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THE REGIONAL ARCHIVES & FILM AND MEDIA HISTORY
South East Film & Video Archive, University of Brighton
The
majority of the regional and national film collections, as found in public sector
archives and museums across the UK, have been under-funded and neglected for far
too long. As a consequence, far too little academic research has been devoted
to these collections. This valuable material can inform the many histories which
are important to the study of the C20th - histories of film and media,
art and design, narrative, visual representation, popular culture, life at home
and work, technology, leisure, tourism, commemoration, urban and rural development
and regional and national identity. This project will focus on these public collections
in order to identify their nature, their value to higher education, the access
issues relevant to their use and to generate dialogue between the archives/museums
and the academic community on how to develop the film and television studies research
culture. The project, in
broad terms, will have four inter-related activities: The project will
identify the appropriate critical apparatus required to investigate these collections,
recognising that a significant amount of the material found in regional collections
falls outside of the dominant understanding of film and television history because
of its non-industrial nature. A multi-disciplinary approach to the study of
this material will be very valuable. Besides film and television historians,
the strand will seek to involve scholars from art & design history, cultural
studies, cultural geography, labour history, business history and social and
economic history. The project hopes
that it will develop a policy dimension by working with the Film
Archive Forum to produce policy statements on how to sustain and develop
these public collections in a digital age and the steps required to develop
the first national catalogue of these resources and a relevant national research
plan. The two-year appointment
of a Junior Research Fellow, Elaine Sheppard, to this project (from July 2001
to June 2003) will represent the most intense and sustained period of this five-year
programme.
SEFVA is a UK regional film archive and it is a member of the UK Film
Archive Forum, the organisation that represents the regional and nation
public sector moving image archives in the UK. SEFVA’s public sector partners
are drawn from the region’s record offices and museums and it is involved in a
number of museum-based projects on film and cultural history. This creates a strong
base for research into this region’s film and media history and provides opportunities
for the exhibition and display of regional films in public venues.
Contact:
Frank Gray
Director
South East Film and Video Archive
University of Brighton
Grand Parade
Brighton BN2 2JY
01273 643213
frank.gray@brighton.ac.uk
