New Year resolutions 2013

A very belated Happy New Year to everyone! I have been putting off addressing last year's New Year resolutions as I was so sure I hadn't done very well in fulfilling them.  However looking at them now I've done a bit better than I thought.

1. Organise my time better, at home and at work - this was really far to vague to have as a resolution.  I've realised I don't have a problem organising my time at work.  The problem is at home -caused by the big box in the corner of the room, the time-eater AKA the TV.  This year I resolve to spend less time watching television and more time doing things - sewing, working on the Registration scheme (see next point), and working on the Lindsay Anderson Memorial Foundation website (relaunch happening soon I hope!).
2. Sign up for the Archives and Records Association Registration Scheme - Hmmn well to say I haven't done well with this would be an understatement. I started off well and organising a London meet-up of folk on the Registration Scheme.  This went really well but somehow time moved on and I still never got round to starting any of the learning outcomes.  So this year I hope to get started on it.
3. Get back to reading more non-fiction - Success! I've read a lot more non-fiction - usually autobiographies and biographies but also reportage and women's history. 
4. Try and visit a new-to-me Cinema/film screening venue once a month - I didn't manage this every month but I have been to a load of new cinemas this year - highlights in London being the Prince Charles Cinema, Pipilotti Rist at the Hayward Gallery, and most recently a visit to the Genesis Cinema.  Outside of London I paid my first visit to the Baker Street cinema in Abergavenny - to see Madagascar 3 with my nieces, a fun experience!
5. Keep a record of all the films I watch and books I read - Fail! Maybe this year. I did sign back into my Library thing account as I thought this might be an easy way of keeping track of books I read.
6. Buy less clothes/get back to learning to sew- Success! I'm enjoying learning to sew again and have definitely bought far less clothes. I do post occasional updates on my sewing blog but I'm not very good at taking photos of my creations yet.
7. Introduce the idea of Analog Sunday's as I saw it on a blog I recently found 'Someday. by Avalonne Hall' Try and have at least 2 a month - I've done this a few times and I do enjoy breaks from using my laptop but I'm not going to stress if I don't manage it all that often.

So this year I'm not going to make any new resolutions, instead I'm going to try harder at number 2, 5 and 6 on my list from last year.  Once I get started on the Archives and Records Association Registration Scheme I'll post some updates here. 

New book on Lindsay Anderson

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!

The book is published by Manchester University Press and is available on Amazon.

Dreams of wings

A rather whimsical post to ease myself back into my archive related blogging (it's been all about the sewing this summer). I came across this magazine cover (the back cover) when we were doing some recent appraisal work on a large collection. There were some real gems in there and this advert, from a Japanese magazine,  really caught my eye - what does it all mean?! I really can't work it out - the only wings women have that I can think of are from certain sanitary products that I can't imagine men aspire to using! so what? is it just a weird translation? or maybe it means 'men' as 'mankind' and is talking about architecture as a tribute to God and angels? Or could it be to do with the lapels on his jacket?  Any suggestions warmly welcomed.

In a very unprofessional way I forgot to note the date of this magazine, or it's title - but it's too good not to share!

Advert from Japanese magazine

Visit to the Cinema Museum, London

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.

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)