Searching the BFI

The British Film Institute has issued a new version of its database, which is a huge improvement on what has been available online before now. The new service, BFI Collections Search, for the first time combines its bibliographic, filmographic and technical databases, something the BFI has been trying to engineer for years (decades even). ThisRead More

Travelling hopefully

Highlights from NRK’s ten-hour Nordlandsbanen train journey programme In December the Norwegian broadcaster NRK put on a ten-hour transmission of a train journey. Filmed from the front of a train cab travelling along the Nordlandsbanen line between Trondheim and Bodø (a distance of 438 miles), the programme gained one million viewers, or a fifth ofRead More

Be still

I’ve only collected three autographs in my lifetime (getting friends to sign copies of their books for me doesn’t count). The first was when I was aged 10 or so. It was Bertie Mee, the manager of Arsenal football club. I forget the circumstances, and I lost the autograph long ago. The second was theRead More