I spent a fascinating, exhausting and illuminating two days last weekend attending the conference of the Federation of International Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA), which was held at the British Library. FIAT/IFTA is a representative body for those archives, commercial and public sector, that care for the world’s television heritage (its film equivalent is FIAF, the internationalRead More
A few months ago I came across two wax cylinders in an antique shop in my home town of Rochester. They both had beautiful cardboard tube covers, one for Edison Bell, the other for Clarion, though as I was to discover the cylinders inside did not match the desciptions of the music on the outsideRead More
Blogs are addictive things. I’ve set up some five or six over the past few years, not to give my petty views of the world but instead devoted to individual subjects where I could report on research discoveries. A couple did quite well – The Bioscope provided information on early and silent cinema and wasRead More
I’ve been dreaming of going to the Olympic Games since I was eleven. The 1972 Games were such a thrill, not only for the sports themselves, but for the discovery of Olympic history. My heroes were the Olympians of years past: Ray Ewry, Jim Thorpe, Paavo Nurmi, Jesse Owens, Wilma Rudolph, Abebe Bikila. I alsoRead More
This is the first post of my personal blog. I’ve maintained several blogs over the past few years – on silent films, poetry, online Shakespeare, moving images at the British Library, and a collective site that aimed to bring all of this activity into one place. It’s been too much. I’m simplifying what I writeRead More
Pandaemonium is the Palace of All the Devils. Its building began c.1660. It will never be finished – it has to be transformed into Jerusalem. The building of Pandaemonium is the real history of Britain for the last three hundred years. Frank Cottrell Boyce, the writer behind ‘Isles of Wonder’, the extraordinary and widely acclaimedRead More
Rather by accident, I saw the feature film Mr Bean’s Holiday yesterday. Catching the opening credits while channel-hopping, I imagined that I’d stay with it for a few minutes and ended up, well, almost captivated. It’s a well-constructed comedy about Mr Bean’s haphazardous trip through France in the company of a lost child. It adroitlyRead More
This week I attended Screening the Future 2011: New Strategies and Challenges in Audiovisual Archiving, held in Hilversum, the Netherlands. The event was organised by PrestoPrime and PrestoCentre, interlinked projects funded by the European Union as part of a decade-long programme looking at how film and broadcast archives should plan for the future by sharingRead More
On the night of 16 December 1910 a group of Latvian revolutionaries attempted to rob a jeweller’s shop at 119 Houndsditch in the City of London. Their aim was to obtain funds to support revolutionary activity in Russia (and to support themselves), but their efforts to break in were overheard and nine policemen were calledRead More
The relief to be out of the sun, To have come north once more To my islands of dark ore Where winter is so long Only a little light Gets through, and that perfect. I think this is my favourite film poem. It’s not immediately obvious that it is about film; for that you needRead More