While I have been reading (and enjoying) Colour Films in Britain: The Negotiation of Innovation 1900-55, a major new book by Sarah Street from BFI/Palgrave Macmillan, two key posts have appeared that render a touch redundant what I might have written. Samuel Wigley posted at the BFI an introduction to the book, A glorious adventure: colour films in Britain – with wonderful images (including the one above from the wartime docudrama Western Approaches, 1944). Then earlier this week Luke McKernan drew together numerous strands of scholarship about colour film in a major post, How colour works, with a cornucopia of additional links. So before you go any further, look up those two pieces.
What I can offer here are complementary clips culled from YouTube of eighteen British films made in colour between 1925 and 1955. These are embedded below, annotated with quotes from and thoughts about Sarah Street’s book. Read on for some vividly colourful treasures… (and wait a moment – or refresh – if the clips do not immediately appear). read more »
So keen was I – and am I – to see Phyllida Lloyd’s new production of Julius Caesar at Donmar Warehouse (until 9 February) that I booked tickets for the first preview. The production stars, among others, Harriet Walter, Frances Barber and Cush Jumbo (above, in rehearsal). That preview was to have been Thursday night, but then the team decided that they needed more time and the first preview was cancelled. So I am re-booked for 12 December and like the rest of you I have to make do with the press previews, which include Can an all-women Julius Caesar work? by the Guardian’s Charlotte Higgins; Shakespeare’s sisters force their way into the Bard’s boys’ club by Matt Trueman for the Independent; Women trouble in Evening Standard; and an interview with Harriet Walter with What’s On Stage. Meanwhile, I have been collecting other links on other stuff, and offer this week’s mid-week selection here, with thanks to @emmafgreen, @brainpicker and @UCLAFTVarchive, among others. read more »
One of the ways in which I’m keen to continue refreshing our blog is by beginning to make better use of selected – and updated – reprises from our archive. There is a good deal of interesting stuff buried away in there and each week I intend to revive an earlier post, starting today with one from May 2011 that was pegged to the opening of The Hepworth Wakefield. Designed by David Chipperfield Architects, this gallery has proved itself as a spectacular success, and until 3 February it has on show a well-received presentation of The Hospital Drawings by Barbara Hepworth. Richard Cork in the Financial Times described this as ‘a superb show’, and said that in these ‘redemptive images, the surgeons’ devotion to their tasks ends up charged by an almost sacramental significance’. read more »
As detailed on Thursday, I am posting my links twice a week from now on – on Thursdays and on Sundays. Today’s lead is the excellent news that images from the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts at The British Library are now provided under a Public Domain Mark. This means that – as the library’s Medieval and earlier manuscripts blog explains – ‘within certain restrictions of reasonable use, images from this catalogue are freely available to the public’ (details of the one above are below). Which is exciting, truly enlightened of the library, and a MAJOR shift in the provision of museum images in this country. There are more than 35,000 images in the database from 4,231 manuscripts. Bravo BL – and let’s hope other institutions follow your lead. Across the jump, more links, collected with the help of – and thanks to – among others, @filmdrblog, @emmafgreen, @AlxButterworth and @mia_out (each of whom more than deserves a “follow”). read more »
The Julius Caesar DVD has arrived! The disc includes a new 40-minute documentary Julius Caesar: Behind the Scenes with location footage and interviews with cast and crew. We will be presenting parts of that here over the next month. But for the moment watch our new trailer and go here to order.
On reflection, my idea last weekend of splitting the week’s links into two (here and here) is probably not the way to go. Simply put, I like the eclecticism of a single list; plus, one post is easier to promote than two. So in another attempt to avoid an elephantine offering, and at the same time to keep the links current, I’m going to try posting a list mid-week as well as one for the weekend. Which is what I’ve done here – any thoughts on which approach is better would be much appreciated. Let’s start with How art history is failing at the internet in which President and CEO of the J Paul Getty Trust James Cuno laments that ‘scholars, curators and conservators of art are not exploiting the new technology to research differently.’ Take a look too at the fairly astonishing web application that he references, Closer to Van Eyck(above). As usual, there’s much more across the jump, with hat-tips for links due to, among others, @gkllday, @Chi_Humanities, @hannahrudman, @gilesedwards and (inevitably) both @filmstudiesff and @TheBrowser. read more »
I’m coming very late to this but I have been engaged by – and have learned from – a film made by BBC Research and Development and posted in six parts on their blog across the summer. Opening up the Archives looks at the issues facing the BBC in dealing with its huge television, radio and other collections (such as written materials and photographs) and at some of the solutions being contributed by BBC R&D. The sections are indexed here but since they make it easy to embed I have also brought them across to the blog. The six parts are across the jump, with a few comments from me on each. I should say that I think this is a terrific resource and I’m grateful for BBC R&D for making and posting it. read more »
I was sorry to read last week of the death at the age of 90 of artist William Turnbull (above). You can read fine obituaries of him by Michael McNay for the Guardian and Mark Hudson for The Arts Desk, and there is a fine website devoted to his art here. I first encountered his work when at the impressionable age of 16 I saw the 1971 exhibition of ‘the Alistair McAlpine Gift’. The peer who has been so much in the news lately was then a noted a collector of contemporary art and he had donated to the Tate Gallery sixty works by seven sculptors, including Turnbull. For a long time many of these colourful modern pieces were a bit of an embarassment to Tate and they sat undisturbed in the stores, but more recently their particular qualities have begun to be recognised more. Turnbull too remains comparatively little-known, even if his work has been widely admired and quietly influential. So I was pleased to see last week’s acknowledgement of his achievements, even as his death led me to reflect on our DVD series theEYE– for which we filmed William Turnbull in 2005 – and on its afterlife. read more »
My ‘Links for the weekend’ is our blog’s most popular offering. But given the length of this week’s post as it first appeared, it is clear that the idea is in danger of getting out of hand. So I am considering posting ‘Links…’ in two parts on some weekends – one with film, broadcasting and other media links and one with all the rest – including visual arts, literature, politics and other stuff (and I do recognise that some stuff will fall into both strands). To try this out, I’m now splitting this weekend’s grouping – and adding a few more links – to see how it might work. See the original post for the film and media links and this new one for everything else. Also, for no reason other than that the first two episodes were terrific, the picture is of Sofie Gråbøl as Sarah Lund in The Killing III. read more »
After the BFI’s extensive tribute to Alfred Hitchcock over the summer and the immaculate restorations of his silent films, you might have thought the great director had nothing else to give. But now, and for the next two months, the first film on which Hitchcock received a screen credit, The White Shadow (1924, above), is available as an online premiere (go to the National Film Preservation Foundation here). The director was Graham Cutts, and in fact only some 42 minutes of the film have been recovered, but these make a rich and remarkable offering, on which Hitch was assistant director, screenwriter, art director and editor. For discussions of the film and its discovery in the New Zealand Film Archive together with background as to why it is online, see David Steritt’s excellent programme notes accompanying the stream (on the right of the page) and a valuable post from ferdyonfilms.
