It is sad to hear of the recent death of Don Swift, former cataloguer at the National Film Archive, as the BFI National Archive was known in his time. Don was steady, wise, understanding and deeply knowledgeable (especially about mountaineering and cricket – his detailed shotlists of archival cricket films are masterpieces of description and research). He was so kindly and sympathetic towards a young and clueless assistant cataloguer – myself – who joined the NFA in 1986.
He represented, for me, the model cataloguer. He appreciated, he understood, he described and classified. He put objects in their good order, and in doing all this maintained what was truthful. As Clyde Jeavons, former Deputy Curator and then Curator of the NFA says in an oral history interview, the emphasis on cataloguing was an inheritance of the Archive’s principled founder, Ernest Lindgren:
Lindgren led the way in film cataloguing. He was at heart a librarian figure really – he wasn’t a librarian but his philosophy was librarianship as you will know. And life should be led as if you were a librarian, I think [chuckles], and he applied all those tenets to film archiving and he said there was no point in storing all this material unless it is fully recorded and catalogued, and he consciously built up a formal cataloguing department and when I joined to be a cataloguer you still had to take a librarianship course, and become a qualified librarian to be a film cataloguer.
Life should be led as if you were a librarian. Now there’s food for thought.
One memory, among many, of Don, is him telling me what he felt was the greatest film in the National Film Archive, or at least the film that he admired the most. It was Plastic Surgery in Wartime (UK 1941). To the best of my knowledge this little-known documentary film, directed by Frank Sainsbury for the Realist Film Unit and shot in Technicolor by Jack Cardiff, has never featured in any of the BFI National Archive’s prestige colour film restoration projects, at least those with a public outcome. Perhaps that is unsurprising, given its challenging subject matter. But for Don the honesty of its production, and in particular the dignity of the patients, each speaking to camera about the nature and cause of their injuries, made it a film of singular poetry and a model of what the film medium could achieve. Don’s view of film was not as art but as a reflection of humanity. The archive – with its huge variety of fiction and non-fiction films, professional and amateur, finished and unfinished, silent and sound – was the ultimate expression of this, and what was greatest about it was that which was most humane.
The splendid photo above shows Don with colleagues, probably in 1979. They are lined up on the roof of 81 Dean Street in London, then the home of the National Film Archive (the films themselves were in Aston Clinton in Buckinghamshire, Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire and Gaydon in Warwickshire). Why they were on the roof to celebrate the National Flim Achrive [sic], I do not know, but it feels important to identify them – not just because several became colleagues and good friends when I joined some years later, but we must remember those who have preserved our culture. The line-up includes managers, cataloguers, production and viewing staff, acquisition staff, stills collection staff, and secretaries. They are:
Top row (L-R), Don Swift, Scott Meek, Clive Truman, David Francis (then the Curator of the NFA), Markku Salmi, Tim Cotter, Dorly Minich, Anne Burton, Elaine Burrows, Roger Holman
Middle row (L-R): Jan Faull, Liz Heasman, Shirley Pluckrose (subsequently Jeavons), Michelle Snapes (subsequently Aubert), Dave Meara, Dinah Marmery
Front row: Clyde Jeavons (then Deputy Curator).
Links:
- My thanks to Elaine Burrows for helping with identifying the names and to Clyde Jeavons for remembering the year
- Clyde Jeavons’s interview was conducted for the British Entertainment History Project in 2016/2017 and is available online in video and PDF transcript form
- There is a catalogue record for Plastic Surgery in Wartime on the BFI Collections site. There is also a catalogue record for the videotape/DVD copies held by the Wellcome Collection
- A shorter version of this tribute is posted on LinkedIn
Ah, the good ol’ National Flim Achrive! Were those cataloguers trolling us before such a thing existed? 🙂
They do seem to be saying hello to all of us, forty-five years into the future
I just stumbled across this blog – that’s my dad! What a surprise and a joy to read about his work at the National Film Archive. I grew up with dad the mountaineering book specialist but know little of his former career. I’d love to hear more.
I’m delighted that you have found this short tribute. I’ll reply by email.