This week, I had the honour of delivering the Philip French Memorial Lecture at the Cinema Rediscovered festival in Bristol. Due to the strange times that we are living in, the lecture was livestreamed as well as being held in person at the Watershed Cinema.
My task for the lecture was to talk about the role of critics in reframing film heritage. I spoke a little about Silent London, and also about Musidora, why cinema is like a tree and what I like to call “young cinema”.
If you would like to watch the lecture and admire my rather outré shoes, it’s all on YouTube. Thanks so much to Cinema Rediscovered and Bristol Ideas for inviting me to speak and to Andrew Kelly for hosting the event.
And here, also on YouTube, and so not in the best quality, are some of the films that I mention in the talk.
• Cinema Rediscovered continues all weekend, and many events are running online, including this discussion of William Friese-Greene with Bryony Dixon, Peter Domankiewicz and Sir Christopher Frayling. And if you’re in Bristol, Neil Brand is accompanying The Open Road (1926) on Sunday.
• Here is the essay on cinema anxiety I wrote for the forthcoming Brisol Ideas book.
• Watch more silent films: the Hippfest Taste of Silents programme this autumn looks stunning.
• Silent London will always be free to all readers. If you enjoy checking in with the site, including reports from silent film festivals, features and reviews, please consider shouting me a coffee on my Ko-Fi page.
