisation. The first diary day was the Coronation of George VI, last years was the first day in Government for the coalition, and this year, well it's just an 'ordinary' day but who's to say that's any less interesting.

The Archives of the Mass Observation project, including the diaries, are publicly available at the University of Sussex.

What they are looking for:

Write as much as you can about what you do, who you meet, what you talk about, what you eat and drink, what you buy or sell, what you are working on, the places you visit, the people you meet, the things you read, see and hear around you and of course what you yourself think.

What to include:

You should include a brief self portrait: your age, where you live, whether you are married or single, your present job or occupation if you are working and any other information that you think is important to record. We need this as background to your diary.
If 12th May was a typical day for you please say so. If not, please say why it wasn’t. Any reflections on the day and on how you felt while keeping the diary always welcome.
So that we can add your diary to the rest of the Archive for the future, please include the statement below at the end of your diary. If you don’t attach this statement, we won’t be able to keep your diary or make it part of the Archive.

“I donate my 12th May diary to the Mass Observation Archive. I consent to it being made publicly available as part of the Archive and assign my copyright in the diary to the Mass Observation Archive Trustees so that it can be reproduced in full or in part on websites, in publications and in broadcasts as approved by the Trustees”.

How to submit:

Anyone can keep a diary but it must be in electronic form. They can be sent as emails or as attachments (preferably word documents). Send them to - moa@sussex.ac.uk

Apologies to readers not in the UK for the UK specific post. Maybe there are similar projects elsewhere in the world, does anyone know of any? If so please share as I'd lvoe to hear about them.

When work and hobbies collide

2011-05-03T21:48:00.000+01:00

In my new quest to become a sewing wonder and make my own clothes, I have started off with doing repairs. Imagine my surprise when repairing a vintage dress I bought in Los Angeles to discover that it was Union Made! Now this may not be that unusual to see on clothing labels, I don't know, but what is so unusual about this for me is how eerily it related to my new job cataloguing the Archive of the National Union of Women Teachers. So it just seems incredibly serendipitous that the label on my dress says 'Int. Ladies Garment Workers Union - Union Made'. Of course I couldn't leave it at that, I had to do a bit more digging and find out about the ILGWU.

On the second page of google results (or the first page if you go through wikipedia entry) is the link to the ILGWU Archive, held at the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives at Cornell University Library. I mention the ranking in google as I feel that the archive catalogue description should be right up there on the first page, as it's the primary source of information about the union. The information I've included about the union here is taken from the organisation history included on the catalogue description. The ILGWU was formed in 1900 in New York City by a variety of immigrant groups, Jewish, Italian, Scots-Irish and Irish, working in the garment industry. Like the NUWT there was a lot of resistance to the Union but by 1917 they were more powerful and had brought about a great deal of improvements for their members including improved working conditions and unemployment benefit. I was just cataloguing records today which listed the impressive achievements of the NUWT, including the part they played in gaining equal franchise for women, equal superannuation and pension rights, and of course, their objective - equal pay for women teachers.

There's no point in me just copying out the text from other articles, here and here, where you can read more about the achievements of the ILGWU and some of the horrific events which highlighted the terrible working conditions in place at the time. However the story of the Triangle Waist Company fire in New York. This was a sweatshop employing 500 people on the ninth floor of a building at Washington Square East. When a fire broke out on March 25 1911 there was nowhere for the employees, mostly women, many girls as young as 14, to go. They were unable to open the fire escape or other exits and of the 500 workers, 146 perished that day, either in the fire or jumping from the ninth floor. Afterwards workers claimed that the owners had locked all the doors to prevent theft, and this was apparently common practice at the time. The ILGWU proposed a day of mourning and, along with other unions, formed a Joint Relief Committee to help those suffering because of the fire. The company Blanck and Harris were acquitted of any wrongdoing despite the testimonies of all those who survived that they were locked in the building. Even just writing this now I'm getting shivers up my spine and tears in my eyes just thinking about it, and getting mad as well - how is it that those in power will always get away with their actions for the sake of profit.

I got the information on the Triangle Factory Fire from an online exhibition at Cornell University to mark 100 years since the fire. This is a fantastic exhibition with lots of examples of the primary archive material about the fire and all laid out in a very accessible way.

Who would have known I could learn so much from repairing a dress!

Diaries as film source in Meek's Cutoff

2011-05-01T08:03:00.003+01:00

Last night I finally got to see Meek's Cutoff. I was determined to get to see it at the cinema as the descriptions of the scenery and shots in the reviews I'd read sounded stunning and I wasn't disappointed. Every single shot looked perfectly placed and I kept thinking of paintings as I was watching it - for example the mustard and blue of Millie's clothes really brought to mind Vermeer's 'Girl with a Pearl Earring'. The lighting was wonderful as well, the colours were muted in most of the film which emphasised the barren and dry landscape they inhabited.

Even before reading reviews I knew I wanted to see this film, firstly because it is directed by Kelly Reichardt, the director of Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy, both of which I really enjoyed, although some of the scenes in Old Joy did make quite uncomfortable viewing. On a side note there's a really good video essay on the scenery in Old Joy over at Fandor. Also the presence of Michelle Williams is always going to interest me as she picks some very quirky and interesting films, and she is just so super stylish too! However what I wanted to focus on here was an aspect that really intrigued me - the influence of diaries written by pioneer women on the director and, Jon Raymond, the scriptwriter. Here's an example (from SodaPictures):

"When researching MEEK'S CUTOFF we were reading a lot of diaries from the period. Of course, the women were the diary keepers and the diaries offer such a specific take on the history. It's a very different tone and point of view than what we see in the Hollywood Western... The other thing you get from the diaries is the loneliness women felt. I remember one woman writing that she was keeping a diary in case her husband should ever want to know her. On the one hand you're never really alone and have no privacy on the trail and yet you’re incredibly isolated, too. The exceptions seemed to be the friendships the women formed with each other.
You also get the sense that the diaries are the only thing besides the weather that mark the passing of time. The journey seems trance-like with each long day bleeding into the next. These are some of the things we tried to get across. The stillness, the silence and the super unforgiving and dynamic landscape."- Kelly Reichardt

From reading other reviews and interviews I realise that the diaries were inspiration rather than literal source material for the story and it just really interested me to see the amount of research that was put into the film. I spent so long cataloguing Lindsay Anderson's diaries for whom they seemed to serve myriad purposes - discussing the progress on whatever film or play he was working on, working out ideas, venting steam at people who annoyed him, noting his always continuing battle with his waistline, what he bought at the supermarket that day, but also, sadly, they also seemed to serve as his closest confidant and friend. In addition to sometimes feeling like an intruder reading such personal thoughts his diaries also made me quite sad at times, to think that they were the best (or only) place he felt he could confide. Kelly's memory from one of the diaries she read, that 'one woman was keeping a diary in case her husband should ever want to know her' echoes this use of the diary as a remedy or tonic for loneliness. It also brings up the issue of whether or not people write their diaries with the hope that others might read them.

Which leads me on to a few really interesting diary related projects I've been reading about recently. I heard about Her Five Year Diary thanks to Casey's Elegant Musings
and I've been enjoying reading it since. Sara, the creator of the blog, found the diary at an estate sale and was intrigued. The diary is from 1961 - 1965 and from reading the entries she knows the diary writer was a female teacher in a deaf school in the Seattle area. She wrote an entry every day for 5 years so Sara is now posting each day's diary online. I love the idea of this and I think all the mundane everyday things are as interesting as special events.

The other diary related project is a current project running at West Yorkshire Archives Service's where they are using Local History Month to highlight all the diaries in their Archive. On their blog they discuss the huge variety of types of diaries they hold, from the everyday lives of people in the area, for example a farming diary from Bottom Boat Farm, to the diaries of soldiers posted abroad, to diaries from peoples holiday travels. You'll be able to see the exhibition at all the Archive centres in West Yorkshire but for those who can't make it then you can read about it on their blog, Catablogue.

I don't keep a diary myself, though I do enjoy reading other peoples, when I'm cataloguing them, or reading about other people's projects with diaries, and also in published form. Does this mean I'm nosy - I prefer to think it just means I've picked the right profession where I can get paid to indulge my interests on other people's news!

Archives selling on eBay

2011-04-26T08:23:00.001+01:00

I saw this posted on Ephemera - an original 1937 Dr. Seuss lithograph. I checked and it sold for just over $100. The seller on eBay states that this was one of a year's worth of images which Dr. Seuss a.k.a. Theodor Seuss Geisel, created for the Thomas D. Murphy Calender Company and that this particular image was never distributed or publicly used. So it has come directly out of the archives of the Thomas D. Murphy Calendar Company. Part of me thinks what a shame, that these original illustrations are being sold off individually, rather than preserved as an archive, of the Calendar Company's work, or even as a smaller collection just of Geisel's work for the company. However at the same time I'd love to own an original Dr. Seuss illustration and I hope the individual who bought it will get lots of enjoyment out of it!

The reason this post on Ephemera stuck out for me is that I'm currently reading 'Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel - a Biography' which I'm really enjoying. The acknowledgements in the book begin with thanking Librarians and Archivists throughout American and British Institutions. The authors also acknowledge the invaluable insights gleaned from other personal archives - the letters of friends and relatives, and interviews they conducted with his friends and relatives. All this use of archival sources really shines through in the book, even at this early stage of reading. The research is meticulous and highly detailed, luckily without being dry! At the moment we're in 1930s New York, the Wall Street crash has just happened and times are changing from the optimism of the 20s, though at the moment the fortunes of Dr. Seuss are still on the up and up. I love biographies as not only do you get an insight into the life of someone you admire (well in my case it's usually someone I admire, a musician/artist/writer), but you also get an insight into a way of life, a particular society, particular time. In this case his experience growing up in an immigrant German community during WWI, and now New York in the 1920s and 1930s and who knows what's still to come!

Researcher's Tales at the BFI

2011-04-21T08:55:00.001+01:00

Monday was the first time I went to a 'Researcher's Tales' evening at the British Film Institute Library and Archive on Stephen Street. I've been wanting to go for ages but would never have been home from work in time before - it's so great now that I'm both living and working in the same city! Researcher's Tales is billed as "An occasional series of informal discussions for BFI National Library members in which leading writers, historians and practitioners in film, television, artists' film and the moving image reflect on their past, current and future work."

It was such a great evening - the talk by Laura Mulvey and Mark Lewis was fascinating, and the clips they used to illustrate their points were great. They talked over each other at times, contradicted and corrected each other but that was all part of the dialogue and you really got a feel for the regard and affection they have for each other. The talk was about Rear Projection - a film technique which I recognised but hadn't heard the term for before. Basically for anyone else like me who hasn't heard the term used, it means that the stars are shot doing their scene in a studio with the scene itself e.g. the landscape, city scape, ocean etc projected behind them on a flat screen. I'm sure everyone can think of at least a few examples from films they know but what I hadn't realised was just how widely used it was, particularly from the early 1930s through to the late 1950s. Laura and Mark recalled how they first began talking about, and discovering their mutual interest in this under theorised and under discussed area of cinematic history. Laura was showing Mark one of her favourite films - the 1930 film Her Man and although Mark was uninterested in the initial aspect Laura wanted to show him he was intrigued by the use of rear projection. This started the dialogue and research which they discussed on Monday night as they "realised that rear projection had an intrinsic aesthetic interest of its own and that its very artificiality, its lack of transparency, brought with it a certain 'modernist' self-consciousness". You can read more of their views on rear projection here.

We were also privileged to see clips and segments from a number of films by Mark Lewis. These films were fantastic, particularly Backstory (2009) and Molly Parker (2006). I really enjoyed the Researcher's Tales and am looking forward to making it to more of them in the future. You have to be a member of the BFI Library in order to go but that's fine by me too - going back to the Library at Stephen Street for the first time in ages reminded me of what a special place it is. I so hope they change their mind/the finances change and they don't move it, as proposed, to the much smaller space in the exhibition room at BFI Southbank.

N.B. The clip that they showed from Her Man was copied from Laura's VHS copy of the film. Mark referred to the poor quality of this but said it was all they could get as the original film has been destroyed and there aren't any copies of it in archives. I had a look online and it seems you can get it on DVD but these are poor quality copies, probably also from VHS, which I think people can sell now as the film is in the public domain - though I'm not sure if that's just in America or worldwide. It made me think again of film archiving, obviously not all films can be preserved, or indeed merit being preserved - however, how much of what is saved and what is lost is often down to chance.

New York Downtown Scene 1970s - exhibition at the Barbican, London

2011-04-21T08:13:00.003+01:00

I realised I tantalisingly mentioned the Barbican exhibition at the end of my post of my new job, then got so excited about the Researcher's Tales at the BFI that I forgot about the Barbican. However, it definitely was only temporarily forgotten as it was such a breathtaking exhibition that I'm actually hoping I've got time to go back!

View of 'Floor of the Forest', Barbican

'Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown and Gordon Matta-Clark - Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York, 1970s' is on until 22 May and I would recommend it to anyone in or visiting London. It was the last exhibition I went to see with a friend who's since moved back to Israel (if you're reading this, I hope you make it back to London soon!) and what a lovely day we had. It was lovely and sunny, we saw this exhibition, wandered around the Barbican complex, saw part of the original wall of London, then went to meet other friends in 'The Book Club' pub in Shoreditch - a packed and fun day!

I've read so much about New York in the 1970's, in Tim Lawrence's fantastic biography of Arthur Russell Hold On To Your Dreams, in Patti Smith's Just Kids, and most recently in City Boy by Edmund White. So I'd heard of Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown and Gordon Matta-Clark without ever having seen or experienced their work. As the title states the exhibition is about their work in New York in the 1970s and it covers dance, performance art, photography, film - but none of them in quite such a straightforward way as that makes them sound. For example Gordon Matta-Clark's cut outs of buildings - at first I thought, yes interesting, replica's of sections of dilapidated buildings, however... they weren't replicas, it was actual sections of buildings! He had taken photographs of the cut-outs and it was just such a painstaking looking process and so clever, I loved it! I read a good post about him here, which is also where I got the image below from.

Interior view of conical intersect

We were lucky to arrive just in time for 'Walking on the Wall' a performance piece by Trisha Brown. This really played with your sense of perspective and space and was spell-binding and fun to watch. The performances are on every day - if I go back I'd love to see Floor of the Forest! Laurie Anderson's performance pieces which she had photographed were so much fun as well, for example there was one series of photographs of her lying in various places, on a bench, in a train station, on a beach. The premise was to see if sleeping in different places altered her dreams.

There were a large number of film pieces by Gordon Matta-Clark and Trisha Brown and whilst I really enjoyed all of them they also brought out my archivist side as the quality of some of them was great, they'd obviously been preserved, there were others which were really very grainy and quite difficult to make everything out clearly. That made me very sad as anyone who sees these works could see how deserving of preservation and care they are. Though I guess at the time if the artist just kept a print themselves, maybe in a loft or cupboard then the chances of it being well preserved are less. It was just so much fun to see them all though that the quality was really of minor importance to the effect and the experience!

Having read so much about the music scene in New York it was great to see another side to the New York of the 1970s - I know at the time it would have been edgy, no doubt dangerous, and pretty poor too - but I'd still have loved to have experienced it!

Tree in blossom outside the Barbican

New Twitter account for Archives project

2011-04-18T15:56:00.000+01:00

Just a brief post to say that I have now set up an NUWT Twitter account specifically for my new job cataloguing the records of the National Union of Women Teachers. It's a project I'm really excited about and I'm already finding lots of really interesting material in the Archive so am looking forward to sharing it through Twitter, and hopefully soon enough, through a dedicated NUWT blog.

Equal suffrage demonstration in Lowestoft, Suffolk
©Institute of Education Archive

New Cataloguing Archivist post

2011-04-12T09:22:00.000+01:00

I've just started a new job in the Archive at the Institute of Education, London. It's another project job - this time for fourteen months - and I'm loving it already! My job is to catalogue the records of the National Union of Women Teachers (NUWT). The NUWT was founded in 1904 as the Equal Pay League and in 1906 it was re-named the National Federation of Women Teachers. In 1920 it broke away to form an independent union, the National Union of Women Teachers. I wrote a post about my first impressions and first finds over at the Newsam News blog (the blog of the Institute of Education Library and Archive) so I won't repeat what I've said there except to say that the variety of subjects covered in the archive sounds very exciting, a perfect example is the poster shown below for the 'World Youth Conference' held in Prague in 1947. The correspondence, pamphlets and posters for this conference were so filled with optimism and hope for the future, for a new peaceful future, that was wonderful to read. Though at the same time quite sad that the optimism and hopes for peace are still just that, optimism and hope.

World Youth Festival pamphlet,
UWT/D/28A/2 ©Institute of Education Archive

From what I've read so far the NUWT was filled with strong, independent females and finding out more about them is going to be a pleasure, and a privilege to get to do s part of my daily work! I've got lots of plans for free publicity I can do and connections and links that can be made with other archives and other organisations, in fact I even had a dream about my plans, on a Friday night - a bit strange granted, but I wouldn't have it any other way, better to over-think and enjoy my work than the other way around. I think I'll be keeping the majority of posts about the project confined to the Newsam News blog but I'm sure the occasional one will stray over here. I'm still going to keep this blog up though as there's plenty of other archive related events I can talk about, like a recent exhibition I went to at the Barbican...

more reflections on working in a film archive

2011-03-29T16:52:00.000+01:00

I've been thinking more about what I've learned whilst working at Wessex Film and Sound Archive, and the things I listed in my last post on the subject. One thing I didn't really touch upon but which is really the biggest revelation for me was that maybe my idea that a film archive is where I want to work in the long-term isn't necessarily as set in stone as I thought.

For years my ultimate goal in terms of where I would like to work long-term is in a film archive. However after my, admittedly very limited, experience of working for five months in a film archive I realised that without all the paper records and research I'd be lost! I understand that when films come into a general archive (such as John Grierson films at the Stirling University Archive) then it makes sense to pass them to a specialist film archive where they will have the skills and equipment to look after the films and make them available. However this often means separating the films from the paper records that tell us about the creation/inspiration behind the films. Again I understand this, specialist film archives don't have the space to look after all the paper records relating to the filmmaker. Obviously they'll keep accession records relating to the films, and in WFSA there are also paper records created by the filmmakers or their families, such as cataloguing notes, photographs, biographical information. However these paper records are considered secondary to the films, which in a way they are, although in my view they're also essential in understanding the context of the creation of the films. A qualification I'll make here is that as a project worker, I know I have had the luxury of full-time devotion to cataloguing which of course means much more time to research each film, including looking at the related paper records. If I was a permanent member of staff at WFSA, or in any Film archive, there would be so many things competing for time, such as enquiries, researchers, administration tasks, reports, funding applications etc. Also, from the other direction, if the filmmaker is well known and their films are available on DVD then it isn't necessary for those working with the paper records of the filmmaker to have access to the original films themselves... Unless, of course, the films have been cut/altered. Or also, as with the Lindsay Anderson Archive at Stirling University, there are so many unmade films discussed in the paper archives that of course you would never know about if you were only looking at the films themselves. It seems like every line I write here has at least one qualification so I guess it indicates that my mind is still a bit muddled.

Ultimately working in a film archive has just convinced me even more of my love of archives, film and paper, and my ambition to continue working with both - yes, I want to have my cake and eat it!

I am enjoying my four days off now before I start my new job (which I will post about once I start) and have more nice plans for my time off. Spending some time with a friend before she moves home (it's great to have time to spend with her, and am excited for her plans for the future, but of course it'll be bittersweet too as having only just lived in the same city again for 6 months I'm going to miss her!) One of my other plans is to continue the sewing/crafting I have started with the draft excluder I made. Now, given that it took me months to make then it isn't a very auspicious start but I hope that my sewing skills, and my concentration/dedication will improve as time goes on. In order to give myself a kick-start I thought I'd start another blog for my crafty goings-ons and inspirations - however I've yet to come up with a name for said blog, yet again not a very good start - and... I haven't done anything crafty!

I've got back into cooking the past two days instead. Yesterday was Refried Beans and Smoked Mackerel Tostadas, courtesy of Thomasina Mier's excellent book, Mexican Food Made Simple', which turned out great, as all the recipes from her book have. Today I've just finished making Chana Daal and Saag Paneer - of course, it's important to taste as you go along so I can already confirm that dinner tonight is going to be a good one. Maybe I'll get started on a crafty/sewing project on Thursday!

The perks of being a cataloguer/researcher.

2011-03-27T16:59:00.001+01:00

In my last week at Wessex Film and Sound Archive (WFSA) me and Zoe Viney had a research trip to Salisbury. We timed it perfectly, picking the sunniest day of the week to go! I hadn't been to Salisbury before and Zoe hadn't been in years so we did a bit of exploring whilst we were there.

The reason for your visit was to try and gather more information on Eda Moore, an amateur filmmaker from Salisbury whose films are held in WFSA. I love her films as they cover a wide date range, from the 1930s through to the 1970s/1980s and cover a wide range of subjects. The films which we catalogued though were all about Salisbury. This was because the project 'Revitalising the Regions' is all about films from Hampshire and the surroundings regions, including Dorset. Her films about Salisbury show local events, carnivals, parades, processions etc such as the clip shown below.

She also filmed her travels, including many visits back to South Africa. Unfortunately due to the nature of the project I was employed on, I couldn't really justify spending time sitting watching all of these but I did have a peak at a few of them and wish I'd had time to watch them all!

Eda Moore herself, though, was proving a good deal more elusive than her films. We couldn't find out much biographical information about her at all. So, a trip to Salisbury was called for - oh the hardships of being a film cataloguer/researcher! The first stop was at Salisbury Local Reference Library where we found lots of useful information, mostly through an obituary for her we found on the microfilm for the Salisbury Journal. We found the obituary because Zoe had found out her date of death through Ancestry - I'm ashamed to admit that it hadn't occurred to me to use something like Ancestry, some archivist eh!?

Our next port of call was Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum, whom I had been in touch with via e-mail. They had informed us they had a box of archive material about Eda Moore's father, Francis John Moore, who had been Mayor of Salisbury 1953/1954. They suggested we might want to look through the material as it included a large book compiled of press cuttings. Another confession - I totally forgot to get in touch and set up an appointment so we just popped in when we were there. Terrible I know, just dropping in like that, but thankfully the staff there were super friendly and helpful! We had a walk round the museum (which I'd highly recommend) sat outside Salisbury Cathedral for lunch and then got to look through the material. It proved very illuminating and gave us lots of useful information - my favourite nugget was a page written by Eda Moore herself where she talks about carrying her Bolex around in her handbag with her. I love it! I have this image now of this very genteel lady, going to official events at the invite of her father the Mayor, all the while having her camera in her bag so she could film!

Whilst in Salisbury we also fitted in a visit to the Cathedral which was absolutely beautiful, both inside and out. My photos, as usual, don't do it justice. It was so satisfying to be able to fill in some gaps in the story of Eda Moore before finishing up at WFSA. I'm going to miss my colleagues, and the films of course!, but I know I can keep checking out the WFSA Flickr to see what's new.

2011-03-22T19:00:00.010Z

Today was the first day of my last week at Wessex Film and Sound Archive(WFSA) before I move on to pastures new (more of that in a later post once I start the new job!). My post at WFSA was only a six month post and I'll be leaving it four weeks early but having completed all the work I was scheduled to do, in addition to all the extra work me and Zoe Viney have done on promoting and project and the Archive.

What have I learned?

Cataloguing films isn't different from cataloguing paper documents in terms of the description of the material i.e. keep it descriptive, don't use words the general public couldn't understand (unless you also provide a glossary), include as much contextual information as possible given time and availability of information constraints, include all the ISAD(G) elements
Knowledge of the variety of film and audio formats and knowledge of how to identify and differentiate between them
I've learned more of the quirks and functions of CALM as I've continued using that at WFSA
The wonders of Excel! - it is fantastic for keeping and managing timetables and deadlines. I can now use an Excel spreadsheet, and create one, with a lot more confidence - thanks Zoe!
I have been working on a Mac so have greatly increased my knowledge of using that, including simple things like learning how to take screenshots
I've installed and used DROID - Digital Record Object IDentification
I've learned how to edit film clips using Quicktime
Experience of using an 8mm projector
Plenty of experience now of using a Steenbeck - which I love!
Splicing film, adding leader tape
An awareness of the various ways and places in which archive film can be utilised, such as the Little Black Dress exhibition in Portsmouth
More experience of carrying out research - into film locations and film makers.
I now have knowledge of Hampshire, Dorset, Isle of Wight - and lots of places which I would now like to visit in person, as opposed to just seeing on film
Increased experience of the ways in which Twitter and Flickr can be used by Archives to promote specific projects and Archives in general.

Louis Vuitton & Paris

2011-03-21T22:30:00.000Z

As a Christmas present my husband surprised me with a trip to Paris which we went on at the end of February. I've only been to Paris once before, it was January and freezing, and I didn't have much of a plan really, except to go to the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. So this time we made lots of plans! I am guilty of always overestimating how much can be done in a day and then trying to fit it all in anyway so this time I tried to be more realistic.

The l'Orangerie had come highly recommended by a number of friends, including Zoe at McGill Duncan Gallery so that was high on my list, as was the Rodin Museum, recommended by my Gran as a highlight of her visit twenty or so years ago! Surprisingly, the other place at the top of my list was an exhibition about Louis Vuitton, I say surprisingly as I'm not exactly a high fashion devotee. I found out about the exhibition here. All I knew about Louis Vuitton was that lots of people seem to have Louis Vuitton embossed handbags which say nothing to me about fashion and everything about how much money they want people to think they've spent on said bag. Oh, and at the other extreme, the beautiful luggage seen in Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Unlimited (one of the highlights of a disappointing film).

Photograph my own.

However this exhibition, at the Musee Carnavalet, has completely changed my perceptions of the company and brand. The company began in 1834 in Paris with the first store opening in 1854. The exhibition goes deeply into the history of the company and the aims and beliefs of the Vuitton family who set up and ran the business. Interestingly even from the beginning there was a real awareness of history, of archiving their own history and looking further back into history, as tools for marketing and promotion. I think it was his son who researched and wrote a history of luggage through the ages and in addition to items deigned by Vuitton the exhibition also included examples of sources for inspiration for some of the designs. There were so many stunning examples of suitcases, vanity cases, tea cabinets, travel wardrobes etc but unfortunately you couldn't take photographs - which, given my complete lack of photography skills is no huge loss - instead I will share with you this promotional video for the exhibition. One of my favourites was a suitcase filled with hairbrushes, all of which fitted exactly into their own slots to stop them becoming dislodged in travel, and even better... when you looked at it upside down all the handles of the brushes made up a Manhattan skyline - genius! The exhibition was laid out beautifully as you can see in the video and I suppose it all works as very effective promotion for the company but heck, what's wrong with promotion when it's so enjoyable!

'Tweeter's' help in identifying building

2011-03-15T09:53:00.001Z

Last week I was cataloguing a film (AV260/30) by Alan E Turner, an amateur filmmaker from Romsey. The film was called 'West Country Holiday' and having a title is always useful, especially when it identifies the area shown in the film. Inter-titles are even more useful and luckily for us Mr Turner included inter-titles in most of his films. These are titles which appear throughout the film, usually indicating a change of location. In this particular film there was an inter-title Ilfracombe, followed by some footage of the seaside resort of Ilfracombe in the 1930s. The footage is lovely, showing lots of beautiful buildings, some great footage of the Lynton to Lynmouth Cliff Railway, and including this building shown in the image below. I tried with Google Maps, walking about the streets of Ilfracombe in Google street view, looking at tourist websites for Ilfracombe but I just could not identify this building.

I decided to try Twitter as this has been successful before in identifying buildings, particularly when we have the name of the town to help. This time I didn't even need to send messages to local tourist websites, I just posted the image on Twit Pic with a message on Twitter asking if anyone knew what this building was - you can see the response in the second image. People are so helpful - I posted the request for information on the 10th of March and the replies from two individuals both came in the same day!

It turns out the building is the Victoria Pavilion. It was built in the 1920s but in 1994 the decision was made that the costs to continue repairing it were too high and the building was demolished and replaced with the Landmark Theatre. I used various online sources to verify the identification of the building and gather information on it but I would never have found any of this without the help from our followers on Twitter. Or I should correct that, I might have found it, if I had been able to track down a book of old photographs of Ilfracombe but there just isn't that kind of time to devote to identifying one building so the use of social media such as Twitter are invaluable in this respect.

My thoughts on the UK Archives Discovery Network (UKAD) Forum on Wednesday 3rd March 2011

2011-03-11T15:05:00.000Z

My first visit to the National Archives – after getting slightly disorientated when I came out the station I eventually got on the right road and made my way to the National Archives. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect of the day – would it all be too ‘techy’ and over my head, would it be practical or theoretical, what would I be able to take away and apply to my work? One thing I certainly had not expected was the high attendance of the conference, I was expecting maybe 30 or 40 people not the 100 or so people that attended. There was a real buzz on arrival of expectation and enthusiasm which was just great. I felt slightly overwhelmed at first as it’s the first archive meeting I’ve been to since moving down to London and although the archives world is still relatively small it is of course a lot smaller in Scotland, so not so many familiar faces for me. However this was great as it was an opportunity to meet and chat to archivists and information professionals from all over, Scotland included.

The event was the first event organised by the UK Archives Discovery Network (UKAD) who describe themselves as “a network of like-minded archivists and other professionals working towards opening up archival data in order to promote the use of archives.” I liked the sound of this, had a look at the planned agenda for the day, and decided to sign up, and, the event was free – even better!

The day began.. with tea and biscuits of course! As anyone who knows me can attest I don’t function well until I’ve had my obligatory morning caffeine kick. The day proper began with two keynote speakers in the plenary session, John Sheridan (The National Archives) and Richard Wallis (Talis). Both these speakers talked about open data and linked data. The definition given of linked data, as I remember it, was information that is known about the information you have, and how to exploit this using the web. So basically how do we create the links between the information we have and other information about our information on the web. So far so straightforward. At least two speakers references Tim Berners-Lee’s ‘Five Stars of publishing data’ which i really like as a brief guide of 'what to do'.

* putting on web

** make it available as structured data

*** standardized format

**** URL’s to identify things

***** link data to other data, context

So, what I have taken away from the day? First off, as a side product of the actual presentations and workshops, I came away with a reaffirmed belief in the friendliness and enthusiasm of my colleagues in the profession because of the energy and enthusiasm of the day. I’m always banging on about how much I love being an archivist, well this day just reinforced many of the reasons why.

I also came away with some specific tips for increasing the profile of an institution, for example using Google Analytics; using URL’s which make sense & are relevant, & not using acronyms in URL’s; checking to see if there’s a Wikipedia entry for institution, if not, why not, and can we create one?

Importantly I feel I gained a deeper awareness of the importance of thinking about what we want to achieve with the use of social media. Do we want to attract the same users as would come through the door, are we targeting specific user groups at all or do we just want to promote generally? Is it about promotion or interaction, or both? Generally thinking of the use of social media in the same way you would any other activity i.e. formulating plans and aims beforehand.

The day ended with a great session by Teresa Docherty from the Women’s Library about the relaunch of Genesis. Genesis is a project which works as a portal allowing people to search across women’s studies resources in a huge number of locations – archives, libraries and museums across the UK. Teresa finished her talk with the sentiment that ‘lets get out data out and let people play with it. It’s time to have some fun!’ (paraphrased). I love this attitude as I think it’s too easy to get stuck in the trap that our Archive, or a particular set of records in our archive, would only be of interest to one set of users. One example I can think of from my own experience so far is artists coming in and doing projects in the archive and producing outstanding new work based on the archives. This ties into a point made earlier in the day by Alexandra Eveleigh that we are maybe too accustomed to thinking only of study and research in terms of use of our archive and we need to think of archives outside of this narrow definition for example the use of apps and gaming devices by museums. There were of course mountain of other topics discussed and areas covered, and far more eloquently than I could summarise, so here is a link to Slideshare where some of the speakers have uploaded their presentations:

Alexandra Eveleigh – Crowds and Communities: User participation in the Archives

Teresa Docherty – Genesis Relaunch

Richard Wallis – Linked Data

Jane Stevenson – A Return on Investment: Making the Data Work Harder

David Flanders – What Lies between Archives and the Future…

There are also some blog posts I've come across about the day - a great post by Bethan Ruddock at the Archives Hub and another on the SALDA blog.

So, the task now is to apply what has been learned, continue to be open and receptive to new ideas, and keep up the enthusiasm!

John Stezaker at the Whitechapel Gallery - collage work using archive images

2011-03-10T22:03:00.000Z

Last weekend- after a Friday and Saturday night at home I decided I had to get out and about on Sunday and do something, but, with so much choice in London what to do! I chose to go to the Whitechapel Art Gallery which I love anyway, but which also has an exhibition on which I'd been wanting to see for a while. The work of John Stezaker is collages which he creates from classic movie stills, old postcards and book and magazine illustrations and clippings. He puts these together in such a way that although you know instinctively that the image is wrong, in the sense that it's been altered, there is something about them that's so right. Often the images are lined up, for example in the image below he lines the faces in the movie still up with the edges of the cliff from the vintage postcard. I found this whole exhibition incredibly pleasing! It made me smile as I walked around it, which is always nice on a Sunday afternoon, and you could read so much into the images, but you could also just enjoy the act of looking, the new meanings and contexts created by mixing together these old images.

It's only on for one more week, finishing on Friday 18th March and I would highly recommend this to anyone who gets a chance to visit before it finishes. If I lived in the area it's something I would probably have gone back to more than once, in fact if I wasn't going away this weekend I think I'd be going back!

The most Inspirational Woman in my life - my Mother

2011-03-08T22:29:00.000Z

I've just realised that tonight - on International Women's Day - I spent my time doing things inspired by the most inspirational woman in my life, my mum, Christine Mackenzie. I finally finished a draft excluder I started making in January on the sewing machine which belonged to her. I think it looks pretty good - as long as you don't look too closely at the bad stitching on the finish. I used instructions I found on the Guardian website here. The main mistake I made was not sticking so closely to the instructions given about the width - I used up at least four large bags of rice to fill it, maybe necessary if you live in a cave but slightly excessive for a small under-door draft! I also think I should have picked a material with a smaller, more repetitive pattern, but that's purely aesthetic and to be honest given the cold weather this winter it's the function I'm more bothered about. It took me a while to work out which needle head to use on the sewing machine but luckily I still had the instruction manual so managed to work it out with the help of that.

I was amazed that I remembered how to thread it all up, having been shown on many occasions as a young girl by my mum. As a teenager I was always starting up art projects which my mum always encouraged - although invariably, any ones involving the sewing machine, she ended up finishing off for me. It is very comforting for me to use her sewing machine as it brings back so many happy memories, even the noise of the foot pedal bring back memories of sitting reading a book or watching TV in the living room, hearing my mum being creative in the other room - she was never one for sitting in front of the TV, always preferring to do something creative (maybe more than preferring actually, it was like an imperative, it was essential to who she was I think).

my draft excluder

I'll never live up to my mum's inspirational and creative work on the sewing machine but it's going to be nice to use the same machine to (hopefully!) make clothes that my mum used to make such beautiful art work - such as the first image here, an early work of a farm just across the fields from the house we grew up in in Eaglesham. Believe it or not this is just a scanned image of a photo of the work - the texture has come through so well! This photo of the piece, mounted on board and with explanations would have been done for the classes she taught. This archive of my mum's work, the samples she did, the explanations she gave, is something I want to collect, along with photos of her finished art works, on a website - a project for this year I think.

The mermaid is a more recent work and I absolutely love it - the colours, the skill and detail in the stitching, the romance and mythology of the boat on the water and the Gaelic text (which I know I have a translation of but can't find right now).

After that I made pancakes - large crepe style ones rather than scotch ones. It brought back lots of happy memories of making them with my mum and for my mum. I remember on pancake day when we were younger and both me and my mum were vegetarians, and my brother just fussy, that we would make 'savory' pancakes - filling the with grated cheese - followed by sweet pancakes - filled with Golden Syrup and maybe a bit of cream. Tonight though I stuck to the traditional lemon and sugar for me and Oliver.

The recipe for the pancakes I made tonight came from the Glasgow Cookery Book, Centenary Edition. But the history of the Glasgow Cookery Book and the inspirational women behind it is definitely a story for another blog post! if you can't wait for that and want more information then you can find out more about the history of the book at Glasgow Caledonian University Archives and about the centenary edition here.

I hope everyone else has had some positive thoughts, actions and memories on International Women's Day.

Where private and professional meet - or should do.

2011-03-07T14:28:00.003Z

Yesterday I was reading Saturday's Guardian and was very happy to find an article The Rise and Rise of Family Photographs about the issues of personal archiving, appraisal, and digital obsolescence of family photographs. However as I continued to read through the article I got this awful sinking feeling in my stomach, the knowledge that I might have done something which is bad as both a family member, and, as an archivist. [takes a deep breath]... I think when I was clearing out my mum's house I may have chucked out a whole paper bag full of family photos. Now to qualify this slightly, they aren't my immediate family photos as in my Grandparents/Great Grandparents, they are photos which my mum got when she was helping to clear out the house of a Great Aunt. None of the photos had any names, dates or places on them and my mum didn't know who most of the people were in them. She did say a few times that she hoped to get round to trying to put names to at least some of them, but sadly she passed away before she could do this. I did however keep a leather envelope which contains photos belonging to the same Great Aunt and, given that these were selected and kept in better storage, it suggests they were considered of more importance, or maybe just the best of the collection. So, in retrospect maybe what I did, or may have done (as I haven't quite got round to going through everything that I packed up from my mum's house yet so am still unsure whether I merely packed the photos away) maybe it isn't so bad after all. I've still got a selection of the photographs, which were considered important, and I wouldn't have been able to put names to any of the faces anyway.

I've got two boxes full of me and my brother's family photographs with our parents and grandparents, the majority of which are in albums but very few of which have dates or places attached. I think decisions have to be made, and to me, my immediate family photographs come first. Me and my brother will need to sit down and go through these photos, probably with our dad, in order to remember where many of them were taken. For example the photo below is me and my brother - but where? This could have been taken on a summer holiday, most likely Arisaig or Arran, though it doesn't look like Arran to me, or it could have been a day trip away, maybe Millport or Troon - in other words even these relatively recent photos are in desperate need of labelling if they are to stay relevant to our family.

When I was going through the bags of our family photographs in my mum's house there were also loads of envelopes of photographs in addition to the albums - I made the decision that I wasn't just going to carry all these on with me - I was going to make like a good archivist and sort and appraise them! I did this with my brother, which was a great experience in itself, reminiscing about childhood memories. We decided to remove all duplication, we got rid of lots of photographs of scenery with no people in them keeping only the best shots of a place. For example we went to the Isle of Skye many years in a row, each year taking similar photos of the Cuillins and the Old Man of Storr, so we picked the best ones and kept them, getting rid of the others. We also narrowed it down by getting rid of photos that were very similar, for example photos of my 8th birthday - just how many photos do you need of me and my friends standing round the table laden down with cakes and treats - answer, not as many as immediate instinct would have you keep. We then put all the loose photos in spaces in the photo albums - at this point my archival practices went a bit out the window to be honest. I just wanted to get them all in albums so the didn't get bent and torn in transit so I still haven't tried to date or label any of them. Reading the Guardian article has made me want to devote a day, with my brother, to going through and doing that - not only would it be useful, but it would be fun too!

I tweeted about the Guardian article last night then today when I checked the blogs I follow I found a really interesting post by Melissa Manon at ArchivesInfo 'Culling Family Photographs'. In her article she makes the very important point

"We really do not need to keep everything. We do not need to be afraid to determine what is unnecessary. We do not need to leave the "dirty work" for our descendants. If we do, eventually someone is likely to get frustrated and just throw the whole kit-and-kaboodle into the trash. Handing down a well-managed collection of personal papers and photographs to loved ones encourages them to treasure the items, keep up their maintenance, AND to value the family history that they embody."

These personal examples I've given really resonated with another point in 'Culling Family Photographs' -
"Label, label, label. If a photo is worth keeping, you should provide its back-story. Use a photo safe pen or pencil to record the name of the person, place, and/or event depicted. If there is a "story" to the image, supply as much as you can of that too." (ArchivesInfo, Culling Family Photographs, March 5 2011).
Her article is full of useful advice about the issues of archiving family photographs, including the very important issue of appraisal i.e. do you keep it or not.

From personal experience I, like Melissa, do take exception to the point made in the Guardian article by Michael Hewitt that in regards to uncertainties over whether something will be of value to future generations "The only answer, therefore, is to hang on to all of it, and let our descendents do the sifting." Having been put in this position I am determined that I am not going to repeat it!

Another thread running through the Guardian article was the issue of digital obsolescence. Michael Hewitt makes the point that -
"we all seem to need something approaching an information technology degree. It's a problem that will become increasingly common as we gradually entrust all our photos and home movies to digital media. Not just because of disk crashes. Format obsolescence won't help either... American Scientist recently dubbed this potential loss of generations' worth of photos and home movies the "digital dark age". We should, it says, all make an effort now to preserve them before it's too late."
There are so many issues encased in the worries over digital obsolescence, not least the fact that it is something which most people don't think about until they have a problem, for example their computer crashes and the files weren't backed up, or the files were only on the memory drive in the camera and the camera was stolen. Also in terms of labelling - ok you might give the photo a title but where do you put the additional information - generally this would be on Facebook, Flickr, Twitpic or whatever other platform is used to share the photographs. This means that the information about the photographs is detached from the photograph files themselves, and even if the files are backed up elsewhere is this metadata about them carried over with them? I know that personally I didn't, until now, think of what happens to all the cataloguing I add to photographs on Flickr - not just places, dates, etc but the URL's that I'll add in to photographs of exhibitions, as just one example. Then there are all the family photographs I haven't put up on Flickr that are just on my laptop and my camera - I should clearly have these backed up somewhere, but how do I add metadata to the photos? I don't know how to do that, I'm sure I could ask an archivist/IT friend but will I ever get round to it - I doubt it. My option is still to print off the most important photos and put them in envelopes. I have albums but as yet still haven't got round to putting any of the photos in them.

It really gave me a warm glow to read this article in the Guardian though - to hear the terms archiving and digital obsolescence, and the concepts of cataloguing and tagging, discussed in such a thoughtful way. Although I know I have a long way to go in terms of properly labelling and preserving my family photographs at least I feel aware of all the issues involved - now all I have to do is act on it and use my professional archiving skills for the benefit of my personal and family life!

An Oscar in the Archive

2011-03-01T16:55:00.002Z

This was something I wrote when I worked at Stirling University Archives - I thought with the Oscars being topical right now I would finally get round to putting it up!

'An Oscar in the Archive', Kathryn Mackenzie, Archivist/Research Assistant, Lindsay Anderson Collection, University Archives, University of Stirling

One of the more unusual items found when the Lindsay Anderson Collection arrived at the University of Stirling was an Oscar statuette. The ‘Oscar’ was found in the Collection when it was being unpacked by the University Archivist, Karl Magee. The initial excitement at having found an Oscar gave way to a realisation that, going by the weight and material of the statue, it was highly unlikely it was an original! The Lindsay Anderson Collection now contained a fake Oscar rather than the real thing, but it is precisely this fact that makes the story so interesting.

Lindsay Anderson's 'Oscar'
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives

We knew from research into Lindsay Anderson’s films that he had won an Oscar, in 1954, for a film he co-directed with Guy Brenton entitled Thursday’s Children. Set in the Royal School for the Deaf in Margate this 25 minute film shows a group of deaf children in their classroom. The film is narrated by Richard Burton who describes the stories of the individual children and the learning process they go through to enable them to communicate. Thursday’s Children won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short in 1954. So, the question we faced now was, given that Anderson had won an Oscar, why was the one in the Archive a fake?!

LA/5/01/1/1/4 Letter from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to Brigitte Roelen (Lindsay Anderson's secretary), 17/08/1973
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives

It wasn’t until a few months later, whilst going through the correspondence, that this puzzle was solved. A letter from Lindsay Anderson’s secretary to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, dated 8 August 1973, was the first step in uncovering the story of the Oscar. She explains that the Award for Thursday’s Children was collected by Anderson’s co-director as Anderson was unable to attend. The letter is to enquire if it is possible for Anderson to receive a replica of the Oscar statue. The Executive Director of the Academy replied only a week later on 17 August 1973. He explained that “Our Board of Governors has established a long standing policy that no duplicate statuettes can be issued”. Well, this must have disappointed Anderson greatly, enough in fact that he discussed it with his friends. How do we know this? Because at a meeting of the Lindsay Anderson Memorial Foundation’ we found out it was friends of his who bought him a replica Oscar to fill the gap on his mantelpiece where the statuette should have stood! So we now knew the story behind the Oscar in our collection and, although a real Oscar would have been a wonderful addition to the Collection, I think the story the fake Oscar tells is far more interesting.

'Oscar' on display in the James Hockey Gallery, University College for the Creative Arts, Farnham
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives

The ‘Oscar’ and the letters to and from the Academy are now regular features in an exhibition ‘Is That All There Is? An exhibition of archive material from the Lindsay Anderson Collection’. This exhibition has been on display at the Changing Room Gallery in Stirling, The MacRobert Arts Centre at the University of Stirling and the James Hockey Gallery at the University College for the Creative Arts, Farnham.

(Originally written 14/08/2010)

Post Script:

The Oscar is now part of a new exhibition display Treasure from our Collections at the newly refurbished University of Stirling Archives and Special Collection

Fun with statistics

2011-02-23T14:45:00.002Z

Now, if you'd asked me any time up until this if I could have fun with statistics the answer would have been a very quick and very clear No! However I've since rediscovered the StatCounter account I set up when I started Archives and Auteurs and I am amazed to find myself idly browsing my blog's statistics. The reason I remembered about the account was thinking about the work Flickr I recently set up with Zoe Viney for the Wessex Film and Sound Archive. We couldn't find any way for collecting statistical information through Flickr beyond the basic page views information. I remembered about StatCounter and surprised myself by remembering my user name and password as well. It had still been running even though I haven't been logging in but as I hadn't added my new IP addresses (work and home) to the list of addresses not to count then I think my results might be slightly skewed. So, if anyone else is setting up StatCounter or any similar statistical service then it is always best to block your own computer's IP address so your figures are more accurate, unless your memory is really bad and you want to keep count of your own views of course.

The images I've included below show the breakdown by country of visitors to my blog over the course of last week, then the second one lists in more detail every country that views have come from. you can narrow this down to city as well. Other useful things you can check are which pages are the most popular, which websites people are directed to your site from, how long they stay (this can sometimes be a bit painful), and lots of other useful, or useless, information depending on your point of view/general inclination to nosiness.

What I found most useful was information on how people had found my blog - what terms they had searched for or what website they had come from. This made me think more about the tagging I use on my posts and I have resolved to try and be a bit more thorough in my tagging - treating it more like my actual cataloguing work than I have done in the past.

I haven't started using it yet for the WFSA Flickr account for two reasons, the first being I thought I would try it first with my Flickr account to see if it worked. With StatCounter, and I assume it is similar whatever software you use, you have to input the HTML code in to your profile on Flickr then add the web pages to your statistic software account. I'm find doing this with my own account but I was a bit unsure with the work one - does this give them access to other information on your Flickr account, do they have rights over the statistical data as it is displayed on their account? These questions are things I would rather investigate more fully before using it for workplace statistics - but for now I'll keep enjoying using it for my own web pages.

on Marginalia

2011-02-22T22:08:00.001Z

Thanks to a few links on Twitter I just got directed to an article in the New York Times 'Book Lovers Fear Dim Future for Notes in the Margins' (20/02/2011). The article doesn't discuss the issue of writing in the margins on digital books, except to quote G. Thomas Tanselle, a former vice president of the Kohn Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and an adjunct professor of English at Columbia University “People will always find a way to annotate electronically... But there is the question of how it is going to be preserved. And that is a problem now facing collections libraries.” I don't own a Kindle or other digital book so don't know if it is possible to write in the margins so to speak - does anyone else know, has anyone tried to do it?

What it does discuss is the history of marginalia, or writing in the margins of books. It gives various examples including a book The Pen and the Book about making a profit in publishing. the book in itself is not particularly valuable for it's original content, instead it is the notes in the margins that qualify it to be held in an Archive. The notes were written by Mark Twain and they include very scathing comments about the author, Walter Besant. Twain noted in pencil that "nothing could be stupider" in regards to Besant's argument that advertising could be used to sell books.

The Lindsay Anderson Archive holds Anderson's personal book collection and how I wish now that I'd spent a few evenings going through all the books in it more thoroughly for annotations as the ones I did find were great! The one I most remember is one that has been used by me and by Karl Magee (the University Archivist at Stirling). The book in question is Hollywood England: the British Film Industry in the Sixties, Alexander Walker, 1974. In one section Walker talks about the failings of British cinema to produce Auteurs 'Where in the period under review does one look for the British equivalent of Bergman, or Forman, or Rohmer, or Antonioni, or Truffaut of even Godard? The answer is, nowhere.'. In his characteristic red pen Lindsay Anderson has boldly underlined this and written in the margins in large red letters 'Thanks!' I'm sure there must be many more examples of marginalia in the book collection that I just didn't get to - one of the pitfalls of fixed-term contract work I suppose!

Thoughts on using Flickr for Archives

2011-02-22T16:13:00.001Z

Since last Friday me and fellow cataloguer Zoe Viney have been avidly following our Flickr statistics (really not as boring as it sounds!) and the publicity we did has had a huge impact on viewing figures. Just using mailing lists such as the Archives NRA list, Hampshire County Council lists, and our Twitter we had over 300 views by the end of the first day (last Friday, 18th February 2011) and as of five minutes ago we have 495 views - pretty good going for five days I would say! Even though I use Twitter every day, check my mailing lists every day and so on, I was still surprised by the high response rate to our postings. I think this illustrates the high value which such social networking tools as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr can have for an archive, especially in these difficult times of cuts and closures.

Our original aim was to create an online exhibition which would promote the project we are working on specifically and the Wessex Film and Sound Archive more generally. This was an additional outcome to the project rather than a core part of it so we had to do it for free, and without using up our cataloguing time. I had used Flickr before when I worked at Stirling University (see their Flickr here) so I knew how easy it was to set up and to upload images to. I had never used it to upload videos before but this isn't any different to uploading photos so doesn't take long at all. What I had thought would take longer was actually making clips from the digital copies of the films. However this was surprisingly straightforward using Quicktime to select then extract a short section of a film. The quality of the images varied hugely depending on whether we were doing screenshots from Quicktime files, DVD copies, or taking photographs of a screen showing a VHS copy with the Quicktime files giving the best quality still shots.

The exhibition is 'A Sense of Place' - let me know what you think of it and feel free to add any additional information or comments to the Flickr site. It is very easy to use Flickr and by using some free publicity, very easy to direct people to your site. However what seems to be a lot harder, well at least I've found it harder, is encouraging people to interact and communicate with the archives through Flickr. Our aim now should be to try to generate more user interaction, maybe by posting stills of places or people we can't identify - that's the next project to get started on!

Another thing - trying to set up an exhibition within Flickr, (we don't have Flickr Pro so can't use Collections, only Sets) was tricky. It was only due to Zoe's persistence with sorting out the links that it works (well, we think it works, let us know what you think). it took a lot of tweaking to get it so that we could create themes then link to a set of images from a particular film. Flickr Pro would help with this as you could create Collections, then Sets within the Collections - if the exhibition and our general use of Flickr proves to be a success then we hope that Flickr Pro is something the Record Office would consider investing in (not that it's a huge investment really, just $25).

I think this clip below shows just how much you can get out of a 1 minute 30 second clip - there is just so much going on at this market and fair! The film is titled 1939 - 1963 Then and Now as the filmmaker Eda Moore spliced together footage of Salisbury (her hometown) across this date range to show what had changed, and what had stayed the same.

AV509/3 - Eda Moore 1939 - 1963 Then and Now

Perfection is not an aim.

2011-02-20T18:11:00.002Z

Danny Boyle on David Lean "[Lean] dominates the British landscape in a way that I think is unhealthy really. He was a perfectionist and I'm not sure that the pursuit of perfection is what it's about really. I think it's about expression, not perfection... I find that perfection a little bit glossy at times really." (from an interview with Danny Boyle in the Guardian - I have searched online and cannot find the article this came from, I should ~~the~~ have kept the paper copy!)

I wrote this down at the time because it stuck in my head in reference to the Free Cinema Manifesto which Lindsay Anderson wrote:

“No film can be too personal…
Perfection is not an aim.
An attitude means a style.
A style means an attitude.”

Lindsay Anderson, Free Cinema Manifesto from the 1956 Free Cinema Programme

I'm with Lindsay Anderson and Danny Boyle on this one, perfection is definitely not what it's about!

New book on music collector Alan Lomax

2011-02-18T15:15:00.001Z

"It still remains for us to learn how we can put our magnificent mass communications technology at the service of each and every branch of the human family." - Alan Lomax

This aim was something that Alan Lomax worked towards his whole life, using technology to make field recordings of grassroots music, dance and song throughout America and abroad. He founded the Association for Cultural Equity to promote his belief that every culture has the need to express and develop its distinctive heritage. In addition to his position as an ethnographic music collector and then head of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress Alan Lomax was also well known as an author, folklorist, radio broadcaster, filmmaker, concert and record producer and as a television host.

This book The Man who Recorded the World about Alan Lomax is on my 'to buy' list for this year as I have a feeling it's a book that I'd want to come back to again and browse through. I have heard a lot about Alan Lomax, originally through my mum and her love of folk music, then I read America over the Water by Shirley Collins in which she travelled to America and worked as an assistant to Alan Lomax in his field recordings.

The Alan Lomax Collection is held at the American Folklife Centre. There is a huge amount of material from the Archive online on the AlanLomaxArchive YouTube channel.

Danger! Danger!

2011-02-17T13:11:00.000Z

Oh dear, the news that Liberty have opened a new stationery department in their store is something I've been trying to ignore but I. just. can't. do. it. anymore. - I've caved. I've looked at pictures, salivated over notebooks, wrapping paper, notelets etc and now I'm going to have to go visit! There's some particularly enticing photo's at The Women's Room. My husband has endured stationery shops throughout the world for me as I just can't walk past one without going in - though I think the Liberty experience may have to be undertaken alone so I can spend as long, and as much, as I like!

Image from the Liberty blog

Using Wordle for Archives

2011-01-14T15:05:00.005Z

Yes, I know I'm coming slightly late to the party but I've just discovered the fun of using Wordle for Archive Collections - it's great! At lunchtime today I've been experimenting with entering the text from a number of small film collections (such as the example below). This means that you get an overview of the main subjects, places and names which appear in these films. I haven't worked out yet if there's a way to stop a word from appearing more than once so if anyone knows if there is a way to do this then please let me know. As well as being eye-catching and nice to look at I think Wordle could be very useful, for highlighting the places or subjects which are discussed, or in the case of film archives shown, in a particular collection. It could also give a general overview of the content of an entire archive, a filmmaker, a particular project - anything you want to highlight from your collections really... it's also quite an enjoyable way to while away a hour or so!

The examples below are from the text of my cataloguing for four films by Antony Clover, an amateur filmmaker from Portsmouth.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-06T13:48:00.001Z

Happy New Year to everyone! I was thinking of writing a list of New year's resolutions but decided against this when I realised I hadn't done half the ones I set out last year. 2010 was a very busy year with lots of happy times, and some sad too. Here's to a year of new and happy experiences in 2011.

I don't have the TCM television channel but if I did I'd be tuning in on ~~Sunday 11th January~~ (it said Sunday 11th on their website but have just checked an online TV Guide and it is actually on Saturday 15th January at 1.10pm and again at 5am) as they will be screening Lindsay Anderson's The Whales of August (1987). This film is available on DVD but has never had a UK release so it can be difficult and pricey to get hold of. It is one of my favourite Lindsay Anderson films so this is as much of an excuse as I need to post a lovely photo of Lindsay Anderson with the wonderful Lillian Gish.

Lindsay Anderson and Lillian Gish on set of The Whales of August, LA/1/11/4/2
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives

'Revitalising the Regions' - reflections on my first month working in a film archive

2010-12-06T21:46:00.000Z

I should change the title to first six weeks as I started writing this post ages ago - as visitors to my blog will know my posts have been far from regular recently! With the move to London and the new job I seem to have got rather behind with my postings. My new job is just what I was looking for as it is a post as a film cataloguer. I knew when I did my Masters in Archives that I was interested in working in a film and sound archive but I think what I hadn’t was expected was just how much I have loved all my jobs since I qualified! I would consider myself a pretty positive person most of the time anyway but I can’t imagine how anyone could get bored with the variety of material you get to work with in an archive.

The Wessex Film and Sound Archive where I now work has its home in the Hampshire Records Office in Winchester. So, I now have a commute from London to Winchester every day – the opposite direction to most people. I really enjoy the commute though, I started writing this on the train one day last week but I often use the journey for an extra wee half hour snooze, or to read my book, or just enjoy the beautiful scenery passing by outside the window.

So, my new job: I am working on a project again, as a film cataloguer, this time on a six month post. I enjoy project work and for me it’s been a great way to start out in the profession, going from projects at Glasgow Caledonian University, to Stirling University and now on to Wessex Film and Sound Archive. Although with the way the cuts in the arts and cultural heritage sector are going I'm starting to get slightly worried about finding another job come next April!

The project I am working on ‘Revitalising the Regions’ is one strand of the larger Screen Heritage UK project, itself based on the Strategy for UK Screen Heritage which states that -

“The public are entitled to access, learn about and enjoy their rich screen heritage wherever they live and wherever the materials are held.”

I am working, along with fellow cataloguer Zoe Viney on cataloguing over 600 films which will then be put on the Screen Heritage UK Union catalogue. Some of the films we’re cataloguing already have some cataloguing information on them, others have very little, and many have nothing except one line of description. We have set fields we have to complete in order for the records to be exported to the Union Search catalogue, which covers information about the format and physical description of the film in addition to date, title, any information about the filmmakers, and of course description of the film itself. In addition to the set fields we are also adding in any additional contextual information to the films which we think could be useful to users.

My only experience of cataloguing films prior to this job was one afternoon, a very interesting afternoon, at the Huntley Film Archive (which I wrote about in an earlier post here). I was slightly apprehensive about beginning then but have found that the cataloguing process works in much the same way as with paper records, in fact, I'm not even sure why I would have thought differently as the main purpose of any cataloguing is to make the records more accessibly, understandable, provide context etc. whatever the format. What I have found difficult is the films which have sound as it's difficult not to write down everything in the commentary, and difficult to concentrate on the visual. Is this just me, that the aural takes over the visual when they are both together? It's made me think more about sound in movies, and about silent films. In a silent film, or one with limited sound, or even with only diagetic sound, the image is central, but maybe I'm not alone that once there is a soundtrack or commentary, it becomes hard to pull back and only concentrate on the visual? I'm really enjoying cataloguing the films as I'm learning so much about Hampshire, its history, landscape, industries, culture and people. I'm hoping to become a bit more regular with my posts again so I'll write more about specific films as I catalogue them.

My new workspace - with TV and VHS player to the right.
I also have a mouse mat map of Scotland for when I get homesick

Before I started work Zoe had already set up a Twitter account for us to chart our progress, document our finds, and ask for help if, for example, we can’t identify a particular building in a town, so we’ve both been posting to this on a regular basis. In addition to the Twitter account I’ll continue to write about my work on this blog.

This Sporting Life - sports book of the half century

2010-12-02T09:18:00.000Z

There was an interesting article about the novel 'This Sporting Life', by David Storey, on this morning's Guardian sportblog. The point is made that the depiction of Rugby, both the on and off pitch side, is as realistic a portrait as you will get. I knew when watching the film that it was pretty brutal, both on and off the pitch, but as a non-sports person with no knowledge of rugby I had no idea how true a depiction it was until it was pointed out to me in reviews of both the book and the film.

Here's an exert from the article by Frank Keating. The original article can be read here

"By nice coincidence, this modest commemorative hurrah to mark the half-century since the publication of the finest British novel about professional sport to be written by an actual professional sportsman coincides with yesterday's naming of Brian Moore as 2010's winner of the William Hill prize for sports book of the year.

In the 50 years since its first appearance in 60s' pre-Christmas bookshops, David Storey's This Sporting Life remains not only the best literary novel by a sportsman, but the only one...

This Sporting Life has stood the test of "classic" category; at the time the Guardian staffer and rugby league buff Geoffrey Moorhouse hailed the novel as "unique", adding that "an interest in rugby league is by no means necessary to appreciate this story, any more than a fascination with whaling has ever been vital to an enjoyment of Moby Dick"...

Indeed, only this very year, the novelist Caryl Phillips was acclaiming Storey in our books' pages as "the only author who knew what it was like to be raked and stamped on by opponents, and then patronised by the chairman over drinks in the boardroom, so only he could have written such a fiercely authentic account of the hypocrisies of British sporting life"...

The novel's uneasy love story of insecure anti-hero tough, Machin, and his world-weary landlady, Mrs Howard, earthily provides harrowing off-field narrative, but it is in the raw sporting passages where the reader can wince at the resonance of uncomfortable truths as in, to take a single example, this touchline gallop by the malcontent, joyless Machin...

In Robert Sellers's unputdownable new book Hellraisers, on the careers of various larger-than-life actors, the author quotes Storey on the first day's shooting of the film at Huddersfield's ground where the cynical local team, hired as extras, waited in a bored, heel-kicking cluster for Harris's entrance.

"They were at the other end of the pitch going, 'Oh, Jesus, look at this flower coming out.' Harris just took one look at them and ran down the whole pitch towards them. And as he ran, he got faster and faster until they suddenly realised with horror that he was going to run right into them, which he eventually did. It was that initial gesture of total physical commitment, indifference and carelessness, that caught the players' admiration and they really took to him in a major way."

For once a film was so faithful to its origins that it even enhanced the original novel's unfading and stimulating quality. Sports book of the half-century, you might even say."

The novel was first published in 1960 and the film, made by Lindsay Anderson, and starring Richard Harris, was made in 1963.

Lindsay Anderson and Richard Harris on set of This Sporting Life
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives

Happy St Andrew's Day!

2010-11-30T16:37:00.000Z

Today is St. Andrew's Day and although I am no longer living in Scotland, indeed perhaps because of it, St. Andrew's Day has made me remember all the things I love about my home country. The mountains, the forests, Glasgow, Fife fishing villages, Skye, the history, the arts and culture, and of course family and friends.

I liked this wee animation on Scotland.org which gives a brief history of the story of St Andrew.

I just posted a photo on my work Twitter as well - via our Twitpic. Zoe, the other film cataloguer I work with, set up the Twitter and we both use it to post stills from the films we're cataloguing. It's useful if we're stuck on identifying a place or building as we can post an image and get help from other people!
The photo I've posted, of the Forth Rail Bridge, is somewhere I'll be seeing soon as we're off back up to Fife at Christmas time.

I'm in the process of writing a longer post about my new job - which I'm really enjoying! - but the dark nights are holding me back as I struggle to get the laptop out and do any work when I get home! I'll get it finished and posted soon though.

Giving thanks

2010-11-25T22:28:00.000Z

This post is a slight departure from usual in that it has nothing to do with archives and not much to do with film.

I've been reading a lot of interviews with Apichatpong Weerasethakul recently about his recently released film Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives. The interviews have really struck me as, as well as coming across like a really nice guy, Weerasethakul makes some really simple but incredibly profound and meaningful statements. I just like his simple way of wording things and some of his words came to my mind yesterday when I got the terribly sad news that a friend of a friend had recently passed away. I knew Jose too and having seen him only a few months ago found the news very hard to take in. He loved Thailand and was planning to return there to live and work so it seems fitting that the words of Weerasethakul gave me some comfort.

This is the section that came to my mind when I got the sad news:

‘So, we are going to die right, you and I?’ opens Apichatpong Weerasethakul conversationally. ‘One day we are all going to turn to dust. But we will not disappear,’ he adds reassuringly.

‘We just integrate and transform into other things. In classical reincarnation you are reborn into another animal but I believe it’s more like an energy, what Buddhists call a transmigration of souls. The idea we connect with everything: with the sunlight, the Earth, the animals – we are all recycled. That’s what I’m interested in.’

It's not like I hadn't heard these ideas before, in fact it fits in with my beliefs, but I think to read it in the Metro newspaper on a crowded tube on the way to work just really hit home how powerful and how complex these simple sentiments really are.

To finish this post I though I would use a beautiful image which my mum drew, with some inspirational words from Thich Nhat Hanh which she used as the centerpiece. She used to have it hanging on her bedroom wall so she would read the words every morning when she woke. I don't have this up on our wall yet but I do try and remember to smile first thing when I wake up and give thanks in that way, through a quick thought and a smile.

So I just thought that on this day of Thanksgiving in America I would take the opportunity to write a few words to give thanks for love, for friendship and for this beautiful world we live in. Jose's energy will live on through his friends and family and all the people he has met along the way.

Rethinking Lindsay Anderson

2010-11-14T21:13:00.000Z

I am really looking forward to this evening 'Rethinking Lindsay Anderson' at the BFI Southbank on Tuesday 23 November. It will be a screening of a number of his early documentaries, including Idlers That Work (1949) (New Print), Henry (1955) (New Print) and Foot and Mouth (1955). I'm sure it will be really interesting to see these films, some of which I haven't seen before. I'm also really looking forward to the panel discussion with Walter Lassally (cinematographer who worked with Anderson on Wakefield Express, Three Installations, Thursday's Children, A Hundred Thousand Children, Henry, Green and Pleasant Land, Foot and Mouth, The Children Upstairs and Every Day Except Christmas), Erik Hedling (film scholar who wrote 'Lindsay Anderson, Maverick Filmmaker) and Lois Smith (a lifelong friend of Lindsay Anderson's who provided his entry into filmmaking by inviting him to make a film at the factory her husband ran (this film was Meet the Pioneers 1948).

Lindsay Anderson's 'O Dreamland' screening in London

2010-09-15T10:47:00.001+01:00

There will be a screening of Lindsay Anderson's O Dreamland next Thursday in London as part of a night of poetry, performance and film screenings under the banner of 'Plectrum Live Edition'. The event 'Plectrum Live Edition: Postcards from the Promenade' is organised by 'Plectrum - the cultural pick' - an arts magazine published on-line and bi-monthly in print. I heard of this event via The Horse Hospital - this is an arts venue in London. In their own words "The Horse Hospital is a three tiered progressive arts venue in London providing an encompassing umbrella for the related media of film fashion, music and art." Oh, so many things to explore when I move to London! Although unfortunately I'll miss this event as I'm travelling back up from London on the 23rd after a few days flat hunting and starting a film course at Lux - Opening up the Archive - a Guided tour of Artists Moving Image.

Here is some more information about the event which the screening of O Dreamland is a part of:

"Returning from a seaside summer holiday, the first Plectrum Live Edition of the autumn mixes postcards from the promenade and the view into the fairground fortune teller’s crystal ball, with fresh perspectives on the sights and sounds of London, to present an evening of author readings, film screening, live music, poetry, and more with Travis Elborough, Lindsay Anderson’s O Dreamland, Karen McLeod, The Vatican Cellars, and Benedict Newbery, hosted by Guy Sangster Adams."

Thursday 23 September at The Horse Hospital, Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD. Doors at 7.30 performances begin 8pm. Tickets £6 on the door.

Set in a funfair in Margate called 'Dreamland' Lindsay Anderson's 1953 film O Dreamland wasn't actually screened until the first Free Cinema programme at the National Film Theatre in 1956. A short film of 12 minutes which tours round the funfair showing the 'attractions' which in this film appear very bleak, and at times, sinister. The effect of the film is described brilliantly by Gavin Lambert in an article he wrote on Free Cinema:

"Everything is ugly... It is almost too much. The nightmare is redeemed by the point of view, which, for all the unsparing candid camerawork and the harsh, inelegant photography, is emphatically humane. Pity, sadness, even poetry is infused into this drearily tawdry, aimlessly hungry world."

N.B. The funfair at Margate is still there today although it closed in 2005.

N.B. If you are in a Library, College or University which has an account with BFI Screenonline then you can watch O Dreamland for free online at http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/438978/

A Lucky Find

2010-09-11T10:59:00.000+01:00

I'm just back from a week's holiday in Crete where we had a lovely time enjoying the beautiful scenery and lovely hot weather, eating tasty local food (including lots of fresh fish), and basically relaxing after the recent hectic time of the end of my post at Stirling University and celebrating my husband's new job and our imminent move to London - yay!

So on our return from Crete we're spending a few days in London exploring some of the areas we're thinking we might move to. Yesterday we were in Stoke Newington first which we both really liked but which is maybe not going to be feasible re commuting. Anyway we had fun exploring and of course doing a wee bit of shopping. On our wander we came across a lovely shop on Church Street which drew me in with the lovely array of vintage tea pots I could see through the window. They also had a great selection of prints, including reproductions of Cuban film posters. I wasn't planning to buy anything but when I came across this poster for Lindsay Anderson's O Lucky Man! (1973) I just had to buy it! The artist is Antonio Fernandez Reboiro and the poster is from 1977. I didn't want to take the poster out it's plastic until I get home so apologies for the poor quality of the image but the quality of the art work shines through I think.

I don't know much about Cuban movie posters but found a few interesting blogs that will start me off on a bit more reading when I get back to Glasgow - for now we're off to Borough Market for some tasty food!

Here are the blogs I came across:

Tales of a Cinesthete

Cuban Posters

Our new Archive space in the University of Stirling Library

2010-08-27T15:39:00.001+01:00

The newly renovated library building is getting all the finishing touches put in now - ready for the big opening on Monday 30 August. The new archive space is looking, and smelling great! Yes, I did say smelling - I had forgotten how much I love the small of an archive store! Hmmn, just brought to my mind Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore's "I love the small of napalm in the morning" when I wrote that line down - I guess to some I might sound a bit mad with my love of the small of an archive store, but hopefully not in the same league as Kilgore! The new search room is lovely and bright and spacious as you can see from the photos. I think the archival material we've chosen for the display cases (each shelf having its own theme) work really well and hopefully the staff and students will agree when we open on Monday.

Image from the archive

2010-08-25T15:02:00.000+01:00

Well I forgot my camera again today so no images of the lovely new archive. So, as a quick post I thought I'd share this striking image from a 1984 aerogramme sent to Lindsay Anderson. It is promoting the 1984 US Olympics (as you can see!) and there are quite a few of these in the collection, sent by different people. I really like all the bright colours and the design and I think it would be so nice to receive a letter dressed up like that. I was talking to someone last night about the lost art of letter writing - well actually not quite so lost, I don't think, as I know that me and my friends often write letters to each other, send cards, postcards and Cd's etc. There is really something so wonderful about receiving a letter that is quite different than online communication. I know people still use the post for communicating but only as one of many forms of communication and this is what is so exciting nowadays- the myriad of ways in which people can speak to each other.

Now I'm off back to the archives store to carry on with organising all the boxes in the Lindsay Anderson Archive - it's very satisfying to see it all in its new home!

Reaching the end of the project

2010-08-24T15:13:00.000+01:00

A week today will be my final day working at Stirling University on the Lindsay Anderson Archive and the 'Cinema Authorship of Lindsay Anderson' AHRC project. I'm excited about the new challenges the future will bring- including the immediate challenge of finding a new job! However after three years working with the archive I'll be incredibly sad to leave Lindsay (as I now think of him) behind. I feel like I've really come to know him over the past 3 years - though I know that this is in no way comparable to those who actually knew him during his lifetime. I also feel rather possessive of the archive - is this a common feeling amongst archivists when you work so long with one collection? I imagine so - but I know that it is in good hands at Stirling University, particularly now it will be housed in the lovely new Archive store (more pictures of the new archive to follow tomorrow as I forgot my camera today). London is calling though and I am super excited about the move to London with my husband to start a new stage in our life in a city which we both already love. For today though I better stop gabbing and get back to David Vaughan (yes, I'm on 'V' of the named correspondence files - not long to go now!). I did try and scan a rather lovely piece of sheet music which David Vaughan sent to Lindsay Anderson for the 1929 film 'The Broadway Melody' but my highly temperamental scanner seems to have finally given up the ghost.

So instead here is a photo of my co-workers from the Lindsay Anderson project on a team away day we recently enjoyed. The photo is taken near the Standing Stones on Machrie Moor on the Isle of Arran. We had a lovely day, we walked for three hours in total, saw lots of beautiful countryside, enjoyed each others company - and a well deserved pint at the end of the walk!

Exhibition from the Lindsay Anderson Archive will open newly refurbished Stirling University Library and Archive

2010-08-20T15:20:00.001+01:00

It's all go here with the last few weeks before the newly refurbished library and archive opens at Stirling University. On entering the new library one of the first things that people will see will be all the wonderful photographs from the Lindsay Anderson Archive Exhibition. We had a run through last week of marking out where everything would be hung and you can see our work in the images below. This week is the setting up of the exhibition so it will all be ready for the opening of the new Library and Archive on 30 August - which is spookily enough, also the anniversary of Lindsay Anderson's death. I'll post some more photos on Monday of the exhibition all up on the walls. It was a really good idea to lay it all out like this though as it gave us an idea of the amount of space we had, the spacing to leave between photographs and the overall impact of the images - pretty striking I think (obviously looking a whole lot better on the walls than they do laid out on the carpet!).

Archives Hub feature on the Lindsay Anderson Archive

2010-08-02T11:39:00.001+01:00

The 'This month we celebrate' feature on the Archives Hub website is a good way of finding out about collections held in other further education institutions in Britain and I've enjoyed reading about the different collections highlighted through this section. I am very pleased to say that this month I wrote a piece about the Lindsay Anderson Archive which has been used for the 'This month we celebrate' feature for August - so... 'This month we celebrate Lindsay Anderson'.

New images on Stirling University Archives Flickr

2010-07-28T14:24:00.001+01:00

LA/6/2/2/29/4(5) Image from the march to Aldermaston, Easter 1958
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives

I'm having a short enforced break from cataloguing whilst my database (notice the possessive use here!) is being converted to become an online catalogue. Hopefully this will be ready within the next two weeks and I can share it all here. Today I can start back on cataloguing (phew!) but I thought I'd share some of alternative work I've been doing over the past few days before I get back to my files! Seeing as how discussing the numbering and reordering I've been doing may be slightly dull I thought I'd focus on the new sets of images I've uploaded to the University Archives Flickr site. I've scanned in five sets of photographs, or contact strips to be more precise and although the quality isn't all that great in a few of them - some fading, bright spots, tears etc. the content of the images is great and I think the distress on some of them just adds to the character.

The main subject of the images is the 1958 march from London to Aldermaston. This was a march organised over the Easter weekend 1958 by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). CND was formed a few months earlier in February 1958 and this was their first large organised protest. Several thousand people took part in the four day march which travelled from London to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire. There was a contingent of friends and supporters from the Royal Court Theatre who took part in this march and they can be seen, with their theatre inspired banners ('To be or not to be'), in the images below.

LA/6/2/2/30/2(6) Image from the march to Aldermaston, Easter 1958
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives

LA/6/2/2/32/1(6) Image from the march to Aldermaston, Easter 1958
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives

LA/6/2/2/30/3(2) Image from the march to Aldermaston, Easter 1958
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives

Lindsay Anderson took part in this march and was also central to the creation of a film March to Aldermaston (1959). The film was made by a committee of volunteers entitled the 'Film and Television Committee for Nuclear Disarmament'. Along with Lindsay Anderson was Karel Reisz and a whole team of experienced film workers. This included lab technicians who worked for free to process the footage and Contemporary Films, who handled the distribution of the film. Although the film is credited to the entire committee it is widely acknowledged that Lindsay Anderson took over the film at the editing stage and shaped it into the film. The narration of the film is by Richard Burton, who also narrated Lindsay Anderson and Guy Brenton's Thursday's Children (1954). The commentary which Burton read was written by Christopher Logue (a poet and playwright and a friend of Anderson's). The film itself seems as relevant to me today as it was then and indeed this made the film even more powerful in my mind - the fact that nothing much has changed. Personally I find the support of nuclear weapons quite incomprehensible (of course, money and power are the main reasons but quite why these should outweigh the concern for human life is beyond me). Whatever your political views though I think this film would be very interesting to watch as a document of the 1950s. Like the films created by Anderson and others under the banner of Free Cinema this film documents the lives and concerns of ordinary working people.

The film is available as part of the boxset DVD on Free Cinema produced by the British Film Institute. There is more information about the film on BFI Screenonline. For more information about CND see their website.

I like that the images show the periods of rest and fun in between the marching, for example the photo below of a girl having a rest. There was musical accompaniment to the march, inlcuding folk music and jazz and there are a number of photos like the one second below which show the musicians taking part in the march.

LA/6/2/2/29/4(1) Image from the march to Aldermaston, Easter 1958
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives

LA/6/2/2/29/3(4) Image from the march to Aldermaston, Easter 1958
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives

2010-07-19T15:22:00.000+01:00

My posting has still been rather sporadic of late and I think it will continue that way for the next two months as it nears the end of our three-year project on 'The Cinema Authorship of Lindsay Anderson' with the deadlines looming large! I've now catalogued over 10,200 items in the archive which I find quite staggering to think about sometimes! The best things is I'm still enjoying the cataloguing as much now as I was at the beginning, indeed perhaps even more so. The reason for that being that the more you get to know about a collection and the individuals in it the more you get out of the cataloguing - well that's what I find anyway.

So, in the lack of anything more constructive to say right now whilst I continue to work my way through the named correspondence files I thought I would just share this Polish postcard I came across in a file on Friday. It's for a theatre production of Le Peche (according to Wikipedia this was written in 1908 and translates as History of Sin). The playwright, Stefan Zeromski(1864 - 1925) was a Polish writer, journalist and playwright and (once again taken from Wikipedia) he was apparently known as "the conscience of Polish literature."

LA/5/01/2/18/52, Lindsay Anderson Collection

The wonders of modern technology!

2010-07-13T16:42:00.001+01:00

I am steadily making my way through the Lindsay Anderson named correspondence files. I had a very pleasant day recently cataloguing the correspondence between Lindsay Anderson and Harry Carey Jr. The son of Harry Carey, Harry Carey Jr. was, like his father, an actor in John Ford's Stock Company. He starred in ten John Ford's films: 3 Godfathers (1948); She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949); Wagonmaster (1950); Rio Grande (1950); The Long Gray Line (1955); Mister Roberts (1955); The Searchers (1956); Two Rode Together (1961); Flashing Spikes (1962); Cheyenne Autumn (1964). Harry Carey Jr. (also known as Dobe due to the colour of his hair) wrote a memoir of his time as an actor for John Ford Company of Heroes and this occupies a lot of the discussion in the correspondence between Anderson and Carey. The correspondence starts in 1980 but we know they met earlier than this as there is an interview Anderson conducted with Carey in About John Ford in 1978.

Insert sent to Anderson by Harry Carey Jr. with copy of Company of Heroes
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives

The reason I said that this was a very pleasant way to spend the day is that Harry Carey Jr. just comes across as such a lovely man - the correspondence between them is warm, filled with reminiscences about John Ford and discussions of his films, but also some very vivid descriptions of Monument Valley and the surrounding areas which are great to read.

The first letter in the file from Anderson to Harry Carey Jr. is dated 6 February 1980 and in it Anderson discusses his latest purchase - a video recorder! Anderson mentions this is correspondence with a number of people so it's apparent that he was very excited by this new ability to record films from the television and create his own film library. Here he is filling Harry Carey Jr. in on his purchase:

"We've had YELLOW RIBBON here on TV recently , followed by LIBERTY VALANCE. I indulged myself in a video-recorder before Christmas - so now I am building up a classic-film library. So far, besides the aforementioned, I have MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, THE MALTESE FALCON, Renoir's LE GRAND ILLUSION, LITTLE CAESAR and PUBLIC ENEMY etc., etc. Little did I think I would have copies of such pictures of my own, available at the press of a couple of switches. Modern technology at last pays off!" LA/5/01/2/5/2

Ah, modern technology! I was going to say it's easy to take this technology for granted but, not having a sky box or any similar thing for recording of the television, and being too lazy to try and tune my video recorder to the TV, I don't take this for granted anymore! I have to hope that any programmes I miss are on BBC and will be repeated on the iPlayer, or that they are available for hire. Of course, I could just get myself a sky box or similar technology but that would be too easy, I usually wait at last a few years before catching up with the latest technology. I'll get an iPhone one of these days but only having got an iPod in the last few years, after years of a personal CD player when everyone else had a minidisc player, and before that years of a cassette player when everyone else had long moved on to CD's I guess I should just accept to being slightly behind the times with personal use of technology!

Cataloguing milestones

2010-06-23T16:11:00.001+01:00

Well, that's me finally finished cataloguing all the A-Z correspondence files - it felt like a never ending task at times but at least the material I'm cataloguing has been very interesting. The thing about being in an office on your own though is when you do reach a milestone like this there's no one to celebrate with! It does feel like a pretty big achievement when you complete one section, especially one as big as this one was, with over 3800 items! It was with great satisfaction that I scored all those files off my timetable!

Today I am not on my own as my room mate Isabelle is in so I'm doing a good job of distracting her from her dissertation with my interesting finds in the named correspondence files. Yes, once again I'm back to 'A', well 'B' now to be more precise - cataloguing the correspondence between Lindsay Anderson and the artist Don Bachardy, from the named correspondence files. Bachardy is an artist who paints the most beautiful portraits but is perhaps better known (well he was to me anyway) as the long-term partner of Christopher Isherwood. Indeed the recent Tom Ford film A Single Man, based on the book by Isherwood, was inspired by a break-up between Bachardy and Isherwood, although in real life the break up was short lived and they were together until Christopher Isherwood died in 1986.

I am only half way through their correspondence together and I found an interesting description by Anderson of why he felt Bachardy is such a talented artist "they manage to be both portraits and a collective self-portrait, which makes the whole collection a single work - as well as being a wonderfully perceptive and acute assembly of individual studies" [here Anderson is referring to a book of Bachardy's portraits which has just been published]. I thought this definition of Bachardy's talent could be transferred quite easily to film and seems to sum up Anderson's attitudes to his own creative work as a film director "no film can be too personal".

There are lots of fantastic photographs and colour images of Bachardy's paintings in the file but I would never want to use these without first seeking the permission of the artist. Instead I thought I would show these images - an invitation to an exhibition of Bachardy's portraits of actors carried out during the shooting of Robert Altman's Short Cuts.

Invitation to exhibition of The 'Short Cuts' portfolio by Don Bachardy, LA/5/1/2/3/14
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives

I have just checked online and the Short Cuts portraits painted by Don Bachardy have been published with the script for Short Cuts. You can see the front cover of the published script with some of Bachardy's work (though the quality of the image is poor) on Amazon.

International Archives Day!

2010-06-10T19:26:00.002+01:00

Happy (Belated) International Archives Day! I only found out it was International Archives Day yesterday through a link from archivesblog.com. Archives Outside is a blog based in New South Wales and they decided to celebrate International Archives Day by showcasing examples of archive collections from NSW. I thought I would appropriate this idea and pick some of my favourite archives in my home town of Glasgow, Scotland.

But first of all, I am wondering if any archives in the UK picked up on it being International Archives Day and did anything special for it? I didn't see anything on any of the listservs about it which I thought was a bit strange. Although it wasn't very well publicised at all this year, particularly in comparison with the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage in October last year. We certainly didn't know anything about it in time to do anything to celebrate - I'll need to keep a closer eye on potential awareness raising dates like this.

So, on to a couple of my favourite archives in Glasgow. I'll start with my first place of work after qualifying - Glasgow Caledonian University Archives. They have lots of interesting archives, for example, the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) Archive and the anti-apartheid movement in Scotland Archive. I'll just give a bit more information though about one Archive they hold, the one which I worked on as a project archivist whilst I was there, the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) Archive. This Archive contains documentation relating to the STUC and its business from 1897 onwards. I loved my work cataloguing part of this archive in the nine months that I was there and I remember being particularly interested by the minutes of some of the sub-committees, for example the Entertainment and Arts Sub Committee, the Women's Advisory Committee and of course, the letters of the various General Secretary's of the STUC (it's great to get paid to read other people's business!). There's full details of the contents of the archive here

Also on my list of top archives to visit in Glasgow would be the Glasgow School of Art Archives and Collections. These are based in the beautiful Charles Rennie Mackintosh designed main art school building and I'd love to visit just for a browse through their archives. Going by the images they have on their Flickr site it looks like they've got some really interesting and inspiring stuff! I've attended some really interesting events at the Art School (more of that in later posts) but I've never just been in to look through their archives. Here's a few images from their Flickr pages that illustrate the variety of material in the archive.

I could go on and on as there are lots more archives to visit in Glasgow, including Scottish Screen Archive, the University of Glasgow Archives (who gave me my first work experience and started me off on my chosen career path), Glasgow Women's Library and many more - but if I do that then this post will be more than the one day late it already is for International Archives Day!

Archive ephemera

2010-06-09T09:45:00.007+01:00

This is in reply to a post on the Orkney Archives blog - "Do other countries actually have nicer stamps than ours or do they just seem exotic because they're foreign?".

Well, I would have to concur that other countries do seem to have far more interesting stamps than ours. This gives me the perfect opportunity to make use of an envelope I came across yesterday which I just had to scan an image of, without quite knowing how I would use it. It's not often that the envelopes have been kept with the letters in the Lindsay Anderson Archive so I assume that either Anderson himself or his secretary liked these stamps too and decided to keep the envelope with the letter. It's from Poland and has two very different but equally interesting images.

I love the abstract design - it looks similar to the style of a lot of Polish film poster designs and is far more interesting than this: -

Also, to my mind anyway, the eagle topped with the crown is far more regal than this. So thank you Orkney Archive for helping me justify why I scanned the envelope in the first place! The example the Orkney Archive show is an envelope from Norway with two botanical drawings on the stamps. Inside the letter is a lovely little square watercolour painting of a seascape.

Agnes Varda season at The Auteurs

2010-06-08T22:04:00.003+01:00

I just got back from the Glasgow Film Theatre after seeing three short films by Agnes Varda and when I checked my emails there was one from the Auteurs about this season of Varda's films all available to view online, for a small cost. The three films which were screened at the GFT tonight are all available and I would highly recommend them - particularly the first one, Salut les Cubains (1963). It's interesting to see that this film was made the year before Soy Cuba (1964). I've only seen snippets from Soy Cuba but watching Varda's film immediately reminded me of it just because I've seen so little footage of Cuba from that time. Varda's film came across to me as being very positive about the Cuban revolution and Castro and I'd be interested to see Soy Cuba, a Russian/Cuban collaboration, to see what the take is in that film. I loved Varda's film, it's filled with wonderful characters and music and discusses really interesting events and developments in Cuban social and cultural history. I was particularly impressed with the way it is composed of still images linked by narration and themes, and really liked the way the film was organised which I think I'm going to find is a theme with her work as I found the structure of the other two films I saw similarly pleasing - the other films were, Ulysse and Ydessa, the Bears, and etc.

Early John Ford film amongst those found at the New Zealand Film Archive

2010-06-07T12:38:00.008+01:00

I was directed to an interesting article in the New York Times via the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) mailing list. For anyone interested in the preservation of films and film-related material I would highly recommend joining this. I know there's a huge amount of mailing lists out there but this one is really worth it. There are always interesting and lively discussions about developments in film preservation, enquiries from film researchers looking for help finding particular films or information about the films, and news of interesting developments, like the link to this article in the New York Times.

A large number of early American films held in the New Zealand Film Archive are now to be returned to America when it emerged that in some cases they were the only surviving print of the film. 75 of these films, chosen for their historical and cultural importance, are now in the process of being returned to the US. The reason so many foreign films remained in New Zealand after their use in cinemas is due to the high cost of shipping them back.

Of particular interest is the discovery of the only print of Upstream a John Ford film from 1927. This film is being copied to modern safety stock before being transferred back to the US as it is the only copy and they do not want to rick any loss or damage to the print. In About John Ford Lindsay Anderson mentions this film, listing it in Ford's filmography, but there is no mention of it in the book or the index - presumably because there was no possible way of viewing a print of the film. It's amazing to think that all these years later we're going to be able to see it again.

The New York Times article discusses the practicalities of moving, and preserving the films, so I'll include an extract from that article here -

Getting the films, which were printed on the unstable, highly inflammable nitrate stock used until the early 1950s, to the United States hasn’t been easy. “There’s no Federal Express for nitrate out of New Zealand,” said Annette Melville, the director of the foundation. “We’re having to ship in UN-approved steel barrels, a little bit at a time. So far we’ve got about one third of the films, and preservation work has already begun on four titles.”

As the films arrive, they are placed in cold storage to slow further degeneration. “We’re triaging the films,” Ms. Melville said, “so we can get to the worst case ones first. About a quarter of the films are in advanced nitrate decay, and the rest have good image quality, though they are badly shrunken.”

As funds permit, the repatriated films will be distributed among the five major nitrate preservation facilities in the United States — the Library of Congress, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, George Eastman House, the U.C.L.A Film & Television Archive and the Museum of Modern Art — where the painstaking work of reclaiming images from material slowly turning to muck will be performed.

I like that the reason the films came to light was because Brian Meacham, who works at the Film Archive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, went to visit the New Zealand Film Archive when he was on holiday! Is that something a lot of archivists do, visit archives in their holidays? I know I do and it's good to know I'm not alone in this!

Cataloguing - timetables and deadlines

2010-06-07T12:25:00.003+01:00

All my plans of getting straight back into posting in May came to naught as I've become increasingly aware of my looming project deadlines. However I now have a very helpful Excel spreadsheet with a full breakdown of everything I want to achieve, set out week by week! Although there's still a huge amount to do before the project finishes at the end of August I now feel that it is all achievable and it makes it so much easier to just get on with the work and not panic. Part of my timetable includes posting on my blog so I thought I would start with a topical (for me) post about my cataloguing.

The thing that's so hard about doing a timetable for cataloguing archival records is that until you open each individual file you don't know how many letters there are, and until you catalogue each letter you don't know how much content there is in it. Letters with lots of interesting content take far longer than say, a greetings card sent simply to say 'Happy New Year'. Quite often the letters with lots of detail about film projects, theatre projects, actors, directors etc also require research into the people and subjects referred to as these will have to be added to the name and subject indexes on the cataloguing system. So I have to remind myself that if some weeks I don't quite meet my targets that's ok as other weeks I can have met them by the Thursday - as long as I get there by the end of August!

This first photo shows the files I am currently cataloguing - the A-Z correspondence files. I've talked about the fun of cataloguing these before as you never know quite what you're going to find - Friday's cataloguing included letters from Lindsay Anderson to Ridley Scott and this mornings started with a series of letters between Anderson and Dame Maggie Smith re a film version of The Cherry Orchard which was in development for a long time, but which finally fell through. Anderson had long wanted to direct a film of this play by Chekhov, having directed it in the theatre twice. Maggie Smith had agreed to star in it and the plan was to get Dustin Hoffman for the lead male role - if only it had happened!

The cataloguing of each file begins by sorting the letters into order alphabetically, then chronologically from earliest to most recent, helpfully all the letters with each correspondent are usually already together. Then it's a case of numbering every letter with a unique identifying code which consists of the collection name, sub-collection, series, sub-series, file and item, for example at the moment I'm doing LA/5/1/1/57/45 with 'LA' identifying the collection, 5 identifying the sub-collection 'working papers', the first 1 is the series 'correspondence files', the second 1 is the sub-series 'correspondence files A-Z', the 57 is the file number and is 'correspondence, S' and 45 is the number of the individual letter from Maggie Smith. After the numbering is done then the folder will be catalogued onto the cataloguing software CALM for Archives - you can see a screenshot in the photo above - this is going to be ingrained on my brain by the end of the project as I've already started dreaming about cataloguing on days when I have a particularly heavy workload!

Once catalogued the folder will be divided up into two or three folders if the amount of letters is too heavy for one folder and these folders are put in new acid-free paper, archival standard boxes. It may not sound too exciting but I love it! The TV in the room is strictly for work-related use by the way! Quite a few of Anderson's films are not available on DVD so it's been really handy to have this TV with a VHS and DVD player built in. Glory! Glory! and The Whales of August are the two which come to mind immediately as being only on VHS (in the UK) so it was necessary to watch them before cataloguing the material relating to them.

New publication on Lindsay Anderson and O Lucky Man!

2010-05-11T14:59:00.004+01:00

Another output from the 'Cinema Authorship of Lindsay Anderson' team here at Stirling University - a chapter in Don't Look Now, a new book published this month by Intellect Ltd. The book investigates film and television culture in the 1970s. Besides being very interesting anyway, and a beautiful looking book, I can highly recommend this book as it contains a chapter by our team here at Stirling ‘What is there to smile at?’ Lindsay Anderson’s O Lucky Man!, by John Izod, Karl Magee, Kathryn Mackenzie and Isabelle Gourdin-Sangouard. As with all of our work it is based in research conducted in the material held in the Lindsay Anderson Archive at the University of Stirling.

I've enclosed the synopsis for the book below:

"While postwar British cinema and the British new wave have received much scholarly attention, the misunderstood period of the 1970s has been comparatively ignored. Don’t Look Now uncovers forgotten but richly rewarding ﬁlms, including Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now and the ﬁlms of Lindsay Anderson and Barney Platts-Mills. This volume offers insight into the careers of important ﬁlm-makers and sheds light on the genres of experimental ﬁlm, horror, and rock and punk ﬁlms, as well as representations of the black community, shifts in gender politics, and adaptations of television comedies. The contributors ask searching questions about the nature of British ﬁlm culture and its relationship to popular culture, television, and the cultural underground."

Here are some reviews of the book:

'The essays in this highly stimulating collection reveal, clearly and persuasively, just how diverse, energetic and imaginative British cinematic creativity was during this rather maligned decade... In shining a bright light into one of the remaining dark corners in British cinema history Don’t Look Now is a welcome and extremely valuable contribution to the field.' – Professor Duncan Petrie, University of York

'Long overdue for a closer look, this volume provides a comprehensive, wide-ranging and stimulating range of new scholarship on British cinema and television in the 1970s. ' – Professor Sarah Street, University of Bristol

Initial reflections on 'Archiving the future: mobilizing the past'

2010-04-07T21:55:00.013+01:00

There was so much going on at the conference and around the conference that I've struggled to start writing about it, so I'll just start with a short post on my initial reflections on the conference. It was huge - I mean 1500 people at one conference - I've never been to anything like that before! The conference programme was so packed with interesting sounds panels that it was really difficult to choose what ones to go to. As I was there in my professional capacity as an archivist I had to put those panels discussing archives first - not that this was a hardship as I can honestly say that I found all the panels I went to to be interesting (and as regular readers will know, I do happen to love my job, just a bit!). In addition to all the archive-related panels I also managed to squeeze in a bit of personal interest in the form of a panel 'Celebrating Chick Strand through screenings and discussions'.

I stayed in the conference hotel, The Westin Bonaventure, which was a fantastic experience in itself. I'm sure there are lots of huge hotels like that in America but that was the first time I'd ever stayed in one. The map in the conference programme was pretty clear and most of the rooms were close together so I never got lost in the hotel, something that worried me on initial arrival!

Our panel on 'The Cinema Authorship of Lindsay Anderson' went very well - even if I do say so myself. I'll talk more about all these things in later posts. However I just wanted to mention some of my lasting impressions. One thing that worried me a bit was the impression left from a few of the panels I attended that archivists were somehow in the way, that we wanted to block access to material. I know there is that stereotypical image of the 'dusty archive' but I really don't believe that to be applicable to the profession any more. However maybe the fact that this image still persists is something we need to think about. Are we really doing enough to encourage access? Do we worry too much about copyright, legalities etc? My answer to these would be Yes to the first (although of course that's not say it's ok to get complacenet about access) and No to the second (we do afterall, work for whichever institution is paying us and have a responsibility in this sense). However it still made me consider these issues - which can never be a bad thing.

So that's my one gripe/negative impression put to one side now. What about the positive? There were so many! The amazingly varied ways in which researchers use archival material as represented by all the hugely interesting papers I listened to. The sheer number of archives that are out there that I've never heard of - an exciting world of possibilities! The engagement between researchers/academics and archivists (as I said the image of archivists I referred to above seemed to be just that, an image, and not reflective of people's actual experiences, on the whole). The huge potential for crossover between archival work and academic research (this is me speaking in a personal capacity in terms of possibilities for PHD's, further study). The clear passion for their work that was evident in the academics, archivists and researchers at the conference.

I'll get back to more regular posting from now on, after my recent time off, and I'll write more about the various panels I attended, and other exciting things from our travels in America. Other highlights from Los Angeles include a visit to the Margaret Herrick Library and the screening of The Exiles at UCLA. One last thing I have to mention - the Nickel Diner (see business card below) is awesome for breakfast. It was really close to the hotel and did very tasty blueberry pancakes. I never did try the maple bacon donut though - maybe next time!

Archiving the Future| mobilizing the past

2010-03-12T13:25:00.008Z

Less than a week to go till the Society of Cinema and Media Studies Conference in Los Angeles and I'm getting pretty excited! I've just been having a look at the conference programme and there's some really interesting sounding panels, well, they all sound interesting actually, but of course I'm particularly keen on the ones which discuss the use of, and role of, archives in film studies.

In addition to the packed conference programme there are lots of screenings and special events scheduled in as well. One I'm particularly looking forward to is a screening at UCLA of The Exiles. This is a film I mentioned briefly in a previous post about The Pleasure Garden (1953), a film by James Broughton and starring Lindsay Anderson. In the same blog post where I first heard about the release of The Pleasure Garden there was also discussion of another recently restored film The Exiles (1961). This film was the debut feature of Kent Mackenzie who had previously made a short film Bunker Hill about the eponymously named area of Los Angeles. Inspired by the experience of making this documentary he carried on to make this feature film. It follows a group of young Native American men and women living in the Bunker Hill area and is based entirely on interviews with them and their friends.

The film was restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive in cooperation with University of Southern California Moving Image Archive, National Film Preservation Foundation and Milestone. There's detailed discussion of the preservation process in the press pack for the film. In 2003 a film by Thom Anderson Los Angeles Plays Itself began a renewal of interest in Mackenzie's film. However these plans were shelved partly becuase it was thought that only one 35mm print survived, and also due to concerns over the copyright clearance of the music used throughout the film. When Milestone found out that the music was created specifically for the film, and that there existed both the original negative and the fine grain interpositive for the film, they resurrected the plans to distribute the film. In order to preserve the film before distributing it, it was taken to UCLA where Ross Lipman, the preservationist who also restored Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep (thanks for that one too!), worked on creating preservation materials and new prints.

I can't wait to see the results!

BFI restores first ever film of 'Alice in Wonderland' (1903)

2010-03-07T12:09:00.006Z

The first ever film version of Alice in Wonderland has been restored by the British Film Institute (BFI) and is now available to watch on the BFI's YouTube channel. I've seen this link on so many blogs and websites already - it's great to see the interest this film has generated. It must be very gratifying for the folks at the BFI who were involved in restoring it to see how popular it has been. It has already had 445,832 hits on YouTube since 25 February!

Here's a bit more information about the film - taken from The Bioscope.

"Alice in Wonderland was produced in Britain by Cecil Hepworth (left), whose studies were in Walton-on-Thames outside London. Denis Gifford, in his British Film Catalogue, credits the direction to Hepworth and his regular director at this period, Percy Stow. Mabel (May) Clark, who had joined Hepworth as a film cutter, plays Alice; Hepworth himself plays a frog, his wife Margaret plays the White Rabbit and the Queen of Hearts, while future director of Irish films Norman Whitten plays the Mad Hatter and a fish, while cinematographer Geoffrey Faithfull and his brother Stanley are two of the playing cards. The film was originally 800 feet or twelve minutes in length (though it was divided up into sixteen scenes which could be bought separately). Eight minutes survive today, in a somewhat ragged state. It was the longest British film yet made.

Alice was made with close attention to Tenniel’s original drawings, though it was bold enough to include its own additions to the narrative, giving Alice a magic fan (Tim Burton adds the Jabberwock to his version of the tale, which seems a somewhat greater liberty to take). Its special effects, achieved using optical printing and some ingenious use of scenery, allow us to see Alice grow large and small with impressive effectiveness. But perhaps the most delightful element is the procession of playing cards (filmed at the Mount Felix estate at Walton), which seems to have involved the participation of a local school. The narrative makes no sense when viewed with cold logic, but then neither does Lewis Carroll’s original. In short it is random – but cool. Now go tell someone about it.

There's some interesting debate about the merits, or otherwise, of film archives using YouTube and other similar mediums to disseminate films and archival material on The Bioscope. I first came across this Alice in Wonderland film on the BFI website, then on various other film and archive related websites and blogs - however I also admit to reading Perez Hilton (I'm never sure whether this is something to admit, or something to try and cure, but hey, there you go, it's out in the open now!) and I was really pleased to see this film embedded on his website - anything that promotes the work of film archivists to a wider audience, and just makes these types of films available for folk to enjoy, is a good thing, is it not? I realise that taking archival material out of its context is a big archival 'no no' but I think it's exciting! As long as the original context is still there in the cataloguing, preservation and original access medium, then it's great to see the archival object, whether it be a film, a letter, a photo, or anything else, being used in different ways. I'm not so naive that I don't realise the potential problems with the context being lost i.e. films being used in completely inappropriate ways to represent things that are against the original context or creation, but going by the example of the wide appeal of Alice in Wonderland it's looking like the positives will outweigh the negatives. What do other folk think about this?