Still to come ...

15-16 Jun - Canterbury Powell-Pressburger Conference, Christ Church University. IC Keynote and conversation with Thelma Schoonmaker

12 Jun - DOMITOR Conference, Filmmuseum Vienna. IC: 'How Vienna could be considered a cradle of Avant-garde cinema'

24 May - BIMI: Afterimage: Introducing Raul Ruiz

17 May - British Silents event, KCL London

3 May - BIMI Afterimage and 'Structural Film'. IC and Simon Field

26 Apr - BIMI: Women Pioneers of Essay Film. IC and Esther Leslie

18 Apr - Decadent Film Club: Goldsmiths College. Robert Paul and the Alhambra in the 1890s presentation 6.30.

5 Apr - EIN Network online discussion of A Trip to Tetlapayac

2024 so far...

8 Mar - BIMI: A Trip to Tetlapayac (IC, Chiema Shimada)

8 Mar - BIMI: Launch of Spaces, ed IC (AUP Key Debates), with Isobel Armstrong, Mark Broughton,  Mark Cosgrove, Luke McKernan, Patrick Keiller.

1 Mar - BIMI: Afterimage Revisited - Godard: History, Passion (IC, Keith Griffiths, 1983) + Le Vent d'est (Godard, Gorin, 1970). IC intro

16 Feb - BIMI: Afterimage Revisited - Imagining October (Jarman, 1984) + Wittgenstein (Jarman, 1993). Intro IC

2 Feb - BIMI: Afterimage Revisited - Black God, White Devil (Glauber Rocha, 1964). Introduced by IC, Simon Field and Mark Webber, marking publication of The Afterimage Reader (Visible Press)

26 Jan - BIMI: The Coming of Cinema to Istanbul. Illustrated talk by Prof Nezih Erdogan, visiting scholar at Birkbeck, introduced by IC, with piano accompaniment by Cigdem Borucu.

.

28 Dec - Thanks to BBC pre-records and I-player, you could hear me on the Soviet James Bond at Radio 4 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04v59h9.  And in Matthew Sweet's very entertaining Palace of Great War Varieties on 6.45pm on Sunday 28 December, as the BBC Radio 3 ‘Sunday Feature’.

15 Dec - Managed to introduce Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin for NFTS Passport to Cinema at BFI Southbank.

My chapter on The Red Shoes in the new edition of the Norton Film Analysis reader: P&P making another inroad into the canon. 

The Ancient World in Silent Cinema, ed. Pantelis Michelakis and Maria Wyke (CUP), has my chapter 'Ancient Rome in London: classical subjects in the forefront of cinema's expansion after 1910'

16-19 Oct  - Chaired the jury of the 'Brno Sixteen' short film festival, celebrating its 54th edition in the Czech Republic. http://brno16.cz/o-festivalu/ and the film we gave the main prize to, The Chicken by Una Gunjak from Croatia, was later voted the best European short of 2014.

28 Sep - Introduced Walter Ruttman's influential Berlin, Symphony of the City (1927) at the Barbican Cinema with live accompaniment by Stephen Horne and Martin Pyne; part of the Barbican series City Visions.

1-3 Oct - Start of the final year of Re-Presenting the Past, the ESF project at Palacky University, Olomouc, in the Czech Republic. I gave a talk about 'Big Data and Small Data' and the significance of digital sources for doing history today. http://www.re-prezentaceminulosti.cz/en/

1 Oct - First film in the new London on Screen series, London Lives, and a tribute to the late Richard Attenborough: Sidney Gilliat's disconcerting comedy-thriller London Belongs to Me (1948). At the Birkbeck Cinema,

43 Gordon Square. Free admission - note screenings on Wednesdays

this term and see new website at www.londonscreenstudy.com

18-20 Sep - Took part in Cambridge University conference on New Directions in the study of Russian cinema, held to mark the retirement of Julian Graffy from teaching at SSEES (not that he's giving up inspiring enthusiasm for Russian cinema!)

17 Sep - Chaired the panel discussion after BFI Southbank screening of Andre Singer's powerful new Holocaust documentary Night Will Fall.

1 Aug - Spoke at Loops and Splices: changing media technologies conference, at Victoria University Wellington, NZ - on 'Denying Depth: the hidden history of 3D in photography and film'

9 - 28 Jul - In Australia, for a Research Fellowship at ANU in Canberra, and the conference History, Cinema, Digital Archives.

6 Jul - The film series I curated for the British Museum, Germany Divided, accompanying a Prints and Drawings exhibition, ended with Goodbye Lenin (2003), an acerbic comedy about 'ostalgie' for the GDR.

29 Jun - 3 Jul - Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna. As always too much to see.. but so much to enjoy and learn from! Silent dance films brought to life by John Sweeney's accompaniment; Germaine Dulac revealed anew in Tami Williams' retrospective, Polish 'scope films of the 60s, Mariann Lewinsky's eclectic 1914 round-up - all great.

21-25 June - DOMITOR conference at University of Chicago and Northwestern University. Theme was 'the image', and I spoke about early scientific imaging in film,and moving pictures' place in the larger history of optical instruments and devices.

13 Jun - In Warsaw for Kertesz Colleg's international conference on State Repression in Socialist Central Europe, discussing Borys Lankosz's black comedy Revers (2009) with its director.

22-25 May - Spoke at the Korean Film Archive 40th anniversary conference on archiving, access and audiences in Seoul.

12-14 May - Robert Rosenstone was in Olomouc, for a lecture and screening of Glory, as part of Re-Presenting History.

12 May - King and Country (1964) with Tom Courtney and Dirk Bogarde

Introduced Joseph Losey's searing account of an alleged WW1 deserter's court martial as part of the Ralph Samuel History Centre London at War series.. http://www.raphael-samuel.org.uk/sites/default/files/downloadables

6-8 May - Conference on film literacy in Ljubljana: Film Education in Cinema: International Approaches, at Kinodvor.

4 May - Introduced Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun, with extracts from Sirk and Straub in the British Museum's Germany Divided series.

1 May - Spoke about Walerian Borowczyk on Radio Four Film Programme and at BFI Southbank, introducing the hallucinatory Goto Isle d'amour.

29 Apr - New 'London on Screen' screening series started at Birkbeck, with London The Modern Babylon (2012) followed by Q&A with director Julien Temple (see rest of programme below right).

15-17 Apr - Hosted Annette Kuhn's visit to Academia Film Festival in Olomouc http://afo.cz/index.php?lang=en

14 Apr - 'You, me and the audience: what makes us go to the cinema?': talk for Creative Europe at BIO OKO, Prague

11 Apr - Introduced Aelita as part of 'Bringing Mars to Earth – An Interplanetary Perspective', at 29-31 Oxford Street, London

6 Apr - 'Germany Divided: A Time of Troubles' - introduction to a screening of the collective Germany in Autumn (1977: Antigone section below), with extracts from work by W & B Hein, Conradt, Syberberg to set the scene.

5 Apr - 'All things Powell & Pressburger' - talk at University Square, Stratford East as part of the Powell-Pressburger series at Stratford East Picturehouse.

2-3 Apr - Udine Film Studies Conference: took part in a panel on Experimental Media Archaeology, with John Ellis and Annie van den Oever. My paper: 'Do you see what I see? The neglected issue of capturing and evaluating spectator experience'.

13-15 Mar - Re-Presenting History conference, Palacky University, Olomouc:

WHERE IS HISTORY TODAY? USES, ABUSES, INVENTIONS

Keynote speakers Jane Gaines, Laura Mulvey, Roger Odin and Daniel Pick

12 Mar - Talking about stereo history at the 3D Summit, BFI Southbank. and showing extracts from the long-unseen 1951 Festival of Britain programme, as seen in the Telekinema [below], forerunner of today's BFI Southbank.

8-9 Mar - London University Screen Studies Group Conference: Location London, co-organised with Roland-Francois Lack. Senate House, Birkbeck and UCL: programme at http://www.locationlondon.net/conference-programme.html  My contribution: 'Drab Streets: the London screen crime scene, here From Hell

2 Mar - Introduced first part of a film programme, Dark Times, accompanying major post-WW2 prints exhibition at the British Museum, featuring Rossellini's Germany Year Zero.

12 Feb - Leeds University World Cinema Research Seminar Series: 'Antique worlds: how production design shapes our sense of the past'.

 17 Feb - Attended unveiling of the Blue Plaque for Powell & Pressburger at their former office in Dorset Place, off Marylebone Road, with Thelma Schoonmaker and Martin Scorsese, hosted by Christopher Frayling.

...and with sincere thanks for Steve Crook, without whom it wouldn't be there!

19-21 Feb - Hosted visit to Olomouc by architect Robin Nicholson of ultra-ecological practice Cullinan Studio www.cullinanstudio.com

27-28 Jan - Audiences panel for Creative Europe/MEDIA at Rotterdam Festival

7 Jan - New London Screen Study Collection screening series 'Men About Town' started with Sebastian (David Greene, 1968), starring Dirk Bogarde and Susannah York, a rare Swinging London comedy-thriller with a security theme, co-produced by Michael Powell from an original story by Peeping Tom creator Leo Marks (himself an ex-spy) [see www.londonscreenstudy.com and below right for full series]

                                          2013

12 Dec - Conference at EYE Institute, Amsterdam, to launch a new book in the AUP Key Debates series, Techne, ed. Annie van den Oever. My chapter is: 'Will the 3D Revolution Happen?', and I also spoke about this at the University of Groningen on 13 Dec.

9-10 Dec - Consultation at the University of Malta. Also a public lecture in Valetta, '"You mean we could shoot it all in Malta?": how production design shapes screen worlds'. Managed to visit Fort Ricasoli, setting for many ancient world films, from Gladiator and Troy to Agora and Game of Thrones, and to see Popeye Village, a one-time outdoor set that's become a theme park!

30 Nov - Keynote at Screen Industries Conference, Olomouc:

'The Past is a foreign country?' (re)creating vanished worlds in European production design'. Some 'pasts' are better known than others, often through a combination of historical sources and persuasive visualisations. Others have been entirely, and prolifically, imagined by illustrators and film designers (from the Roman Empire and Arthur's Camelot to the Crusades). But what about the periods and places that lack such literary accreditation? This presentation will explore some pioneering attempts to create convincing 'vanished worlds', especially in the Central/East European context.

5-6 Dec - 'Mobile, creation, mediation': Paris III-IRCAV conference.  My talk traced the evolution of thinking about mobility and media from McLuhan to the present: "Pour une ethnographie personnalisée des communications mobiles: Mobile Learning et autres usages". Online at http://epresence.univ-paris3.fr/1/watch/305.aspx

2 Dec - Introduced Bergman's The Seventh Seal at BFI Southbank for

the NFTS Passport to Cinema series.

27 Nov - Hosted Stephen Bann's very successful visit to Olomouc

18-21 Nov - Derry/Londonderry City of Culture - I presented extracts

from the restored Photo-Drama of Creation (below) and three films about Northern Ireland by Michael Grigsby. Also spoke at the 'Teaching Divided Histories' conference at the Nerve Centre in Derry - and saw Willie Docherty's great exhibition.

29 Nov - Cognitive Science and film event at Birkbeck Institute of the Moving Image. My talk was entitled: 'Psychology in the dark: just what is it we want to know?'.

8 Nov - 'Is this the way the world ends?': Future histories after World War 1  After the Great War, many responded to its carnage by predicting  worse to come, with a series of great 'predictive histories' from Wells, Huxley and Čapek. How has this this new dystopian tradition shaped our thinking, before and since World War 2 - with the added factor of nuclear apocalypse looming over the post-war years? [Re-Presenting the Past Project]

6 Nov      Imagining the End... The late 19th century saw an upsurge of fervent religious belief, with many sects proclaiming that 'the end is nigh' - taking their ideas from the Book of Revelation, and its apocalyptic prophecies. New visual media proved highly effective in communicating this vision, with groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses producing their own highly ambitious religious spectacles. But the mainstream films industries also responded to a sense of impending doom, underlined by the catastrophic scale of the Great War. The lecture will investigate the symbiosis between new media and a 'new apocalypse'. [Re-Presenting the Past Project]

31 Oct-3 Nov - 7th European Psychoanalytic Film Festival, London. The theme was 'Secrets', and I was in conversation with Valeria Sarmiento, talking about the ingeniously secretive worlds of Raul Ruiz, her late husband, including The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting and Colloque de chiens (below).

24-25 Oct - Conference at Kinodvar, Ljubljana: 'What is the place of cinema today?' Also introduced a screening of Dial M for Murder.

17 Oct - 'Old Dogs, New Tricks: the many modern forms of film and their audiences', a lecture on behalf of Creativeworks London at the British Academy. See link to online version at right.

9 Oct - Memorial for Michael Grigsby at St Martin in the Fields

2-4 Oct - 'Re-Presenting History' Project at the Palacky University, Olomouc - Year Two began with a lecture and workshop on

contemporary war films by American film scholar Robert Burgoyne

http://www.re-prezentaceminulosti.cz/en/

1 Oct - New free screening series began at Birkbeck: Overlooked London, featuring rarities and discoveries; and Victoriana, with films inspired by Victorian motifs. See full listing below right. The first film was Ealing's neglected story of suburban London girls Dance Hall (1950)

24 Sept - Blimp is all around... My contribution to the week-long BBC Radio 3 series Praising Powell and Pressburger was about the Archers and the Colonel, and my essay on Blimp appeared online in Senses of Cinema (see links at right). 'Gad sir, there seems to be some sort of dastardly plot here - someone in authority needs to get a grip!!!'

24 Sept - In conversation with John Smith, as part of an Architectural Foundation event in the Barbican Cinema's Urban Wandering season.

[above: the looming presence of The Black Tower]

12-15 Sept - Miskolc Festival - I was talking about Emeric Pressburger in his home town, where Cinefest holds a ceremony each year in front of the house where Imre Pressburger was born in 1902. The Archers' A Matter of Life and Death was enjoyed by a large audience. My video from Miskolc on Facebook

30 Aug - 'Reading the digital Babel: memory and history on the internet', a fascinating workshop at Edinburgh University organised by Ninian Dunnett and Simon Frith.

27-28 Aug - Walked a stretch of Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland: unexpectedly strenuous stuff, but spectacular. And the Vindolanda  tablets include the earliest writing by a woman found in Europe!

1-3 Aug - At the Summer Film School festival in Uherské Hradiště, Moravia, I was talking about the circulation of European films in cinemas today, the neglect of production design by film scholarship - and the reception of Wojciech Has's wonderful The Saragossa Manuscript (1965, below) back in the 1960s.

21 July - to Latitude Festival, where our Isabel was 'in conversation' with Marcus du Sautoy on neuroscience as part of the festival's science strand.

29 Jun - 5 Jul - Europa Cinemas Workshop at Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, plus book launch for Archival Film Festivals (to which I contributed), and a symposium on Ancient World epics from 1913 (see new book details above right).

28 June - Symposium on Screen Architecture organised by the Architecture Space and Society Network at Birkbeck, My talk, 'Sound, Light and Stone: Bringing Buildings to Life', was about son et lumiere as part of the tradition of 'environmental media.

16 June - More local North London films at Melange Restaurant, Middle Lane N8, as part of the Crouch End Festival, presented by Mick Kidd and me.

15 June - Discussed Svankmajer's Surviving Life (2010) with Andrea Sabbadini at the Institute of Psychoanalysis

Julius Caesar (Italy, 1914 dir. Enrico Guazzoni) introduced by Maria Wyke See www.ucl.ac.uk/classics/research/research

projects/CINECIVS/#screening

27 Apr - Afternoon talk at Merton Historical Society about local London films - which has prompted valuable local research on wartime amateur filming.

24-26 Apr - Olomouc lectures: 'Where am I, and how did I get here?' on theories of space and place; screening of A Canterbury Tale (Powell-Pressburger, 1944); 'Olomouc Observed: first steps towards a narratology of the city', with thanks to De Certeau and Massey.

23 April - New season of 'London on Screen' at Birkbeck Cinema opened with Our Man in Havana (Carol Reed, 1959) - first in a series 'Home and Away', films about being and not being in London (see below r. for rest of programme)

17 Apr - Talk at Belsize Library: 'Something stirring in the stack? Why filmmakers love libraries'.

27 Mar - Presented Robert Paul films at Bruce Castle Museum,

Haringey's local history centre

26 Mar - Tribute to Mike Grigsby on BBC Radio 3 Night Waves, with Rebekah Tolley, his collaborator on We Went to War (below), and yrs truly.

17 Mar - Cinema and Psychosis at the Barbican: an ambitious and rewarding afternoon of presentationsorganised by Sal Anderson

13-15 Mar - Olomouc Lectures, including Jerome De Groot (Manchester)

4-8 Mar - meetings in LA, including a visit to the Academy Library, to inspect a rare 1905 letter from Robert Paul's company - offering to distribute Selig's films in Britain 'if no-one else was'

3 Mar - 'Hollywood-Berlin' talk as part of the Weimar weekend in the Southbank festival The Rest is Noise - before heading to the airport for LA. Wonderful audience!

21- 29 Feb - Olomouc 'Representing History' lectures

17 Feb - Presented Elvey's miraculously re-discovered Life Story of David

Lloyd George (below) at the Barbican Cinemas, with live accompaniment by the incomparable Neil Brand.

14 Feb - Lectures on 'Archives and Audiences' and 'The Film Archive as a Research Tool', at Groningen University, the Netherlands.

9 Feb - Chaired an afternoon devoted to Laura Mulvey's influence on film studies, at Birkbeck Institute of Humanities.

5 Feb - 'Conjuring the City': talk about London portrayed in film from the 40s to the 80s, as part of a conference on Production Design at Lancaster University

4 Feb - Presented A Matter of Life and Death and A Diary for Timothy (Jennings) at BFI Southbank for NFTS series on what should have been in Sight & Sound's Greatest Films poll (yes, you can get young Tim on a mug, at BFI Filmstore , but why no Jennings in the top 100?)

29 Jan - Official opening of Lights, Camera, London! at the London Film Museum in Covent Garden, which ran until early 2014

Online

2016

To download Where is History Today? go to http://www.re-prezentaceminulosti.cz/en/novinka/history-between-media-and-audiences/

2015

*Proms Extra interview for the 1895 series on the Lumiere Brothers and their contemporaries - downloadable as podcast http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b066zjm5

2014

Interview and clips online from 54th Brno 16 short film festival, where I chaired the jury

http://brno16.cz/en/zprava/ian-christie-vladne-vsem-jeden-jim-vsem-kaze/

2013

6 Dec - Talk about mobile media at

Paris conference http://epresence.univ-paris3.fr/1/watch/305.aspx

17 Oct - Lecture on understanding audiences at the British Academy

New essay on The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp for Senses of Cinema http://sensesofcinema.com/2013/cteq/seventy-years-ago-the-return-of-the-life-and-death-of-colonel-blimp/

Also my BBC Radio 3 Essay talk about Powell, Pressburger and Blimp listenable at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03bfqnd

Obituary for the great documentarist, Michael

Grigsby, in the online Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/mar/21/michael-grigsby

Tribute to the late Alexei German for the web

journal OpenDemocracy

http://opendemocracy.net/od-russia/prof-ian-christie/alexei-german-i-knew

 I interviewed Chris Parks, stereo supervisor of

 Gravity, about more  creative uses of 3D and

maximising the emotional impact on audiences, in

 Sight & Sound online http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/lessons-gravity-state-3d-cinema

2012

My commentary on the 2012 Sight & Sound Ten Best poll - at http://www.bfi.org.uk/news/50-greatest-films-all-time

Bologna 2012: Cinema Ritrovato debates Cinephilia - my conversation with Jim Hoberman is online, at http://www.cinetecadibologna.it/cinemaritrovato

2012/ev/cinefilia_ritrovata/24giugno

Barbican Gallery: Bauhaus: Art as Life - Screentalk with Aura Satz, Hattula Maholy-Nagy, 21 June 2012 http://shelf3d.com/bMeiuWSdWok#Bauhaus:

Claude Miller, the French director who was also founding President of Europa Cinemas, has died. I added to the Guardian obituary on-line: 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/apr/06/claude-miller

'When Noel met David' - my essay for the Criterion box set of Lean-Coward films, Mar 2012 http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2218-when-noel-met-david

Report by Pam Hutchinson on the British Silents Festival in Cambridge, mentioning my Rachael Low lecture on the 'teens - 'Britain could make it!' http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/apr/23/five-things-british-silent-film-festival?intcmp=ILCMUSTXT9386

2011

Following Wikipedia's day of protest against new US legislation that could damage the freedom of the internet, I wrote an 'op-ed' piece for the British Academy's Public Policy web pages - viewable at http://www.britac.ac.uk/policyperspectives/christie.cfm

Part of my conversation with Aleksandr Sokurov at BFI Southbank in October 2011 online at http://www.bfi.org.uk/live/video/823

My report on the 5th Cinema Digital Festival in Seoul, South Korea, was in Sight & Sound online at http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/newsandviews/ festivals/cindi-2011.php Also articles on the 'long history' of 3D in the November print edition of S&S; on Sokurov's Faust in the December issue.

Interview with Alexei Popogrebsky after the screening of How I Ended Last Summer at BFI Southbank http://www.bfi.org.uk/live/video/609

I interviewed the Russian filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky for Open Democracy, and the result is now on-line at http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/prof-ian-christie/meeting-with-andrei-konchalovsky-part-i

On the box

2015

Late Aug - Interview on BBC World TV for anniversary of the Crown Film Unit and a tribute to Humphrey Jennings (whose daughter Mary Lou sadly died recently)

12 May - appeared in BBC 1's One Show featurette on A Matter of Life and Death

2013

8 Sept - BBC TV World News - a comment on the Italian documentary Sacro GRA winning the Golden Lion at Venice. Are documentaries finally getting a fair deal?

2012

3 Mar - I appeared briefly in BBC4's look back at Boxing the Movies: Kings of the Ring

2011

24 Dec - BBC4 Timewatch on Epics! A supporting role among a cast of - well - dozens, discussing mainly the golden years of the Ancient World epic in the 50s and 60s (although with a flash forward to Mongol and Avatar)

Walking with dinosaurs... I had a bit part in BBC 4's survey of dinosaurs on screen: Rex Appeal

21 Aug - 11 Sept: BBC4's  The Story of British Pathe had contributions from me, and lots of great archive.

28 Feb - I commented on the Academy Awards, and what they mean for British cinema, on BBC World TV

2015

7 Aug - Obituary for George Cole, protege of Alastair Sim and versatile actor before becoming Arthur Daley in Minder. The Last Word

1 May - Obituary for Andrew Lesnie, cinema-tographer of Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and George Miller's Babe. The Last Word, BBC R4

2014

28 Dec - Supporting role in Matthew Sweet's Palace of Great War Varieties as the BBC Radio 3 ‘Sunday Feature’.

14 Dec - on Radio 4, talking about The Soviet James Bond at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04v59h9.

25 Mar - Joined Matthew Sweet, Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, S F Said and Alexander Jacoby

for a discussion about the enduring appeal of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai - which I released on BFI's Connoisseur Video label back in the 90s.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03yqt07/

Free_Thinking_Landmarks_Seven_Samurai/

26 Feb - Obituary for Harold Ramis, the scholarly Ghostbuster, and director of immortal Groundhog Day, for BBC R4 Last Word.

Reviewed Fyodor Bondarchuk's Stalingrad in IMAX 3D for Front Row, 21 Feb 2014

2013

French film music traditions discussed with Muriel Zahga on BBC Radio 3 Night Waves  on 25 Sept, at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03bfqlx

27 Jan - Spielberg's Lincoln provided an occasion

to review Honest Abe on screen, with Karen

Krisanovich, on Radio 4's Film Programme We're after Steven at www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01q03kx

7 Jan - Reviewed the disappointing Gangster Squad and discussed what gangster movies tell us about different societies. Night Waves, R 3

2012

27 Nov - Reviewed Tarkovsky archive material bring auctioned at Sothebys, in conversation with Alexei Popogrebsky. Night Waves, BBC Radio 3,

Talking about Ealing's 'dark side', in It Always Rains on Sunday, on The Film Programme, BBC Radio 4, 1 Nov.

Guest on Michel Ciment's film programme on France Culture, from the Bologna Cinema Ritrovato Festival, tx 1 July

You and Yours special on the cost and value of British Cinema (with Michael Grade, Tim Richards, Amanda Neville, and others) on BBC Radio 4, 4 June

Reviewed Nuri Bilge Ceylan's mesmerising Once Upon a Time in Anatolia on Radio Three's Night Waves on 21 March

Cinema and that vertiginous feeling - interview for a Front Row piece prompted by Man on a Ledge. 

Contributed to an obituary of Theo Angelopoulos on Radio Four's Last Word.

16 Jan - Reviewed Ralph Fiennes' highly effective Coriolanus on Radio Three's Night Waves, and took part in discussion of the new Film Policy Review with Chris Smith 

2011

29 Dec/1 Jan - I helped to play the old year out and the new in on Radio Four's Film Programme, talking about what 'silent cinema' means today, with Maestro Neil Brand in the studio to illustrate effects.

7 Dec - Reviewed Raul Ruiz's haunting and magical Mysteries of Lisbon on Night Waves.

12 Oct - reviewed Danfung Dennis's Afghan doc To Hell and Back Again on Radio Three's Nightwaves

9 Sept - Reviewed Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy for Radio Four's Film Programme

24 June - Obituary on Gunnar Fischer for Radio Four's The Last Word.

23 May - Night Waves, Radio 3: I reviewed Martin Scorsese's new documentary on Elia Kazan

22 May - BBC World Service: I talked about the Cannes Palme d'or winner, Terrence Malick's Tree of Life

20 May - The Film Programme, Radio Four: I reviewed Karel Reisz's Isadora, newly reissued on DVD

¶ '"Suitable Music": Accompaniment Practice in Early London Screen Exhibition from R. W. Paul to the Picture Palaces', in Julie Brown and Annette Davison, eds, The Sounds of the Silents in Britain, Oxford University Press, 2012

¶ 'Crafting Worlds: the changing role of the production designer', chapter in Framing Film: Cinema and the visual arts, ed. Steven Allen and Laura Hubner, Intellect, 2012)

¶ 'Hitchcock and cinematography', in 39 Steps to the Genius of Hitchcock (BFI Publishing, 2012)

¶ 'A disturbing presence? Scenes from the history of film in the museum', in Angela Dalle Vacche, ed. Film, Art, New Media: Museum without Walls? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)

¶ 'What is a Picture? Film as defined in British law before 1910', chapter in Beyond the Screen: Institutions, Networks and Publics of Early Cinema (Libbey, 2012). Proceedings of 2010 Domitor conference.

¶ 'Cinema has not yet been invented' - a condensed version of my 2006 Cambridge Slade Lectures, in The International Journey of Screendance, vol 2, Spring 2012

¶ Had a letter in The Guardian on 2 May pointing out that Charlie Booker's excellent idea about eras being remembered through the limitations of their media unfortunately recycled myths about speeded-up film from the 20s and 'lush Eastmancolor'

¶ Letter in The Guardian Review 25 Feb on 'Dickens beyond the novels', defending screen versions against the presumption that print (or even radio) is always best. Dickens was a multimedia author bridging the old (melodrama) and the new (serials, lantern slides) Victorian media.

¶ '"The Captains and the Kings depart": Imperial Departures and Arrivals in Early Cinema', chapter in Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe's new collection Empire and Film (Palgrave, 2011) 

¶ Is it too late to save 3D? See my article in the November issue of Sight and Sound - also an article about Scorsese's Hugo and its presentation of Melies in the January 2012 issue

¶ Catalogue entries for the Pordenone Giornate del Cinema Muto on Robert Paul's newly restored A Soldier's Courtship (1896); and for the Telluride Festival on Vasily Shukshin's Pechki-lavochki (Happy Go Lucky, 1972); and for the London Film Festival on Sokurov's Faust.

¶ I reviewed Patrick Russell's and James Piers Taylor's excellent Shadows of Progress, on British post-war documentary, in the March issue of Sight & Sound.

¶ I wrote about Patrick Keiller's installation, The City of the Future, in the BFI Gallery Book

¶ My chapter, 'Knight's Moves: Brecht and Russian Formalism in Britain in the 1970s', appeared in Ostranennie: On 'Strangeness' and the Moving Image, ed. Annie van den Oever, Amsterdam University Press, 2010 [that double nn is deliberate, in case you wonder... all explained in Annie's introduction]. A Symposium based on themes in the book formed part of Birkbeck's Arts Week on Friday 28 May.

Events, links and websites

London on Screen 2015

In and Out of the Tube

7 Jan    Wanted for Murder (Huntingdon, 1946)

14 Jan  Underground (Asquith, 1928)

21 Jan  Man Hunt (Lang, 1941)

28 Jan  The Krays (Medak, 1990)

4 Feb    Wings of the Dove (Softley, 1997)

11Feb  Croupier (Hodges, 1998)

18 Feb  Sliding Doors (Howitt, 1998)

25 Feb  Tube Tales (various,1999)

4 Mar    Code 46 (Winterbottom, 2003)

11 Mar  The Mother (Michell, 2003)

18 Mar  The Deep Blue Sea (Davies, 2011)

London on Screen 2014

London and Other Cites

29 Apr  London: The Modern Babylon (Julien Temple, 2012)

And previously

Jan - Mar 2014: Men About Town

7 Jan  Sebastian (David Greene, 1968) Dirk Bogarde, Susannah York

14 Jan The League of Gentlemen (Basil Dearden, 1960) Jack Hawkins, Nigel Patrick, Roger Livesey

21 Jan  Rattle of a Simple Man (Muriel Box, 1964) Harry H Corbett, Diane Cilento

28 Jan  Doctor in the House (Ralph Thomas, 1954) Dirk Bogarde, James Robertson Justice

4 Feb No Love for Johnnie (Ralph Thomas, 1961) Peter Finch

11 Feb  The Servant (Joseph Losey, 1963) James Fox, Dirk Bogarde

18 Feb Sunday Bloody Sunday (John Schlesinger 1971) Peter Finch, Glenda Jackson, Murray Head

25 Feb The Ruling Class (Peter Medak, 1972) Peter O'Toole, Arthur Lowe, William Mervyn

4 Mar Quadrophenia (Franc Roddam, 1979) Phil Daniels, Philip David, Sting

11 Mar Rogue Trader (James Dearden, 1999) Ewen McGregor, Anna Friel

18 Mar Skyfall (Sam Mendes, 2012) Daniel Craig, Judi Dench

Oct-Dec 2013: Overlooked London and Victoriana

1 Oct    Dance Hall (Charles Crichton, 1950) Donald Houston, Bonar Colleano, Petula Clark

8 Oct     The Yellow Balloon (J Lee Thompson, 1953) Andrew Ray, Kathleen Ryan

15 Oct  Beat Girl (Edmond Greville, 1960) David Farrar, Noelle Adam, Gillian Hills

Victoriana

22 Oct  The Piano (Jane Campion 1993). Introduced by Lynda Nead

29 Oct  The Picture of Dorian Gray (Albert Lewin 1945). Introduced by Cora Kaplan

5 Nov   The Prestige (Christopher Nolan 2006) Introduced by Ann Heilmann

12 Nov  Gone to Earth (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger 1950). Intro by Ian Christie.

19 Nov  The Elephant Man (David Lynch 1980). Introduced by Roger Luckhurst

26 Nov  Angela and Insects (Philip Haas, 1980). Introduced by Lisa Mullen

More Overlooked…

3 Dec   Woman in a Dressing Gown(J. Lee Thompson, 1957) Yvonne Mitchell, Anthony Quayle

10 Dec The Criminal (Julian Simpson, 1999) Steven Mackintosh, Bernard Hill, Eddie Izzard

April–July, 2013: Home and Away

London is, among many other things, a place of passage. Lives may begin or end within its boundaries which take place far away. And Londoners spending most of their lives far from the city may still feel connected, like Graham Greene’s exiled vacuum-cleaner salesman in Havana or Lambeth-born Charlie Chapin, whose return visit is an important episode in Richard Attenborough’s fine biopic. Mixed feelings about the metropolis is a theme running through this selection of films set only partly in London: for some it represents home or a place of safety; for others, escape is the priority. And in the case of Michael Apted’s account of the anti-slavery campaign, events in London would have a world-wide resonance.     

23 Apr Our Man in Havana (Carol Reed, 1951)

30 Apr  The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger,1943)

7 May    The Irish in London: special screening of three short films by Thaddeus O’Sullivan, introduced by the filmmaker

14 May  Withnail and I (Bruce Robinson, 1987)

21 May  In This World (Michael Wintebottom, 2002)

28 May  Chaplin (Richard Attenborough, 1992)

4 Jun     Travels With My Aunt (George Cukor, 1975)

11 Jun  Before the Rain (Milo Manchevski, 1994)

18 Jun  39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock, 1935)

25 Jun  Black Beauty (Caroline Thompson, 1995)

2 Jul  Amazing Grace (Michael Apted, 2006)

London's Secret Communities

2012

Mysteries of London

2 Oct The Man Who Knew Too Much (Hitchcock, 1934)

9 Oct  Contraband (Michael Powell, 1940)

16 Oct The Miinistry of Fear (Fritz Lang, 1944)

23 Oct The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll (Terence

Fisher, 1960)

30 Oct Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni,1966)

6 Nov  Secret Ceremony (Joseph Losey, 1968)

13 Nov The Abominable Dr Phibes (Anton Fuest, 1971)

20 Nov Death Line (Gary Sherman, 1973)

27 Nov tbc

Dickens's London

To celebrate Charles Dickens’s bicententenary, a selection of the film adaptations that have used – or more often recreated – the city that fed the novelist’s imagination. As well as many of the classic adapt-ations, this series includes rare screenings of the earliest feature-length Dickens film, Thomas Bentley’s 1913 David Copperfield, largely filmed at the novel’s locations, and of Christine Edzard’s mammoth and meticulous Little Dorrit, which will be shown over two consecutive weeks. On 14 Feb, William Raban will introduce his film inspired by Dickens’s night walks through London, made for the current Museum of London exhibition, accompanied by earlier films about Dickens’s London.

10 Jan  Great Expectations (David Lean, 1946) with John Mills, Valerie Hobson

17 Jan  The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1947)

24 Jan  Oliver Twist (David Lean, 1948) with John Howard Davis, Robert Newton

31 Jan  David Copperfield (Thomas Bentley, 1913) accompanied by Stephen Horne

7 Feb A Tale of Two Cities (Ralph Thomas, 1958) with Dirk Bogarde, Dorothy Tutin

14 Feb The Houseless Shadow (William Raban, 2011); with Dickens’s London (1924)

21 Feb Little Dorrit (Christine Edzard, 1988) Pt 1: Nobody’s Fault with Derek Jacobi

28 Feb Little Dorrit Pt 2: Little Dorrit’s Story with Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood

6 Mar Scrooge (Brian Desmond Hurst, 1951)    with Alastair Sim, Jack Warner

13 Mar David Copperfield (George Cukor, 1935) with Freddie Bartholomew, W. C. Fields

20 Mar  Oliver! (Carol Reed, 1968) with Ron Moody, Oliver Reed, Shani Wallis

All screenings in the Birkbeck Cinema at 2.30pm. Another bicentenary series, ‘Not Strictly Dickens’, runs at the Stratford Picturehouse on Wednesday afternoons at 4.00, starting on 11 Jan with A Christmas Carol (Robert Zemeckis, 2009) with Jim Carrey. 

Local London ran Oct - Dec 2011

4 Oct      London River (Rachid Bouchareb, 2009) + archive film of Hornsey. With Brenda Blethyn and Sotigui Kuyaté. Two strangers to London search for their children in the aftermath of 7/7 in this powerful  plea for understanding

11 Oct    Pressure (Horace Ove, 1976) +LSSC 'open hour'. With Herbert Norville, Oscar James, Norman Beaton A pioneering film about the pressures and choices facing Black youth, set in Ladbroke Grove and Notting Hill

18 Oct   Frenzy (Alfred Hitchcock, 1972) + archive film of Covent Garden and LSSC ‘open hour’.

With Jon Finch, Barry Foster, Anna Massie. Hitchcock’s macabre return to his native London, where the necktie killer strikes in Covent Garden’s market

25 Oct  Real Money (Ron Peck, 1996) +  Exploring the East End on film – introduced by  Ron Peck.  An intimate account of the shadowy world where East End boxing and crime meet, acted by young boxers.

1 Nov     The Bells Go Down (Basil Dearden, 1943) With Tommy Trinder, James Mason, Mervyn Johns

Ealing Studios’ wartime tribute to the Auxiliary Fire Service, as the Blitz hit the East End

8 Nov    Bullet Boy (Saul Dibb, 2004). With Ashley Walters, Luke Fraser, Claire Perkins

Filmed in Hackney’s council estates, Saul Dibb’s debut feature explres the fascination of gun culture.

15 Nov  Up the Junction (Peter Collinson, 1968)  With Suzy Kendall, Denis Waterman, Maureen Lipman Nell Dunn’s exposé of the underside of Swinging London in a well-observed Battersea

22 Nov  Moon Over the Alley (Despins/Dumaresque, 1975) With Sean Caffrey, Debbie Evans

Future stunt-star Debbie Evans made her debut in this off-beat musical set in Notting Hill.

29 Nov  Breaking and Entering (Anthony Minghella, 2006)  With Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, Robin Wright

Burglary leads to romance and new relationships in a multicultural Kings Cross

6 Dec  It Always Rains on Sundays (Robert Hamer, 1947) With Googie Withers, John McCallum

Great British film noir, with an escaped convict returning to his old East End manor and his former love

13 Dec   Secrets and Lies (Mike Leigh, 1996) With Timothy Spall, Brenda  Blethyn. Between Bethnal Green and Southgate, parallel lives begin to converge in an uplifting drama.

The London Screen Study Collection Workshop on Programming and Presenting London Archive Film took place at Birkbeck on Tue 27 March, followed by the launch of our 1950s London DVD

The Summer London on Screen series was Royal London

3 May   The Young Victoria (2009, Jean-Marc Valée) Emily Blunt, Rupert Friend

10 May Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles) Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau

17 May Richard III (Richard Lonraine) Ian McKellen, Annette Bening

24 May Elizabeth (1998, Shekhar Kapur) Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, MAL 532

31 May To Kill a King (2003, Mike Barker) Rupert Everett, Tim Roth, MAL 421

7 June Nell Gwyn (1934, Herbert Wilcox) Anna Neagle, Cedrick Hardwicke, B34

14 June The Madness of King George (1994, Nicholas Hytner) Nigel Hawthorne, B34

21 June The Prince and the Showgirl (1957, Laurence Olivier) Olivier, Marilyn Monroe, B34

28 June Leo the Last (1970, John Boorman) Marcello Mastroianni, Billie Whitelaw, B34 

5 July The Queen (2006, Stephen Frears) Helen Miren, Michael Sheen         

. . . . . . .

The London Screen Study Centre's Spring term series was London Laughs

11 Jan   The Knack... and How to Get It (1965, Dick

                Lester) Rita Tushingham, Ray Brooks

18 Jan   Major Barbara (1941, Gabriel Pascal)

                Wendy Hiller, Rex Harrison

25 Jan  Drole de Drame (1936, Marcel Carne)

            Louis Jouvet, Francoise Rosay

1 Feb     Passport to Pimlico (1949, Henry

               Cornelius) Stanley Holloway, Betty Warren

8 Feb    The Lavender Hill Mob (1951, Charles

                Crichton) Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway

15 Feb   A Kid for Two Farthings (1955, Carol

                Reed) Celia Johnson, David Kossoff

22 Feb  The Ladykillers (1955, Alexander Macken-

                drick)  Alec Guinness, Cecil Parker   

1 Mar     Black Joy (1977, Anthony Simmons)

               Norman Beaton, Floella Benjamin

8 Mar     A Fish Called Wanda (1988, Charles

               Crichton) John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis

15 Mar   Riff-Raff (1991, Ken Loach) Robert Carlyle,

                Ricky Tomlinson, Emer McCourt

22 Mar   Bend It Like Beckham (2002, Gurinder

               Chadha) Parminder Nagra, Keira Knightley

Free, 2.30pm, Tuesdays, Birkbeck Malet Street, London WC1, in B 34

See below for recent programmes in this series

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Victorian 3D!

During Bournemouth Media Academy's 3D week, in Nov 2010, I was talking about  the success of stereoscopy in the1860s and how film pioneers from Lumiere to Eisenstein always believed that cinema would eventually be in 3D

http://www.bsma.ac.uk/3dweek/programme

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Rethinking Media Archivism - an international workshop at the National Library of Sweden, 9-11 Nov 2010

http://www.kb.se/Forskning/2010/Rethinking-Media-Archivism/Program/

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

London on Screen - past programmes

Autumn Term, 2010

Surviving London

A season of films about the experience of learning how to survive in London, and succeeding or failing. This is perhaps the archetypal 'London story', from the tale of Dick Whittington's success to the many stories of those who are defeated by London's challenge and temptations. This is also a story of London becoming increasingly multiethnic. And the films selected span the revival of British cinema in the 1930s, the 'new wave' of the 60s, and the growing importance of television in supporting British filmmaking.

12/10 Great Expectations (David Lean, 1946) John Mills, Alec Guinness

19/10 Evergreen (Victor Saville, 1934) Jessie Matthews, Sonnie Hale

26/10 Darling (John Schlesinger, 1965) Julie Christie, Dirk Bogarde

2/11 Georgy Girl (Silvia Nazzarino, 1966) Lynn Redgrave, James Mason

9/11 Cathy Come Home (Ken Loach, 1966), Carol White, Ray Brooks

16/11 Bronco Bullfrog (Barney Platts-Mills, 1969) Del Walker, Sam Shepherd

23/11 Bleak Moments (Mike Leigh, 1971) replaced Leo the Last, previously advertised.

30/11 Sparrows Can't Sing (Joan Littlewood, 1963) replaced My Beautiful Laundrette, previously advertised

7/12 Safe (Antonia Bird, 1993) Aidan Gillen, Kate Hardie, Robert Carlyle

14/12 Brick Lane (Sarah Gavron, 2007) Tannishtha Chatterjee, Satish Kaushik

And previously -

A discussion on theatre and cinema during WW2 inspired by the revival of Rattigan's Flare Path (Night Waves, Radio 3, 9 Mar); a review of True Grit on Nightwaves, 9 Feb, and a double obituary for Maria Schneider and Lena Nyman on Last Word, Radio Four, 11 Feb.

18 Jan 2011 - BBC Radio Four's Film Season kicked off with the first of two programmes about early cinema history: Hollywood The Prequel and, on 25 Jan, The Sequel. I popped up in both, and also in other programmes in this season, on Exploding Cinema, Pocket Cinema, Secret Cinema, and on filmgoing round the world. more info at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/film-season/

Revealing Robert Paul as Britain's crucial pioneer continues after the 2019 prize-winning book. A presentation on Paul's programmes at the Alhambra in 1896 at the Decadent Film Club on 18 April. And newly discovered titles at the Kennington Bioscope on 21 April. For everyting on  Paul research and presentations, see:

https://paulsanimatographworks.wordpress.com/