Brunsdon, Charlotte (2008) In the dark : the BFI archive. Cinema Journal, Vol.47 (No.4). pp. 152-155. doi:10.1353/cj.0.0042 ISSN 1527-2087.

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Abstract

Like most British scholars of film and television of my generation, I am formed by the British Film Institute: through its exhibition, distribution, and production policies; by the Education Department, its summer schools, and conferences; through BFI publications; by its promulgation of “film culture”; and in its libraries and archives, both paper and audiovisual, in Dean Street, Charing Cross Road, and Stephen Street. I owe my current occupation, and much of what I know about film and television, to the British Film Institute, and it is on the BFI archives that I thought I would write when invited to contribute to this “In Focus.” 1 I had the idea of documenting the significance of the archives to international film and television scholarship by collating the acknowledgements given in academic and popular books to the archive and its curators and librarians, so that my contribution would consist of a long list of authors and books with their acknowledgement cited. This was such a good idea, I soon discovered, after a little preliminary research, that I could easily have filled the whole of the “In Focus” section of Cinema Journal. I tried various ways of selecting which acknowledgments I would cite, but the beauty of the project was lost when it was not indiscriminate. So instead, reluctantly, rather than being a collagist, I will reflect briefly on my own passion for the dark of the archive by describing three different encounters with it.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1990 Broadcasting
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts > Film and Television Studies
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	British Film Institute -- Criticism and interpretation, Broadcasting archives -- Great Britain
Journal or Publication Title:	Cinema Journal
Publisher:	University of Texas Press * Journals Division
ISSN:	1527-2087
Official Date:	2008
Dates:	Date Event 2008 Published
Volume:	Vol.47
Number:	No.4
Page Range:	pp. 152-155
DOI:	10.1353/cj.0.0042
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Access rights to Published version:	Open Access (Creative Commons)
Date of first compliant deposit:	17 December 2015
Date of first compliant Open Access:	17 December 2015

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