University News Last updated 24 February 2011
Birmingham City University is to take part in two days of presentations, screenings, networking and workshops dedicated to film lovers.
On Friday 4 and Saturday 5 March the University’s Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, together with Screen West Midlands will give members of the public and those with a professional interest in film the opportunity to find out about public-funded projects designed to make a variety of film archives and materials available to everyone. Both day’s proceedings will be held at the University’s School of Art, Margaret Street, in the city centre.
Under the title Film Heritage, Digital Future: Practice and Sustainability for the Film Archive Sector, Friday’s event is aimed at issues facing professionals and academics in the field and features reports on range of innovative projects funded by Screen West Midlands under the Digital Film Archive Fund.
Since the launch of the fund by the Film Council in 2009, these projects have created new archival material, investigated and repurposed existing material, reaching new audiences and prompting engagement with archive issues and cultural heritage. The day will feature contributions from the BBC, Screen WM, Media Archive Central England (MACE), EUScreen, workers from a variety of archives and from the education sector and will offer the opportunity to share insights and ideas about the challenges for the audio-visual archive sector in the digital age.
The event on Saturday features a range of talks and free screenings of some very rare BBC dramas and documentaries made in Birmingham, as well as a new popular musical history of the city told through archives and interviews. The titles and times of the films to be screened are:
11am-12pm/2pm-3pm: A Touch of Eastern Promise (1973) & A Box of Swan (1990)
12pm-1pm: Joe the Chainsmith (1958) & A Story of Cradley Heath (2010)
1pm-2pm: Made in Birmingham (2010).
3pm-4.30pm: Fellow Traveller (1991 ) .
Anyone who would like to attend should contact Paul Long, Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Birmingham School of Media Birmingham City University at paul.long@bcu.ac.uk