Recent events and programmes

Summer 2010. This page has information about programmes I've organised and events I've contributed to recently or will be in the near future. For more details about long-term projects and my background and CV, see About Me or follow me on Twitter at ianchris. - Ian Christie 

 

REMEMBERING JACK CARDIFF

 

I was an early interviewee for Craig McCall's engaging film about the life and work of Jack Cardiff, Cameraman, which is showing internationally at festivals and at screens across the UK over the coming months - further details at www.jackcardiff.com. For confirmed screenings, see http://www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk/cameraman-playdates.htm

 

 

New 'London on Screen' series starts 12 Oct 2010 - details in Sept

  The theme of London Screen Study Collection screenings throughout 2009-10 was 'Cultural London'.

   After Literary London and Musical London, Term 3 (April-June) looked at Artistic London.

 

  20 Apr  The Rebel  (Robert Day, 1961)

 

  27 Apr  The Horse's Mouth  (Ronald Neame, 1958)

 

  4 May   Carrington (Christopher Hampton, 1995)

 

  11 May  London Artists - Hogarth (Ed Bennett, 1977), BLAST! (Murray Grigor,

               1975), Mark Gertler - a Life in Fragments (Phil Mulloy, 1981)

 

  18 May  Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960)

 

  25 May  Blow Up (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966)

 

  1 June   More London Artists - including Fathers of Pop and others tbc

 

  8 June   Love is the Devil (John Maybury, 1998)

 

  15 June Savage Messiah (Ken Russell, 1972)

 

  22 June The Moon and Sixpence (Albert Lewin, 1942)

 

  27 June The Picture of Dorian Gray (Albert Lewin, 1945) 

 

The London Screen Study Collection at Birkbeck College exists to promote awareness of and research into London’s screen history, as part of London’s Screen Archives: the Regional Network. All screenings are on Tuesdays at 2.30 in the Birkbeck Cinema, 43 Gordon Square, WC1. Main contact a.english@bbk.ac.uk.

 

 

Now online: the new London's Screen Archives YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/LondonsScreenArchive

Links to other activities and events

    Quick Links

 

 

 

Previous London Screen Study Collection series:

 

Musical London 

     The second part of this year-long exploration of the capital's culture looked at music in the city. From the 18th century

     satirical Beggar's Opera, filmed in 1952 by rising theatre genius Peter Brook, to the dawn of pirate radio evoked in Isaac

     Julien's Young Soul Rebels, this is largely a story of irreverent popular culture clashing with establishment prejudice. Much

     of the London shown here was studio built, whether in Hollywood for Cukor's My Fair Lady or at Shepperton for Reed's

    Oliver!. But above alll these are films about the city nurturing talent and creating new opportunities for musicians and

     audiences alike.  

 

5 Apr    The Red Shoes (Powell and Pressburger, 1948)

 

12 Jan  A Hard Day’s Night (Dick Lester, 1964)

 

19 Jan  Sally in Our Alley (Maurice Elvey, 1931)

 

26 Jan  The Great Mr Handel (Norman Walker, 1942)

 

2 Feb    Champagne Charlie (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1944)

 

9 Feb    The Beggar’s Opera (Peter Brook, 1952) + ext. Threepenny Opera

 

16 Feb   My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964)

 

23 Feb   Performance (Donald Cammell, Nic Roeg, 1969)

 

2 Mar     Oliver! (Carol Reed, 1968)

 

9 Mar     Young Soul Rebels (Isaac Julien, 1991)

 

16 Mar   O Lucky Man! (Lindsay Anderson, 1973)

  Coming next ... 

  

  

   1 Sep - Introducing The Life and

   Death of Col. Blimp at BFI South

   bank as part of Deborah Kerr

   tribute season, 7.50 pm.

 

   21 Sept - Cultural Impact seminar

   at San Sebastian Film Festival

 

   1 Oct - Speaking about UK film

   studies at Paris Biennale

 

   10 Oct - Symposium on 'History

   and Film' with Robert Rosenstone

   at University of St Andrews.

 

   4 Nov - discussing Eisenstein's

   The Battleship Potemkin at the

   University of Essex.

 

   10 Nov - Stockholm University

   talk on archives in the digital era

 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

 

   And recently ...

 

  19 Jul - Cultural Impact seminar for

   UK Film Council, with Screen Wales,

   in Cardiff

 

   12 Jul - Introduced Cameraman, Craig 

   McCall's film about Jack Cardiff, at

   Saffron Walden Film Society

  

   9 Jul - 'The Captains and the Kings

   depart': early imperial departure

   and arrival films, talk at Colonial

   Film Conference, Birkbeck Cinema.

 

  

   [Frames fron a rare print of Robt Paul's

   Diamond Jubilee films, awaiting restoration

   by BFI National Archive] 

  

  9 Jul - A Room and a Half gets a

   big-screen outing at the Empire

   Leicester Sq, introduced by poet

   Elaine Feinstein and me, and contiues

   on a smaller Empire screen. Go see!

 

   5 Jul - Introduced Mizoguchi's Ugetsu

   Monogatari for NFTS at BFI Southbank

 

  

 

   5 Jul - Ghosts in the Machine: Patrick

   Keiller's explorations of the

   Image-World', presentation at

   Paris III Summer School, Salle

   Vasari, INHA, Paris I online 

   at   http://epresence.univ-paris3.fr/1/watch/40.aspx

 

   27-30 Jun - Making an Impression

   Led the Europa Cinemas Workshop

   at Bologna Cinema Ritrovato Fest. see

   report at http://www.europa-cinemas.org/en/actions/ya/seminaire-de-bologne.php

 

   23 Jun - review of Francis Ford Coppola's

   great new film Tetro for BBC Radio 3's

   Nightwaves.

 

   20 Jun - Cultural Impact seminar for UKFC

   at Edinburgh Int'l Film Festival

  

   13 Jun - 'What is a picture? Film as

   defined by law before 1907' - paper

   at Domitor Conference, Univ of

   Toronto/Ryerson Univ, Toronto

  

  9 Jun - Cultural Impact of UK Film

   seminar at QFT, Belfast

  

   27 May - 'Que voyons-nous dans

   les films? Lecture on psychological

   and neuroscientific approaches to

   understanding 'what we see in films'

   at the École nationale supérieure

   d'architecture Paris-Malaquais.

 

   The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus theatrical one sheet

 

   21 May -  Talk at Arts Week Symposium

   at Birkbeck on 'Art and Money': 'Exclusive!

   How a Danish film company changed the

   international film business'

 

   16 May - 'Digital Tango': panelist at

   European Audiovisual Observatory seminar 

   Cannes Film Festival

 

   12 May - I presented an overview

   of Jack Cardiff's career as DOP and

   director, at BFI Southbank (and appear

   in Craig McCall's documentary Cameraman)

   (below: Cardiff shot his longest takes on

   Hitchcock's Under Capricorn, 1949)

 

  

 

   10 May - 'From Muswell Hill to the Moon',

   a talk about early London filmmaking at the

   Institute of  Historical Research, Senate House

   (below: R W Paul's The ? Motorist (1906), made

   in Muswell Hill)

 

   

 

  7 May - A Room and a Half opened and

   I interviewed Andrey Khrzhanovsky at

   the Curzon Mayfair about his great part-

   animated fantasy on the life of Joseph Brodsky 

 

  

 

   3 May - I broke surface in BBC4's Dive, Dive,

   Dive!, a doc about the enduring fascination of

   submarine movies (rpt 4, 5 May)

 

   25 Apr - Introduced Sokurov's Russian 

   Ark at Watershed in Bristol, as part of their

   Decalogue programme on the best films of the

   Noughties. See my interview at  

 

  

 

   5 April - 'Believing pixels: has digital 

   changed our relation to films?' , a talk at the

   inaugural conference of Cambridge University's

   new Centre for Material Texts

 

  1 Apr - Introduced Lean's The Passionate

   Friends at BFI Southbank 

 

   22 Mar - 'Images of Britishness' - launched

   an exhibition of Polish posters for British films at

   BAFTA

 

   20 Mar - 'London's Pleasure Zones' - paper

   on the representation of London in film at Gorizia

   Spring School Filmforum 2010, Italy.

  

   15 Mar - Introducing Powell and

   Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale at BFI

    Southbank for NFTS

 

  

 

  7 Mar - Film & TV Walk around Muswell Hill.

  Lost cinemas, the art-deco Odeon, site of R W.

  Paul's studio and Ally Pally, birthplace of British

  television.

 

  6 Mar - Parajanov - a Fortunate Man?

  Introduced Parajanov Symposium at BFI Southbank

 

  5 Mar - 'Frozen music: rediscovering

  the still image from the 20s to the

  90s' - talk at PhotoFilm conference at

  Tate Modern

 

  4 Mar - Introducing Paradjanov's

  Shadows of Our Forgotten

  Ancestors, 6.30 at BFI Southbank

 

  12 Feb - Bach on Screen - an illustrated

  'interval talk on Radio 3 at 19.50 that ranges from 

  Fantasia (and that piece!) to Fischinger and Straub-

  Huillet (below).

 

  

      

   5 Feb - 'Blind Spots: what about the history

   that doesn't get screened?' Nick Burton

   Memorial Lecture at Canterbury Christ

   Church University on history and film

 

  2 Feb - Speaker at 'Kino Climates' panel,

  Rotterdam International Film Festival

 

  1 Feb - Introduced Bergman's The Seventh

  Seal  for NFTS, 6.30 at BFI Southbank

 

  31 Jan - 'Just what was modern about 

   Modernism? And why was film so

   important to it?' An illustrated introduction to

   modernist film at Cambridge Arts Cinema, linked

   with Lutz Becker's exhibition at Kettle's Yard

   Gallery, Modern Times: Responding to Chaos

  

   See also the exhibition at the

   new London Film Museum

                                 

   Charlie Chaplin - the Great Londoner' (from

   5 Jan, Belevedere Road, Waterloo)

 

   2009

  

   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. 

 

     

In print ...

 

The essential film books - my contribution to Sight and Sound's poll in the June 2010 issue out now.

 

'Out of the Shadows' - a celebration

of Sergei Parajanov and other ex-

Soviet filmmakers, Kira Muratova and

Andrei Khrzhanovsky, in Sight and Sound, March 2010

 

The Art of Film: John Box and Production Design, Wallflower, 2009 (see About Me, and review by Brian Macfarlane in Sight and Sound Jan 2010)

 

The new Oxford Companion to English Literature, radically revised by Dinah Birch, 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 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)

 

 

 

Read More

 

Read More

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read More

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      Phonomenal! 

     

    Understanding Cameraphones

       

      What would Marshall McLuhan have made of the explosion of cameraphones? Hot or cold medium? I have been trying to scope the anthropology of this intriguing phenomenon in several recent lectures. 

       

      Read More

      Copyright ® 2009 webc.ianchristie.org  
      Ian Christie