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Coming next ...
31 Jan - 'Just what was modern
about Modernism? And why was
film so important to it?' An illustrated
introduction to modernist film, pm at
Cambridge Arts Cinema, in connection
with Lutz Becker's exhibition at Kettle's
Yard Gallery, Modern Times: Responding
to Chaos
See also the exhibition opening at the
new London Film Museum on 'Charlie
Chaplin - the Great Londoner' (from
5 Jan, Belevedere Road, Waterloo)
1 Feb - Introducing Bergman's The
Seventh Seal for NFTS, 6.30 at BFI
Southbank
5 Feb - 'Blind Spots: what about the
history that doesn't get screened?'
Giving Nick Burton Memorial Lecture at
Canterbury Christ Church University on
history and film
4 Mar - Introducing Paradjanov's
Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors,
6.30 at BFI Southbank
5 Mar - PhotoFilm conference at Tate
Modern
7 Mar - Film & TV Walk Muswell Hill.
Meet at Library, 11.00am.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And recently ...
17 Dec - 'What Do We See in Films?
Gave the Keynote Richard Gregory lecture at
Bristol Vision Institute's inaugural symposium,
University of Bristol.
6 Dec - I helping to launch The YouTube
Reader, a great collection of essays exploring
the implications of YouTube, distributed in the
UK by Wallflower, at their cafe-gallery
Cinephilia West,171 Westbourne Grove, W11
3 Dec- Keynote at Polish cinema conference at
Cornerhouse, Manchester: 'Poland - but not as
we knew it', about some of the 'deviant' Polish
films and filmmakers of the 60s, including Has's
The Saragossa Manuscript (below).
30 Nov - talk in Brighton:'Britain's Lost Cinema:
the Ones that Got Away'. about unmade films
planned by Michael Powell, David Lean (below,
John Box design for Nostromo) and Terry Gilliam,
speculating on how these might have affected
the directors' reputations. University of Brighton
20-22 Nov: Europa Cinemas Annual Conference
in Warsaw: Europe's exhibitors facing the digital
future. I presented a survey of European
websites that try to guide intending filmgoers,
and asked whethernthese favour studio releases
at the expense of European films.
17 Nov - Bristol University Art lectures 'Three
Celebrations in Eisenstein' (for details see link)
2 Nov - Talk at the BFI Library, in the series
Researchers' Tales, about work on the recent
UKFC report on the Cultural Impact of British
Film (see link)
30 Oct - Took part in a panel at the European
Psychoanalytic Film Festival at BAFTA in London,
discussing Alexei Popogrebsky's seductive Simple
Things (2007) with the director and Igor Kadyrov
24 Oct - I chaired a panel discussing Gideon
Koppel's wonderful docu-fiction about a
Welsh village, Sleep Furiously (below)
at the Birkbeck Cinema
14 Oct - previewed Anthony Asquith's
restored Underground (1928) showing
in the London Film Festival on 23 Oct,
on Radio 3's Nightwaves
29 Sept - Birkbeck MA in History of Film
& Visual Media Core Course started with
Magic Lantern show, by Jeremy Booker,
with live accompaniment by Stephen Horne -
who accompanied Abel Gance's anti-war
landmark J'Accuse (1918) in Pordenone and
at the Barbican.
22 Sept - Jack Cardiff: Painter with
Light - a tribute to Jack, with clips from
some of his best films, at the Cambridge
Film Festival.
15 Sept - 'Defining the Look': talk about
John Box's production design in the 70s and
80s at Cinephilia, Wallflower's new film cafe
on Westbourne Grove, at 7.00.
14 Sept - Introducing Godard's Masculin-
Feminin at BFI Southbank for National Film
and Television School's Passport to Cinema
11-13 Sept - Screendance workshop at
Brighton University
6-12 Sept - Synapsis Summer School,
Bertinoro, Italy. I led a seminar on this year's
theme, 'Shadows', in cinema, with Giulio Iacoli.
This ranged over shadow-theatre and 20s
Expressionism, up to 'shadow' Gay and Black
identities in film.
4 Sept - Keynote talk at the University of
Winchester's conferenceFraming Film -
Cinema and the Visual Arts: 'Crafting
Worlds: the work of the production
designer'
4 August - launch of my new book on John
Box at BFI Southbank, with an illustrated
survey of John's career, followed by a rare
screening of one of his most impressive later
films, Michael Mann's The Keep.
11 July, University of Bristol conference
on Colour and the Moving Image. In a
keynote, 'Why do we think we see in colour
anyway?, I put the case for a cognitive
approach to distinguishing the perception of
colour and b/w, which didn't convince everyone,
but pointed towards some experimental work I
hope to develop. (see 17 Dec above)
6 July, University of Paris Summer School.
Plenary on Screens Across the City, from
anoramas to urban display networks, via
'cinema'
1 July BFI Southbank As part of One Giant
Leap, I indulged my love of Jules Verne and
astronomy in an illustrated tour of 16 - 19c lunar
fantasies, Trips to the Moon, including
Offenbach and Melies's great 1902 film.
27 June - 1 July: led Europa Cinemas
Workshop for exhibitors at Bologna Cinema
Ritrovato Festival on 'The Challenge of
Generations'.
18 June - led a walk around film-related
sites in Haringey centred on Green Lanes.
Including locations for Face, Long Good Friday and
the ex-Premier Cinema in Turnpike Lane.
9/10 June - US archivist Paul Spehr was in the
UK as joint guest of Birkbeck and BFI Southbank
to talk about W K L Dickson, the subject of his
superb new biography, The Man Who Made
Movies (Libbey). Paul presented Dickson and
Edison films at the Barbican, BFI Southbank and
at Birkbeck.
7/8 June - British Silents Festival and the
Sounds of Early Cinema in Britain
conference. During these two adjoining events,
I led a walk around early cinema sites in
central London, then interviewed American
conductor Gillian Anderson after her brilliant
performance of the original music for Griffith's
Way Down East, and gave a paper about
musical accompaniment in London film
shows before 1914, at the Soundsconference.
5/6 June - European Experimental
Television symposium at Birkbeck Cinema, with
controbutions by Dorota Ostrowska, Michael
Temple, Mike Allen and me, and Laura Mulvey
introducing her and Peter Wollen's experimental
C4 drama The Bad Sister. Papers from this
forthcoming in Critical Studies in Television (MUP)
5 June, Tate Britain - panel with Horace Ove
and Colin Prescod about the 70s independent film
scene and Pressure, as part of The Story of
London.
3 June National Gallery, London, an
illustrated talk in connection with the Picasso
exhibition: Picasso and Film: An Uncon-
summated Affair?, which considered why
Picasso didn't make any films despite his early
and continuing fascination with the medium.
7 May - Nightwaves, BBC Radio 3, discussion
between me and Michael Billington about 'removing
the fourth wall' in theatre and cinema.
10 May Watershed, Bristol I introduced
Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and
Death as part of Pictures in the Mind, discussing
the accuracy of its neurological casework for
1946.
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In print ...
The Art of Film: John Box and Production Design, Wallflower, 2009 (see About Me, and review by Brian Macfarlane in the Jan 2010 Sight and Sound)
The new Oxford Companion to English Literature, radically revised by Dinah Birch and on which I served as an associate editor, has a range of new film entries, including Chaplin, Hitchcock, Greenaway and Jarman (as well as Ealing and Carry On...). A very enjoyable browse, if I may say so.
An article I co-wrote with John Sedgwick has just appeared in a book from Siegen University: "‘Fumbling Towards Some New Form of Art?’: The Changing Composition of Film Programmes in Britain, 1908–1914", in Annemone Ligensa and Klaus Kreimeier (eds), Film 1900: Technology, Perception, Culture, Libbey / Indiana University Press, 2009, 151-163
'Seeing Red' - article on the Red Shoes restoration and its implications, Sight and Sound, Aug 2009, pp. 36-38 - plus follow-up letters in Oct and Nov issues
'History from beneath', review of Anchoress, Comrades and Winstanley , all new on DVD, Sight and Sound, Aug 2009, p. 84.
Stories we tell ourselves: The Cultural Impact of UK Film 1946-2006, UK Film Council, 2009 (co-author) - available to download from UKFC website.
'"Dying for art": Michael Powell's journey towards Duke Bluebeard's Castle and the filmic art-work of the future', in Griselda Pollock and Victoria Anderson, eds., Bluebeard's legacy; death and secrets from Bartok to Hitchcock, I. B. Tauris, 2009
'Text Rules?' - on practice-based research, Journal of Media Practice 9: 3, pp. 275-7.
'Histories of the Future: mapping the avant-garde', Film History, v. 20, n. 1, 2008, pp. 6-13.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Now out ...
What Do You Know About Me? [Di me cosa ne sai] - a punchy new film by Valerio Jalongo about the mysterious disappearance of Italian cinema. I make a brief appearance to explain how the multiplexes brought no variety of choice. see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1514825/
Scotland on Screen (BBC4, 16.9.09) I contributed to Pauline Law's survey of how Scotland has appeared in film, including bits on Braveheart, Rob Roy, I Know Where I'm Going! and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
Commentary for the new Criterion DVD of That Hamilton Woman (Alexander Korda, 1941)
And coming soon ...
Scorsese on Scorsese 4th ed
A fourth edition of this interview-based book, with David Thompson, is in preparation, and should appear early next year. This will include discussion of the recent music films (No Direction Home and Shine a Light), The Departed and Shutter Island - due out in 2010.
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