Lindsay Anderson film retrospective, Warsaw

Just a quick post to let any readers in Poland, or any readers who happen to be heading to Warsaw next week, that there is a Lindsay Anderson retrospective coming up at the cinema Iluzjon.  It starts Wednesday 17th April and along with screening many films by Lindsay Anderson they are also using material from the Lindsay Anderson Archive at Stirling University, Scotland, to promote the season.

Wish I could be there!

Hell Unltd - rare screening of film by Helen Biggar and Norman McLaren

Glasgow Film Theatre is hosting a really exciting event to mark International Women’s Day to highlight the importance of women artists based in Glasgow to protest movements.  They will be screening Hell Unltd, a film by Helen Biggar and Norman McLaren, with a specially commissioned live score performed by Kim Moore (Zoey van Goey) and Gareth Griffiths.  In addition they’re showing Traces Left (1983) ‘a documentary about the Glasgow art and political scene in the 1930s and 40s’. I only wish I could get up to Glasgow to see it!

Their focus is on Helen Biggar (1909 – 1953), a Glasgow School of Art graduate who in 1936 created the important anti-war film Hell Unltd with Norman McLaren.  The film is a real call-to-action to everyone to actively oppose war and is as effective now, in my view, as it was then.  I know we see images of the horror of war every day and you could say that we’ve become anaesthetised or immune to it but for me this film reminds us all that we can play a part in opposing war, and it brings home the disparities between Government spending on armaments versus education, health, culture etc.  

In childhood Helen Biggar suffered from a number of illnesses but she succeeded in gaining admission to Glasgow School of Art at the age of 16 in 1925.  She worked in filmmaking, sculpture and theatre design and was very involved in politics.  She was part of Glasgow Kino, an organisation I hadn’t heard of before, who toured films to raise funds for the Spanish Republican cause.  From 1938 onwards she designed stage shows for the Glasgow Workers’ Theatre Group. She moved to London in 1945 and from 1950 she was wardrobe mistress and costume designer for Ballet Rambert.  She died, young, of a brain haemorrhage in 1953.* 

Helen Biggar sounds like a fascinating individual and I wish there were more resources about her online. Where is her archive? Why isn’t she better known? Annoyingly some references I’ve found to Hell Unltd refer to it as a ‘Norman McLaren’ film completely ignoring the fact that it was made as one of many collaborations between McLaren and Biggar.  There is a good biography of her on the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography but if you don’t have a subscription for that there is a shortened biography on IMDB.

If you end up going to this event at the GFT I‘d love to hear how it went!

Related archives:

I can’t find any information online about the papers of Helen Biggar, maybe they are at Glasgow School of Art, maybe they are in London somewhere, or maybe they are still with family?

Norman McLaren archive at the University of Stirling Archives

Norman McLaren archive material at The National Film Board of Canada

The National Film Board of Canada also has some of Norman McLaren’s films available to watch online  

*Biographical information taken from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Made to be destroyed

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).

Finding Norman

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

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!

Exciting new blog from Stirling University Archives

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!!

An Oscar in the Archive

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

Our new Archive space in the University of Stirling Library

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

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! 

International Archives Day!

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

Certificate of affiliation for Scottish Trades Union Congress membership
© Glasgow Caledonian University Archives

Scottish Trades Union Congress Souvenir 1938, p2
© Glasgow Caledonian University Archives

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.

Lucienne Day colour poster
© The Glasgow School of Art Archives and Collections

Glasgow School of Art degree show poster, 1988
© The Glasgow School of Art Archives and Collection

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!

4D performance using an Archive setting

'4D' was a term which confused me slightly - I wasn't quite sure what it meant in the context of a dance-based performance piece. What it meant was a quite breathtaking show which was a wonderful and very fitting tribute to the Scots-born film director Norman McLaren.

The dancer/choreographer of the show Peter Trosztmer is on stage for pretty much the entire length of the performance (running at 1 hour 40 minutes) which is impressive in itself - well it certainly seems it to a non-dance expert like myself! The show is his tribute to Norman McLaren and the performance is based around a narrative set in the Archives of the National Film Board of Canada. Through this we see and hear the impact that the work of Norman McLaren had on Trosztmer. I'm not sure how it's done but the effect we get is of Trosztmer dancing within and in perfect time with the films, of him talking to people he interviewed about Mclaren (but the people are projected images rather than actual presences). I don't think my description of it are doing justice to the effect of the performance - it's definitely something to see if you get the chance.

The music is amazing throughout, particular favourites of mine remain 'Begone Dull Care', 'Boogie Doodle' and 'Lines Horizontal' (the original music from 'Lines Horizontal', by Pete Seeger wasn't used in the performance but the music that was used fitted the scenario better I think - although I do love the Seeger score!). Having just looked at some letters which McLaren sent home to his parents which are in our Archive here at Stirling I was struck by references to events discussed in the letters. For example the film 'A Phantasy' which is very surrealist in style, reminding me of Dali and also of De Chirico, was explained as being a reaction to McLaren's experience of the Spanish Civil War. I had just read a letter he sent home to his parents in which he discussed the hardships of life for the people in the Spanish countryside where he was staying, he discussed the lack of food and the need for change to the system. However nowhere does he indicate the traumatic affect which the brutality of Franco's soldiers was having on him. He obviously didn't want to worry his parents - a natural instinct we all share! Instead the trauma came out through this work 'A Phantasy' - this was the first time I'd thought of it in this light and it made it even more moving. Likewise 'Neighbours' is a statement against war, I had picked this up, it would be hard not to, but I didn't know it was to do with him having experience the Spanish Civil War, then his experiences of China when the Korea War broke out. The more I watch the film the more moving it is. Here's a promotional sheet for 'Neighbours' from the Norman McLaren Archive at the National Film Board of Canada, taken from their 'Focus on Animation' webpages.

Neighbors : An Academy Award Film. 1952. One-sheet : 1 page : 28 x 21.5 cm
© National Film Board of Canada. Reproduced with permission of the NFB

I feel so lucky to have seen this show at it's only Scottish venue at the MacRobert Arts Centre here at Stirling University.

'Norman' - show combining dance, performance and film returns to the MacRobert Arts Centre

I missed this show the first time it came to Stirling so I'm really looking forward to seeing it next month. On a recent trip to Stirling Council Archives (where our Norman McLaren Archive is being stored whilst the University library refurbishment continues) I was lucky to get the chance to look through his letters home from Canada to his parents in Stirling. I only got a chance to read a few but it's whetted my appetite for more. The ones I read were from 1939 and talk about the long journey on the boat from the UK to New York, and then the excitement of his first few months in New York. I'll need to go back for another look (once I get my conference paper for Los Angeles written, it could be my reward - well, in addition to a night out and some nice wine of course!). Anyhoo - to get back to the point of my blog post and off my ramblings - Norman! The whole concept of the show sounds really intriguing. The dancer/choreographer Peter Trosztmer interacts with the films of Norman McLaren on a visit to the offices of the National Film Board of Canada (where McLaren worked).




Created by Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon of lemieux.pilon 4d with Peter Trosztmer. here's some information from the lemieux.pilon 4d website about the show.

"This production bridges the gap between performance and documentary filmmaking. Peter screens interviews made with people who knew McLaren and his work; these witnesses materialize out of thin air and appear onstage to guide Peter in his exploration, sharing their knowledge and feelings about the filmmaker. A selection of about thirty works from McLaren’s corpus, some of them never released, underline the testimonies and allow Peter to communicate what he's learned, sometimes verbally, sometimes simply through the dance that links him to the films. McLaren once said that if he hadn't been a filmmaker, he would have been a choreographer; this show uses movement (of light, of images, of the body) as a way to access his creative world.

As I haven't seen the show yet here's a link to a review from Peter Dickinson's blog 'Performance, Place and Politics' from a performance of Norman in Montreal May 2009.

Below are some images of the corridor outside my office where a number of drawings, prints, photographs and paintings from the Norman McLaren Collection are on display (sorry they're pretty poor quality photos as the light isn't great, and I'm not that good a photographer!)

For information on how to book for the shows see the MacRobert Arts Centre.

Just launched - Stirling University Archives Flickr page

Lindsay Anderson, seated in front of part of his large collection of VHS tapes
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives

Along with Karl Magee, the University Archivist, we have started a Flickr site for Stirling University Archives. This meant I got to spend some very enjoyable time scanning the pages of photo albums that are part of the Lindsay Anderson Collection here at Stirling.

We decided to take a Flickr pro account as it meant we could organise the photos in 'Collections' and 'Sets'. There are two Collections - the University Archives and The Lindsay Anderson Collection'. Within each of the Collections there are Sets. In the University Archives we have a set for the 40th anniversary exhibition of the University of Stirling, a set for student prospectuses and one for student handbooks. In the Lindsay Anderson Collection, in addition to the individual photo albums, there is also a set of photographs which give a general introduction to the Lindsay Anderson Collection. We will continue to add to these collections and sets. Once the CALM catalogue I'm creating for the Lindsay Anderson Collection is online then the plan is to link each photo directly to its catalogue entry.

Photograph featured in University of Stirling 40th anniversary exhibition.
The newly-opened Pathfoot Building, c1968 © University of Stirling Archives

The photo albums I've scanned are all part of the series of LA/6/2 - Photographs, in the Lindsay Anderson Collection. The albums on Flickr all date from the late 1940s through the 1950s and cover topics such as: the filming of O Dreamland; the filming of Wakefield Express; visit to Cannes International Film Festival 1949; the making of Thorold Dickinson's film Secret People (1952); the making of James Broughton's film The Pleasure Garden (1952) (which Lindsay Anderson starred in); visit to France; and a visit to Moscow in 1957 with the Royal Court Theatre (the front page of this album is pictured below).

Cover of photo album, LA/6/2/1/8
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives

We've started putting some names to the faces and places in the photographs but we thought it would be better to put them all up and then leave it open to other people to help us identify people and places. So far we've had some invaluable help so if anyone else wants to help, or indeed just leave any comments, then that would be very welcome!

Archives and auteurs: Filmmakers and their archives

As part of our AHRC funded research project on The Cinema Authorship of Lindsay Anderson we hosted a conference, 'Archives and Auteurs: filmmakers and their archives' here at the University of Stirling from 2nd - 4th September 2009. The conference went really well, I know I may be slightly biased, but from speaking to people that attended I know that was the general opinion as well. Attending the conference were archivists, academics, curators and researchers all coming together to discuss the ways in which the study of the archives of filmmakers and the film industry can provide new perspectives and insights into the history of cinema.

There was so much packed into the opening evening and two full days of the conference that I've delayed writing about it as I didn't know where to start. I'm not going to give a full run down as the full conference programme and abstracts are available here. We are also collating the papers here and these are continually being added to.

Isabelle Gourdin-Sangouard and me (Kathryn Mackenzie) at the welcome desk on the first night of the conference

The conference started on the Wednesday evening with presentations from me , Isabelle Gourdin-Sangouard, John Izod and Karl Magee, about 'The Cinema Authorship of Lindsay Anderson' AHRC project which we are all working on. The final paper in this panel was by Charles Barr, an Emeritus Professor of Film and Television who is currently teaching at University College Dublin. He gave a very interesting paper about the John Ford Archive, which discussed the variety of material in the archive, including some letters from Lindsay Anderson. It is always wonderful to hear about the material in other archives, and as usual, it always makes me want to visit them!

My first panel on the Thursday morning was 'Collaboration and authorship'. This comprised of three papers; The Schlesinger papers and Sunday Bloody Sunday: compromise, collaboration and authorship - Sian Barber, University of Portsmouth; Ken Russell, Dante's Inferno and the BBC Archives - Brian Hoyle, University of Dundee; Lolita: a journey with Nabakov and Kubrick from the page to the screen - Karyn Stuckey, University of the Arts, London. Some of the many issues raised and discussed included; ideas on ways in which archival material can help us to rethink ideas of cinematic authorship; how archival research can deepen and enrich our understanding of a film; and how archival materials can be used to follow the evolution of a script and examine the changes made to adaptations from script to screenplay.The discussion that followed the presentations was to be typical of all the discussions - lively, engaged and interesting. There was discussion about the moral and ethical issues, and possible legal implications, of making available material that is critical of individuals. I know I tend to overuse the word interesting, but as an Archivist cataloguing an archive, and someone involved in research of that archive, it is interesting to hear of the experiences of others in similar areas of work and research with different filmmakers archives. It is also a very healthy way of not becoming too insular or obsessed with the Lindsay Anderson Archive.

Conference delegates entering the MacRobert filmhouse on the first evening, and enjoying extracts from Is That All There Is

After a tea break the panel I chose to attend was 'Beyond the Director - the production system'. It was always a hard choice to make as to which panel to attend, for instance in this occasion the panel I didn't go to was 'Archives- current projects' which included papers about the Basil Dearden and Michael Relph Archive, Joseph Losey, Sally Potter and the Adelphi Archives - oh to be able to be in two places at once! The panel I chose to attend was really useful to me as it really deepened my understanding of the production system. Papers by: Brian Neve, University of Bath, 'Inside and Outside: Elia Kazan, Newtown Productions and notions of 'independence' in 1950s American filmmaking; Philip Drake, University of Stirling, 'Talent and reputation in Hollywood: the case of Hal Ashby'; Aaron Hunter, Queen's University Belfast, 'Down to the Last Detail: Archival reconstruction of Hal Ashby's Place in Hollywood Cinema'; and Andrew Spicer, University of the West of England, 'The Creative Producer: the Michael Klinger Papers'.

In the afternoon I chaired a panel 'Archive - creating and collecting' which contained: 'Private History, Public Persona and Preserving the Cinematic Past: Martin Scorsese and the Discourse of Film Preservation', by Nicholas Nguyen (NATO Archives); Scottish and Irish Experimental film, classification and archiving in national contexts, Sarah Neely, University of Stirling; 'Private Collections and Collective Authorship, case studies of amateur film practice, Ryan Shand, University of Liverpool; 'Watching Thought', revisiting Grierson and McLaren, Kirsteen Macdonald, Stirling Council.
Nicholas's Nguyen's paper contained discussion of the cultural prestige which Scorsese has got from his work as a film archivist/preserver, and explained how Scorsese's authority comes from his role as a champion of film preservation as much as from his role as a film director. This correlates to another theme which was discussed over the course of the conference and is something which I was discussing in a research seminar the other day - how 'the Archive' can be a source of power/authority, if a filmmaker creates their own archive what are the implications of this on their status as an 'auteur'. I think the example of Scorsese shows that the act of preserving can imbue an individual with a certain authority, which is not in anyway to undermine the work of Scorsese or The World Cinema Foundation (WCF), which Nguyen discussed in some depth. I've talked about the WCF before on this blog, in relation to their restoration of 'The Housemaid' and it was great to hear more about their work and about the history of Scorsese and his collecting/preserving of films.
Sarah Neely's paper discussed the distinction between amateur and experimental films and really broadened my understanding of the two, and the history of the distinctions between them. She explained how there is very little work done on Margaret Tait in this country, her home country, in contrast she is more well known and respected internationally. Once reason for this being that Avant-garde filmmakers are often marginalised because they don't say anything about nationality. An examination of the processes of classification of experimental film was also raised as something needing more research and something which she was looking into. This raised questions in my mind over the role of the archivist in this, and re-iterated for me the many areas of research which archivists are required to get involved in to give the materials we catalogue and describe the full respect they deserve - and reminded me, as if I needed it, of what an exciting and varied profession it is!
Ryan Shand's case studies of Amateur film practice discussed how debates on authorship can be useful in the study of amateur film practice. He focused on a case study of a film club in Bebington which has been running for over 50 years. Through interviews with them he examined ideas of individual and collective authorship that i think would be useful on debates in authorship in non-amateur films as well.
Kirsteen Macdonald looked at the questions which arise around the use of archival material in exhibitions. She discussed the development of an exhibition about Lindsay Anderson in 2007 which used material from the Lindsay Anderson Archive chosen as a result of conversations
between archivist Karl Magee, curator Kirsteen Macdonald and artist Stephen Sutcliffe. Then went on to discuss more recent collaborations between Stirling University Archives and the Changing Room with the work of Katy Dove and Luke Fowler with, respectively, the Norman McLaren and John Grierson Archives. The artist Luke Fowler was also in attendance and there was lots of lively and thought-provoking discussion after these presentations. The idea of artists taking the work out of context was discussed and Kirsten pointed out that in some instances the artists felt uncomfortable with the personal letters and photographs and found that removing them from their context, and only using selected elements from them, made this easier, and I would imagine, gives the artist a sense of control or ownership over the material in a creative sense.

Then followed an interesting presentation by Ruth Washbrook (Education and Outreach Officer, Scottish Screen Archive) which demonstrated the range of resources held at Scottish Screen Archive.

To top it all off, the day finished with a very rare screening of Red, White and Zero, the ill-fated trilogy of films by Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson and Peter Brook. I think these films have only ever been screened together once before so this was a pretty special event. I've talked about The White Bus before in an interview with the Big Picture magazine so I won't go over it again. It was intended to be a trilogy of films based on short stories by Shelagh Delaney but it was only Anderson who stuck to the original concept and producer a wonderful film in The White Bus. This screening was the first time for me, and for anyone else at the conference, to see the other two films - pretty exciting, and a bit nerve wracking for us, what if they were really awful and n one wanted to see them! However this wasn't the case, well, the Tony Richardson film still received mixed reviews but I liked it. Tony Richardson's film was called Red and Blue and featured his wife Vanessa Redgrave playing a singer, following hr through various love interests and cities, singing as she goes along. I would say the reception to this film was generally negative although some people, like myself, did enjoy it. It was bright and garish, a bit cheesy, very OTT, but lots of fun. Isabelle pointed out to me that maybe the reason I liked it was the influence of the work of Jacques Demy, a filmmaker whose work I love. The other film in the trilogy was Peter Brook's Ride of the Valkeries, also known as Zero, in tribute to the star of the film Zero Mostel. Anderson described this film as 'amateurish and confused' in his diaries of the time but it seemed to go down well at the conference. It was funny in a Buster Keaton type way and although the plot was a bit confused I think overall it came out as a funny, yet gently film that it would be nice to see released again.

The Friday started, for me, with 'British Cinema (and television), a panel containing papers by: Nathalie Morris, BFI, on 'The problem of the non-film, archives and unrealised projects'; Philip Wickham, Bill Douglas Centre, university of Exeter, 'You don't need talent to get work these days, you need a miracle - the British film industry in the 1970s and 1980s through filmmakers archives'; and Dave Rolinson, University of Stirling 'Archival research into the television work of Alan Plater'. Nathalie Morris made some very important points abut the study of unrealised films, explaining that until recently these weren't often discussed in terms of a director's work, it was only with a return to the archive for film researchers that attention is beginning to be paid to the important of unfinished film projects in a director's career. She highlighted a book 'Sights Unseen', by Dan North (which contains a chapter by Karl Magee, Stirling University Archives, 'Hooray for Hollywood? the unmade films of Lindsay Anderson') which I will really need to read as it sounds fascinating. Philip Wickham discussed the problems filmmakers faced in 1970s and 1980s and he also highlighted some of the differences in holding the archives of living filmmakers. Dave Rolinson looked at the methodological implications of the way researchers used television archives and discussed differences between research into television and research into films and the implications of this on which archival resources get used for research i.e. TV research tends to focus on the writer therefore research carried out in archives with this agenda already in place, as opposed to films where it is focussed on the director, and therefore archival research is carried out with this agenda already in place. The important of archives as living and breathing resources which need to be used, re-examined, re-used in different ways was emphasised in this session.

After another tea break there followed a preview of the documentary film The American Who Electrified Russia. Produced and directed by the independent filmmaker and academic Michael Chanan, it featured material from public archives and private records that enabled him to portray an extraordinary character, Solomon Trone, who had left powerful memories with his relatives - Chanan's own family.

The plenary speakers who closed the conference illustrated the ways in which academic researchers and professional archivists benefit from co-operation between the two sides of archives use. Sarah Street presented a paper that highlighted a crucial function of close study of archival material. As opposed to using archives on an illustrative basis, she uses them as a platform to challenge or enrich existing theoretical writing on film authorship. Marc Vernet from Université Paris Diderot, shared the core of a report he had written for the French Government focussing on the implications for archival work of that nation's employment regime for archivists which affords them careers spent at the crossroads of film theory and film preservation - but without continuing professional development.

Finally, Barbara Hall from the Margaret Herrick Library - Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, gave an insight into the wealth of material it makes available to researchers. By focusing on the Library's holdings of Hitchcock's material, Barbara summarised the challenges of preserving and making available to the general public the Hitchcock archives. While attempting this, she and her colleagues have to keep in mind the materials' value for knowledge arbiters. The Herrick Library's endeavours to hold this balance speak eloquently of every archives ongoing difficulty in evaluating, and adapting to the shifting impact of any given filmmaker's work and legacy. (these final three paragraphs are taken from the review of the conference which was written by my colleagues and posted on the conference webpages

I realised at the top of this post that I said I wouldn't give a full overview, oops - once I started talking about it I couldn't stop. Suffice to say the conference was a resounding success and I'm very glad to have played a part in it, and for anyone who took part in it who is reading this - thank you all for your contributions!!

The Old Crowd

Invitation to attend screening of The Old Crowd in Venice, California with ‘Director’s note’ written by Anderson © Lindsay Anderson Collection

I keep thinking about The Old Crowd after watching it again recently, it makes for such uncomfortable viewing and it's such a great piece of work that I feel it deserves to be considered on the same terms as Lindsay Anderson's films. I knew it was based on a play by Alan Bennett but I hadn't realised until cataloguing the correspondence what a collaborative piece of work the television adaptation was.

A little piece of context - Stephen Frears (who was Anderson's assistant director on If....) produced a series of six plays by Alan Bennett for LWT (London Weekend Television). The Old Crowd was the one that most interested Lindsay Anderson when he was asked to direct one of them.

[Plot synopsis – I realised after I posted this that I didn’t really include a plot synopsis as I got carried away talking about what’s in the Archive! Hmmn, not very good for an archivist though, not putting it in context, oops. So, what happens – George and Betty are having a dinner party in the large house they have just moved into with George’s mother. There is no furniture in the house due to a mix-up with the furniture ending up in another city. They are hosting a dinner party and the first people to arrive at the door are ‘the Slaves’, these two servants are Harold and Glyn and they instantly give off a sense of foreboding and menace. The windows in the house are covered in newspaper and whenever one of the guests arrives at the door there is an emphasis made on shutting the door, shutting out the outside world. There is a talk of a virus sweeping the country, of muggers, riots, rampant crime. All the guests arrive, including Totty, a friend they had been talking about who has just been given six months to live. The ‘Old Crowd’ are depicted as self-centred, boorish, bourgeoisie, but the ‘Slaves’ are not portrayed any better, they’re devious, threatening and opportunistic. The crack which appears in a ceiling at the start of the film is representative of the cracks within their own social group, the unlikelihood of their survival, and the cracks in society as a whole. All this is intensified by the glimpses of the camera, crew and edges of the set, making the whole thing much more uncomfortable and ‘real’ in the sense of a possible merging of their world and ours.]

In the correspondence files we have copies of the letter which Anderson originally sent to Alan Bennett, explaining that he would like to direct the play but asking if Bennett would mind if he made some changes. Then follows detailed correspondence between the two of them where they discuss changes to the plot, the script and the characters, it is also noted in Anderson's introduction to the play in The Writer in Disguise, that they met up to collaborate on the script. Every revision seems to make the play more disturbing, more satirical and more surreal. Anderson mentions Bunuel as an influence that came to his mind when reading the script, and also Max Frisch's play The Fire Raisers. I was very pleased to read this as one of my thoughts when I was watching the film was the Slaves, Harold and Glyn (played by Philip Stone and Frank Grimes, both wonderfully threatening and sinister in their roles), were reminiscent of the two intruders in The Fire Raisers. Indeed the overall feel of the play, the sense of foreboding, of events being out of their control, and yet that this lack of control was actually of their own making, their own blindness, is something that I got from both The Fire Raisers and Anderson's adaptation of The Old Crowd. In fact, thinking of it now, maybe the blindness of the piano player at the beginning is meant to be symbolic, I think it's one of those films that reveals more the more you watch it.

Lindsay Anderson, Jill Bennett and Frank Grimes on set ofThe Old Crowd © Lindsay Anderson Collection

Writing to Philip Stone, the actor who played Harold, before the film was aired on ITV, Anderson pre-empted the hostile reception the film would receive -

“I’m afraid it is fearfully sophisticated for a television “play” – in fact I have grown used to calling it an anti-television play. It will be another work I fear a few years advance of its time and one which disastrously will need to be seen more than once. And I don’t need to tell you that television isn’t designed for a product of this kind.” 28/07/1978, LA/2/3/3/4/17

There were a number of positive reviews, most notably by Alexander Walker and Tom Sutcliffe in The Guardian. These were however, overwhelmed by the slightly hysterical nature of the critical reviews, for example, Clive James writing for The Observer (04/02/1979)

"[The Old Crowd] was so unsophisticated in its presentation that it could scarcely be said to exist... People like Lindsay Anderson can never learn what people like Alan Bennett should know in their bones: that common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds".

Well I'm certainly not sure what that last bit is meant to mean but I know that 'common sense' as Clive James put it, is something which Anderson had little patience for in relation to humour. This is illustrated in a letter Anderson wrote to Melvyn Bragg where he asks ""the English tradition of Nonsense. Why have people generally lost their capacity to respond to it, or 'understand' it?" 28/02/1979, LA/2/3/3/3/9

The repeated glimpses, throughout the film, of the camera and crew are intended, in Anderson's own words "not to alienate the audiences from the drama, but rather to focus their attention on its essential - not its superficial or naturalistic - import." (taken from The Writer in Disguise, Alan Bennett, introduction to The Old Crowd by Lindsay Anderson, p164). He highlighted alienate as he didn't like the Brechtian term Alienation for the reasons outlined in the above quote. The critic Herbert Kretzmer, writing for the Daily Mail, said that these devices, intended to alienate, only served "in reassuring frightened viewers that they had nothing to worry about - it's only TV, folks!". Well, for me they did the exact opposite, making the content of the play more aligned with reality and illustrating the disturbing habits which we all have, of enclosing ourselves in our own little reality and ignoring what's going on outside.

There are a large amount of press cuttings for The Old Crowd in the file. A lot of reviews, but also a large number of letters to the editor from viewers who either strongly liked or disliked the film. It seems to have been, and will probably continue to be, a film which divides audiences into these strict camps.

Having all of Anderson’s correspondence relating to the film, all the press cuttings he collected (and was sent), the scripts, on-set photographs, production material and promotional material all together is such a wonderful resource and research tool and even from this preliminary look whilst cataloguing the correspondence, I feel like I’ve gained a much better insight into The Old Crowd. I hope quotes from Anderson’s correspondence and the on-set photographs are providing as much interest to others on here as they do to me whilst cataloguing them!

Lindsay Anderson and Rachel Roberts on set of The Old Crowd
© Lindsay Anderson Collection

Exhibition at the Changing Room, Stirling

Art is not a mirror, its a hammer!

An exploration of the John Grierson and Norman McLaren Archives.
11 July - 5 September 2009

The result of a collaborative project, this exhibition will feature film and archival material selected by artists Katy Dove, Luke Fowler and archivist Karl Magee.

Grierson and McLaren film screening

4 September 2009, 7.00pm

Featuring Hitchcock on Grierson

Please join us for the screening of Hitchcock on Grierson Alfred Hitchcocks tribute to the famous documentary maker John Grierson televised in 1965. Courtesy of STV

Refreshments will be served. This event is free but please call Tolbooth Box Office on 01786 27 4000 to book tickets, as space is limited.