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Research on world cinema at Durham University has led to collaboration with filmmakers, cinemas and film festivals regionally and internationally. Durham academics have assisted regional organisations to bring major figures of international independent cinema to North East England, in order to showcase work which would not normally achieve wide exposure, and to enhance public understanding of foreign film, culture and language. In doing so, they have helped those organisations to meet their own institutional objectives. Internationally, Durham research has led to jury membership at a film festival whose mission is to raise the profile of independent filmmaking in Ibero-America, and to provide financial support to encourage further film production. This participation has also led to changes in the festival's practice, in the form of increased involvement of jury members with an academic background.
Brad Beaven's research into the changing character and form of popular culture in the English city between 1850 and 1945 underpinned the `Portsmouth Voices' project, a collaboration with Portsmouth City Museum supported by a £223,500 Heritage Lottery Fund award. Previous exhibitions had presented rather narrow and parochial narratives of Portsmouth's history. Beaven's research significantly structured the project's engagement with class, gender and ethnicity in narrating the city's past, and played a guiding role in the curation of a major exhibition that successfully challenged preconceived ideas on generation, race and sexuality. In presenting both an inclusive and challenging story of Portsmouth's history, the exhibition attracted significant visitor numbers and a new section of the public who engaged with the Museum for the first time.
Research by Carl Chinn, MBE at the University of Birmingham has contributed to a better public understanding of community relations (past and present) within the Birmingham area, particularly for smaller and formerly marginalised communities. Chinn has also produced a wealth of new, accessible historical data, both directly (through the online and freely available BirminghamLives Archive) and indirectly through stimulating local public interest in local history and encouraging and supporting publication of personal histories, websites and archives which are freely available to the public. Chinn's research and commitment to public engagement have also had an impact on the delivery and design of local school curricula and acted to highlight the opportunity of higher education to pupils. Chinn's research also acts to preserve and present the cultural heritage of the Birmingham area and contributes to the process of memorialisation and reconciliation for all of its people.
The London Screen Studies Collection (LSSC) based in Birkbeck School of Arts has played the key role in centralising, cataloguing and publicising the historic creative moving image record of London in the twentieth century. With the support of funding from Film London and UK Film Council Digital Film Archive Fund, it made a significant contribution to Screen Heritage UK, the £25 million project managed by the British Film Institute. Its ongoing collaboration with Film London has resulted most recently in a successful bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund. In addition, it led to a new exhibition at London Film Museum and a new initiative with a significant collection of historic industrial films in East London.
Cinema St Andrews examines and preserves the cinematic heritage of St Andrews from the medium's origins to the present day. Our historical research has supported film culture in St Andrews to the benefit of local residents, pupils and tourists in three interrelated ways: 1. by contributing to the cultural heritage of the town; 2. by influencing secondary education and its curriculum; 3. by developing film audiences in partnership with local exhibition sites. Positioning the project's scholarly research within the town's heritage industry, Cinema St Andrews has fostered and sustained a thriving community-based film culture, a major component of impact within our discipline.
Film Festivals constitute the main institutional alternative to commercially-driven cinema and as such occupy a vitally important part of our cultural heritage. The BFI estimates that `only 7% of all cinema screens are regularly devoted to non-mainstream film', and cites the film festival as an exemplary model for broadening cinema knowledge and education (`New Horizons for UK Film 2012-17'). Film Studies Queen Mary is committed to enhancing a public understanding of obscure and complex film through film festivals, bringing to bear insights born of research including production histories and analytical interpretations of film texts and performances. Collaborating with programmers, curators, local authorities, and diasporic communities, researchers have made significant contributions to festivals including to the founding of two new film festivals (the London Spanish Film Festival 2005 and Cutting East Youth Film Festival 2013), engaging with constituent groups and cultures that are not strongly represented in the UK's commercial film culture.
Research by University of Exeter academics has increased the public's participation in, and appreciation of, the history and pre-history of cinema. Much of this has been achieved by collaborative projects with the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, a free-entry museum located on the Exeter campus, which has a large collection (65,000 items) of international stature. A number of funded digitisation projects to improve accessibility have presented as well as preserved cultural heritage. The main impacts of this research have been to:
Moving Memories was a participatory research project which used BBC North West and other archive film footage to re-connect people of Caribbean, Sikh and Irish heritage in Moss Side and Hulme with the visual record of their settlement in Manchester from the 1950s to the 1980s. Local people enriched these visual histories with personal memories, interpreting, reflecting, linking across generations, and generating pride in their community's contribution to Manchester's broader historical narrative. The project is a model of exemplary practice for the applied use of archive material in BME contexts, demonstrating how shared story-telling challenges stereotypes of inner- city, multi-ethnic neighbourhoods and improves community cohesion.
The University of East Anglia (UEA) has worked with regional media organisations to facilitate and expand the collection, preservation, presentation and accessibility of film and television materials produced in East Anglia and held by the East Anglian Film Archive (EAFA). Unit support and research links with EAFA are informed by research into the strong connections between media consumption, local identity and sense of place developed by Higson and Jancovich, and Mills and Snelson. The impact is evidenced by substantial increases in the use of EAFA materials by two key groups - Anglian residents and non-academic researchers from across the UK.
Many silent-era films have slipped from public view and lie neglected in archives. Drawing directly on her own research in silent cinema, Judith Buchanan works with arts cinemas, film companies, schools, community groups, festivals, artists and musicians to revivify audiences' access to and experiences of these films. The local, national and international impact of her research is evident in: 1) preservation of silent cinema as an endangered piece of cultural heritage; 2) increased public and commercial availability and visibility of the films; 3) renewed public participation in the films; 4) creative responses to the films prompted by her work; and 5) expansion of university curricula.