I'm very excited to share with you that Lindsay Anderson: Cinema Authorship has now been published! This book is one of the outcomes of the project I worked on for three years at Stirling University 'The Cinema Authorship of Lindsay Anderson' and it is so satisfying to see it in print. I'm really enjoying reading back through it and I'm sure it's going to lead to more viewings of his films and lots of happy memories of cataloguing!
The Lindsay Anderson project was the reason I started this blog way back in February 2009
and I still find it hard to believe sometimes that I got to spend 3
years cataloguing and researching in the Lindsay Anderson Archive - I do
love being an archivist!
This is a post I originally wrote as a piece for the newsletter of the London Region Archives and Records Association (I still have to concentrate not to say Society of Archivists!). I've altered it slightly since and included a few more photographs. The newsletter is available here.
London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) have a monthly film club: a free drop-in event with ‘screenings of archive films from LMA and other organisations, occasional guest speakers and plenty of opportunity for discussion'. Sounded perfect - two of my favourite things, film and archives - together! When I saw the March film club was a visit to the Cinema Museum in Elephant and Castle I was even more excited as I'd been meaning to visit for years. Emily, the organiser of the Film Club, was very friendly and arranged to meet everyone outside. She had arranged for us to have a tour and a film screening.
Exterior of the Cinema Museum, photo by me
Ronald Grant was our host for the evening and he told us the story of the development of the film museum, the history of the building (it was previously a workhouse where a young Charlie Chaplin spent time), and a great history of film itself. Ronald started working as an apprentice projectionist with Aberdeen Picture Palaces Ltd at the age of 15. On moving to London he worked for the BFI and the Brixton Ritzy. A trip back to Aberdeen led to a chance encounter with his old employer who showed him warehouses full of artefacts from the cinema chain he had worked with. In order to save these from being destroyed he returned to London with a large quantity of artifacts and film equipment which formed the basis of the museum (there more on the history of the museum on their website.
Category Board featuring 'H' for Horrific!, photo by me
The collection has continued to grow since then and covers everything you could think of from the doors and display boards of the cinema to the interior fixtures, film projectors and the films themselves (over 17 million feet of film), film journals, books and magazines, uniforms of staff from the cinemas, posters and original artwork, publicity stills and photographs of cinemas, and I’m sure lots more that I’ve missed out!
I really liked this carved poster frame with Mutiny in the Bounty (which starred Richard Harris) in the centre, photo by me
Ronald was a fantastic tour guide, weaving his personal history in and around all the objects and artefacts in the museum. He also showed us the space they use for doing events including film screenings and sessions with film makers and actors – I’ll definitely be going back!
The evening ended with an archive film screening of a selection of films including some a film made about the last tram in London ( 1952) and, to my delight, a film by the New Zealand film-maker Len Lye which I think (I knew I should have written this up when I got home that night!) was A colour box (1935). I would highly recommend a visit to anyone interesting in film, film archives and film history.
Unfortunately I couldn’t make it to the April meeting of the film club so I can’t report on how that went but I’m looking forward to the May Film Club on Wednesday 23rd May. Information on the dates of the upcoming film clubs are available here.
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)
I think this is a tendency in all archivists really, or in anyone who loves their jobs - finding connections everywhere! In my case I always seem to find archive connections in what I'm reading, listening to, talking to friends about, or going to see in exhibitions. I'm still really enjoying reading through Raymond Chandler's published letters in The Raymond Chandler Papers (sadly reaching the end of the book now!). I was particularly happy when I came across a Lindsay Anderson link (if you're new here then I should point out that I spent 3 years working at Stirling University Archives cataloguing parts of Lindsay Anderson's archive). Towards the end of the book there is a letter from Raymond Chandler to the editor of Sequence magazine. This is undated but is in amongst the early 1952 letters which would have been about right given the content of the letter.
“I hate to see the magazine fold. There is so little intelligent writing about films, so little that walks delicately but surely between the avant garde type, which is largely a reflection of neuroticism, and the deadly commercial stuff. I think you have been a little too hard at times on English films, which even when not top notch do give you the feeling of moving around in a civilised world – something which the Hollywood product falls pretty short of as a rule. Even if you had been less intelligent, I should be sorry to see you go. Sight and Sound is all very well so far as it goes. I suppose it is subsidised, and everything that is subsidised compromises, and everything that compromises ends up by being negative."
Sequence was a film journal started by Lindsay Anderson, Gavin Lambert and Peter Ericsson. It started in 1948 and fourteen issues were published, the final in 1952. I still get so happy when I come across links to Lindsay Anderson so of course my first thought was to check the catalogue. I knew I'd catalogued all the Sequence correspondence and I didn't have any memory of a Raymond Chandler letter but of course there's no way of remembering everything you've catalogued! Unfortunately it's not there so the original of the letter didn't make it to the Lindsay Anderson Archive. In the book the authors say that Raymond Chandler's archive is held between the Bodlein and UCLA, though neither of these have their Chandler collection catalogued to item level online so I can't even see which archive holds Chandler's carbon copy of the letter he sent.
It's disappointing the letter isn't in the Lindsay Anderson Archive but then it would be impossible for an archive collection ever to be 'complete'. Maybe the letter is in the archive of one of the other founders of Sequence (Gavin Lambert's papers are at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Centre in Boston) , maybe it ended up with someone else who was a fan of Chandler, or maybe it just got lost of misplaced at some point before the collection arrived at the University. We'll never know I suppose.
Interestingly, there is a mention of Raymond Chandler in the Sequence series of the Lindsay Anderson Archive. It's in section LA/4/1/6 'Letters from readers and subscribers to Sequence' and is a letter from J. B. Priestley to a Mr Panting and my catalogue description reads
Thanks for sending a copy of Sequence; and expressing interest in an article on Raymond Chandler.
It's dated 30/05/1949 so I wonder if there was an article in Sequence which discussed Raymond Chandler's writing, either novels or screen writing, or a film adaptation of one of his books. Mr. Panting seems an odd name but I seem to remember that the authors of Sequence would sometimes write under pseudonyms. I know from the Raymond Chandler Papers that Chandler knew Priestley, but I don't know when from - the earliest mention of Priestley in the book is from 1951. I'm going to have delve a bit further into this sometime, starting with another good look through Sequence - a good excuse for a visit to the new BFI library at Southbank!
'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.
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!
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.
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!
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!
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