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The Colonial Film project produced a major new website housing an online catalogue of all films showing life in British colonies held by three major film archives (the British Film Institute National Archive, the Imperial War Museum, and the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum) from 1895 to the separate moments of independence. The project conserved and made newly accessible — both practically and intellectually — a significant global cultural heritage in the service of memorialising the frequently occluded history of the British Empire. It is now a major national and international resource, and has been utilised by its partner archives and others to improve their own cataloguing and hold new exhibitions.
Through a range of public engagement activities (film screenings, workshops, collaboration with animation studios including Bristol's Aardman Animations) research on early Russian animation has led to an increased awareness of innovative technological developments from pre- Revolutionary and Soviet Russia, including experiments with stop-frame motion, colour and stereo-scopic vision. `Russian' technologies differ from those of European and American cinema and Beumers has identified differences of approach in film technologies that have facilitated exchanges of methods aimed at promoting the adoption of more efficient technologies in contemporary filmmaking. Her research has promoted the restoration and digitisation of rare historical materials, permitting their distribution to a wide audience in the UK, Germany and Italy.
External partners involved with the digitisation process have developed a 3D system used in animation today in Russia and Estonia. The research has permitted the development of a prototype animation Touch Table with local company Aerian Studios Ltd. The Touch Table, which animates old optical devices, has been on public display at museums and film festivals. A resulting iPad application `Walking Pictures' is freely available on the App Store. The prototype has generated new commissions from other museums, which will provide significant new business revenue.
In a separate development, the Estonian Ministry of Culture, NIKFI Moscow, and the Russian State Film Archive Gosfilmofond have agreed, on the basis of Beumers' research and the proposed project, to accelerate the digitisation of films.
This case study examines the impact of Catherine Wheatley's research into spectatorship, audiences, and critical contexts through engagement with the popular press and public-facing media institutions. It focuses on Wheatley's work with Sight & Sound, the monthly consumer magazine published by the British Film Institute, which reaches beyond academia to a cine-literate but non-specialist audience. Her research has influenced discussion and criticism of cinema for a large, interested cine-enthusiastic audience as well as contributing to broader public debate and cultural discussion of cinema through mass-media appearances. She has also judged a competition for budding female critics, encouraging more women to write thoughtfully on film, and nurturing a new generation of women critics through which her research has been able to influence the practice of film criticism more widely.
Dr Julie Brown's research on the sounds of `silent film' exhibition in Britain has had an impact well beyond academia. Her collaborations with film festivals and major film venues plus public lectures have brought about an enhanced public awareness of a lost media art. Through a practitioner/academic network and via practice-based activities involving professional musicians she has had a direct impact on musical practice, and also brought significant performances to the general public in well-attended public events and film festivals at major cinema venues in both Edinburgh and London. Her work has led to enhanced public understanding of the history of the sonic dimension of `silent cinema' in Britain.
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.
Roger Shannon's research on the legacy of the Birmingham Film and Video Workshop (BFVW) has fed directly into the curation and digitisation of previously neglected productions from this pioneering collective, which are now available for public exhibition at arts centres, cinemas, galleries and festivals. The specific examples of the public articulation of the impact include the Participation exhibition at the Vivid Gallery in Birmingham (2009), the digitisation of the original BFVW material, and the Hell Unltd/Traces Left event at the Glasgow Film Theatre (2013) which Shannon co-ordinated. He also worked closely with musician Kim Moore in her composition and performance to accompany the Hell Unltd event.
Three claims to impact stemming from Shannon's research are made here:
Through the agency of Screen Archive South East (SASE) and Cinecity, GRAY's research has transformed the history and wider understanding of screen cultures, particularly during the industry's formative years. Primarily his work has affected public life through the collection, preservation, cataloguing and conversion of diverse footage to publicly accessible formats, creating access to material from otherwise marginalised and forgotten film histories. Engaging with local communities, national and international museums and broadcasters, he has developed new public audiences for contemporary and historical screen culture that have generated over £1.8m in income, with total audiences exceeding 25 million. Secondly, his research has shaped public policy by contributing to the strategic direction of screen heritage across the UK.
I am Breathing, a feature-length documentary directed by Emma Davie (ECA) and Morag McKinnon (unaffiliated) and released in 2012, builds on experiments in co-creativity in film, and explores the ethics and the aesthetics of making a film with, rather than about a man dying of Motor Neurone Disease (MND). Neil Platt wanted to use the film to raise awareness about MND, and since his death, I am Breathing has not only been screened 242 times in thirty-four countries, but has been distributed in concert with the MND Association, raising awareness about the disease, contributing to increased sign-ups to the Association, and lending people with MND a new public voice.
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.
Carter's research into the life and work of the Hungarian film theorist Béla Balázs (1884-1949), and her collaboration with Rodney Livingstone (Professor Emeritus, Southampton) on the first English translation of his early works, provided the inspiration for a travelling exhibition, film screenings and website that showcased Balázs's early writing, and explored the connections between his film theory and contemporary film practice. Artist Zsuzsanna Ardó approached Carter to collaborate following the publication of an article on Balázs (Screen 2007), and worked with her to mount an exhibition at BAFTA and three Everyman Cinemas in London, accompanied by public talks and film screenings.