The birth of the popular science film – Francis Martin Duncan appears as the scientist in Cheese Mites, the notorious film he made for Charles Urban in 1903. The full film was only recently discovered by Oliver Gaycken (lurking on YouTube under a made-up title) Two books are to be published shortly which cover theRead More
I paid a rare visit to the BFI Southbank the other day to see a programme of films entitled ‘The Birth of British Sci-Fi’, part of its Sci-Fi: Days of Fear and Wonder season. The six films on show ranged from 1897, with G.A. Smith’s The X-Rays to A Message from Mars (1913), the firstRead More
I recently watched the Richard Linklater trilogy, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight, which trace the romance over nineteen years between Céline (played by Julie Delpy) and Jesse (played by Ethan Hawke). They are much loved films and have been much discussed. All I need to say about what I thought of them inRead More
‘The Concept of News’ was the title of a symposium organised by The Newsreel Network and held over 20-21 May at the Danish Film Institute in Copenhagen. The Newsreel Network is a collection of scholars interested in newsreel research, convened by the University of Lund in Sweden, newsreels being a common feature of cinema programmesRead More
The news that the entire British Pathé newsreel archive has been published on YouTube has made a huge impact. There have been news broadcasts, web news and newspaper reports, and the story has spread widely across social media, which is very much was British Pathé wanted. 85,000 videos, or 3,500 hours of film ranging fromRead More
Just under thirty years ago I went to a tiny cinema, the name of which escapes me, somewhere off Piccadilly, London, to see a dramatised documentary about the Irish painter William Scott. It was directed by the painter’s son, James Scott (who had won an Academy Award in 1983 for the Graham Greene short filmRead More
100 years ago, on 2 February 1914, the film Making a Living was released by the Keystone Film Company. It was a comedy, one reel long (1,000 feet, or around 10 minutes), directed by Henry Lehrman. The star was a British comedian, newly arrived in Hollywood, whose first film it was. The actor was CharlesRead More
Today, October 27th, is UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage. The day is marked every year by audiovisual archives and archivists as a means to (in UNESCO’s words) “raise general awareness of the need for urgent measures to be taken and to acknowledge the importance of audiovisual documents as an integral part of national identity”.Read More
When did I last see The Big Parade? I can’t remember where or when? On a big screen, I think, and at least twenty years ago. My memory of it, apart from its huge emotional impact, chiefly centred on the soldiers marching slowly through woods in the face of gunfire. I saw the film againRead More
We are planning some grand project at my work place, and part of the inevitable procedure is to find out what people think about the idea. So we get some marketing firm to track down different types of people who use our services, or who don’t use them but might do, and other such categories,Read More