The history of the print

A weekend film screening served as a great reminder to me of what it is that makes the cinema and the medium of film so important - asides from the quality/enjoyment of the film being watched.  The film was Lust for Life - a biopic of Vincent Van Gogh starring Kirk Douglas and directed by Vincente Minnelli - intrigued, I decided to go and see it without reading any reviews.

The film was screened in one of my favourite London haunts, the British Film Institute. When a man came on stage before the film started I was surprised as hadn’t remembered reading about an introduction. Turns out he was just there to inform us that the print we were going to view was from Spain, with Spanish subtitles, but that it was the best print available so they had decided to run with it and hoped the subtitles wouldn’t put anyone off. This immediately sent me off on a reverie imagining  the cinemas and venues around the world where this film might have been seen and I found something very comforting in this. Is it nostalgia or something more? For me it was the reminder of the materiality of the film that I loved, to think of the care and attention needed to keep a film in circulation, of the various projectionists and film enthusiasts who have handled the film, the film goers who have responded to it. There’s just something magical about the history of the print itself. This isn’t to say I’m against digital projection in cinemas but just that seeing this old Spanish print of ‘Lust for Life’ reminded me that much of the power of the cinema, and of film itself, lies in it being this shared experience. The history of the print itself made me feel this on an even wider scale, not just sharing it with those at that particular screening, but with film lovers in other countries and in other times.

The notes given out at the screening informed me that the film is based on a book ‘Lust for Life’ written by Irving Stone, which is in turn based on the letters Vincent exchanged with his brother Theo. The letters are used as a very effective story telling device at various points throughout the film and they’ve left me with a desire to re-read the published letters at some point. Although there are, I am sure, some inaccuracies in the film, to me it really worked to convey the passion and creative life of Vincent Van Gogh and Kirk Douglas excelled in his role as Van Gogh. It was also a very welcome surprise to me to see a Lindsay Anderson regular, Jill Bennett, playing Van Gogh’s sister Wilhelmina.  This is the second film directed by Vincentre Minnelli and starring Kirk Douglas that I've seen in the past few weeks and I'm turning into a real fan - I think it's time to go seek out some more of both of their films!

Kirk Douglas as Vincent Van Gogh (Image taken from here)

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

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.

Wednesday wonders - BFI Southbank

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.

Researcher's Tales at the BFI

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.

Rethinking Lindsay Anderson

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).  

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

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?

British Film Institute release 'The Pleasure Garden'

Another gem has just been released from the BFI Archive. 'The Pleasure Garden', made in 1953 by the American poet James Broughton (1913 - 1999) is a lovely, surreal and poetic film set in the Crystal Palace Terraces in South London. The film won the Prix de Fantasie Poetique at Cannes in 1954.

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

The film opens with people living an idyllic carefree life in the park, which abruptly comes to an end with the arrival of Col. Pall K Gargoyle (John le Mesurier) who is determined to stop all the fun and freedom by erecting notices banning everything and arresting people he doesn't approve of. Then along comes their saviour, Mrs Albion (a wonderful Hettie Jacques) who waves her magic scarf to liberate everyone and open them up to their emotions, thereby returning the park to it's idyllic, happy state. Lindsay Anderson's had a small role in this film (described on IMDb as'Toff in top hat'), acting alongside Jill Bennett, and he is also credited as the 'production manager' for the film. Unfortunately as Anderson didn't keep copies of his letters until he employed a secretary in the 1970s we don't have correspondence about 'The Pleasure Garden', however I know there is some in the Collection of James Broughton's Papers at Kent State University Special Collections and Archives.

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

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

James Broughton and Lindsay Anderson were friends and we have a lot of correspondence between them in the archive. Cataloguing the correspondence of so many other people (all the letters to Anderson) has led me to take quite instant likes or dislikes to people and cataloguing the letters from James Broughton I just instantly found him interesting, funny and a warm person - it made me want to find out more about him. Being surrounded by such a wealth of research materials in the Archive, and in the library in general, meant I could do this. I've been enjoying reading 'A Long Undressing: Collected Poems 1949 - 1969' which is part of the Anderson Archive. I particularly liked the last section of poems 'All About It' which start with a quote 'Into every life a little Zen must fall' (attributed to - Old saying). 'Song of Song' included here is the final poem in the book.

Song of Song © James Broughton

On a final note - when I was doing some google searching on James Broughton I came across a short film he made of one of the poems from the 'All About It' section I mention above. Called 'This Is it' (1971) the film of the poem of the same name is a touching short film following a young boy following a red balloon while the words of the poem are read (does anyone know who the woman reading the poem is?). You can see the film on the Art Forum website where they also had this short review by Robert Greenspun from the New York Times: "James Broughton's creation myth, This Is It, places a two-year-old Adam and a bright apple-red balloon in a backyard garden of Eden, and works a small miracle of the ordinary. And since that miracle is what his film is about, he achieves a kind of casual perfection in matching means and ends."

This was supposed to be just a quick post about the DVD release of 'The Pleasure Garden' but it's ended up a bit of an ode to James Broughton! That's the way it goes with Archives though - they lead you off in unexpected directions. I love that I'm learning new things every day - though I imagine that can be said of any job - it just depends how you look at it!

I'd just like to say thanks to Frank's and his blog for alerting me to the DVD release of 'The Pleasure Garden' and 'The Exiles' (more of 'The Exiles' in a later post!)

British Film Institute receive £45 million Government investment

I just saw the announcement on BBC News that the British Film Institute's National Film Centre have received confirmation of £45 million investment from the Government. The BFI have confirmed that they can now go ahead with plans for a new National Film Centre on London's Southbank. They plan to "create a world-leading centre for the study, enjoyment and celebration of film and television." I have only seen or read about a tiny percentage of the archives at the BFI and even from that it is obvious what a wonderful resource for scholars, film enthusiasts and the general public they are, so it is very good news indeed to hear that the Government is giving them, and our moving image heritage, the recognition and support it needs and deserves. The announcement is available to view on the website of the Department for Culture, Media and Support.

This is all very timely given that the 27 October is UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage!

Unfolding the Aryan Papers

© Jane & Louise Wilson - Unfolding the Aryan Papers, BFI Southbank Gallery, 13 February – 19 April 2009, Research photographs by Stanley Kubrick for 'Aryan Papers', The Stanley Kubrick Archives, University of the Arts London

Part of my work with the Lindsay Anderson Collection will involve cataloguing the vast amount of material relating to unfinished film and theatre projects which Anderson was involved with - they could be unfinished because he didn't feel the project worth pursuing but, more often than not, it came down to a lack of finanical backing and support. I am looking forward to cataloguing this material as I'm sure it will have a very different feel to it than the material relating to the finished films. It will be interesting to see how far each project got, how involved he became in it, and the reasons why it never came to fruition.

As a result I was very interested to hear about an ongoing exhibition, Unfolding the Aryan Papers, at the British Film Institute at Southbank in London. On a recent visit to London I took the opportunity to go and see it and found it very inspiring and insightful. The exhibition is centred around the records relating to an unrealised film project Aryan Papers by the director Stanley Kubrick. Unfolding the Aryan Papers was created by two artists, Jane and Louise Wilson, highly acclaimed British artists who were on a British Film Institute commissioned residency at the Stanley Kubrick Archive at the University of the Arts London

© Jane & Louise Wilson - Unfolding the Aryan Papers, BFI Southbank Gallery, 13 February – 19 April 2009, Research photographs by Stanley Kubrick for 'Aryan Papers', The Stanley Kubrick Archives, University of the Arts London

Stanley Kubrick spent over twenty years researching for Aryan Papers, a film about the holocaust. He went as far as to choose the lead actors and the locations but the film never got passed the pre-production stage. In an interview with Louisa Buck for Ponystep, Louise Wilson pinpoints a number of possible reasons for this, based on the material relating to the film in the Kubrick Archive. The interview highlights the profound insights into thw working rpacticves and thoughts of a director that can be gained through their archive. What I loved about the installation created by Jane and Louise was the way in which they had re-interpreted the material in the archive. They got in touch with Johanna ter Steege, the actor Kubrick had wanted for the lead role, with whom he had shot wardrobe research stills and had many discussions about the film. The film installation which Jane and Louise Wilson created as a result of their extensive research used these wardrobe research stills, pre-production period stills, and the co-operation of Johanna der Steege. In the film Steege discusses her first meeting with Kubrick, explains the story of the film in more detail, her reasons for wanting to do it, and she recreates the original wardrobe stills. Unfolding the Aryan Papers made Steege visible and there was a real sense of how involved she was in the Kubrick film and how disappointed she was that it never got made. The interview which Louisa Buck conducted with Jane and Louise Wilson is really interesting and definitely worth further reading for insights into the benefits, and challenges, of working with archive material to create new and exciting art works.