Next in these reviews of the year is things seen on screen. Now that the boundaries between film, television and Netflix have blurred so utterly, it seems foolish to think of the various forms of screen entertainment or instruction as being separate from one another. We separate them only out of habit. Anyway, here areRead More
Few arguments can be more engrossing to take up, yet with so little hope of resolution, than the relationship between history and film. It is almost as if one of the chief functions of film is to bring history into confusion. Actuality film – newsreels, newsfilms, documentaries, home movies – appears to capture moments ofRead More
Well, perhaps I can retire now. I’ve been at the British Library for eleven years, and we have finally got round to doing that which several must have expected of my being there, which is to digitise the silent film era trade journal The Bioscope. The fact that I had nothing to do with theRead More
It was back in 1992, when an envelope turned up on my desk at the BFI. It came from the Nederlands Filmmuseum (now EYE Filmmuseum), and contained a number of frame stills of very early films that they were preserving. They wanted help in identifying them. They were marvellous, intriguing, baffling images. There were scenesRead More
There has probably been no more romantic human dream than the wish to fly. To defy gravity is to break through the bounds that tie we humans down. It is death-defying, an expression of immortality. Anyone who gets on a plane today and does not think – irrespective of what knowledge of aeronautical physics theyRead More
What a magical image this is. An audience of young people has packed a theatre, to such a degree that some are on the stage, while others sit perilously on the edge of the balcony, their legs hanging over. They are fresh-faced, eager, revelling in where they are and who they are. A man andRead More
Zone Out (via The Brain That Wouldn’t Die) I am aware that I am turning into something of a robot bore. Whatever the human activity, be it work or pleasure, I have become far too prone in conversation to tell people how said activity will be taken over and then transformed by artificial intelligence. AndRead More
None of us entirely likes the stories others tell of us. The pleasure of acknowledgment is countered by the failure of comprehension. No one ever quite gets us right. This is notably true of St Helena. Aside from the misrepresentation of the far-away island by tourists such as myself, with quick opinions based on fleetingRead More
It’s great to be able to report that the number of Charles Urban catalogues freely available online is growing. Charles Urban – just in case you didn’t know – was an Anglo-American film producer who specialised in non-fiction and educational film in the first twenty or so years of cinema. I manage a website aboutRead More
A new film, as yet untitled, made by Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame) and his company WingNut Films has just been announced. Commissioned by the UK World War I centenary art organisation 14-18 NOW, and scheduled to be premiered at the London Film Festival in November 2018, with cinema and school showingsRead More