Moving Images of the British Empire

London, 8-9 July 2010, and Pittsburgh, 25-26 Sept 2010. “Colonial Film: Moving Images of The British Empire” is a major scholarly and archival project to investigate the history of moving images of the British Empire.

“Colonial Film: Moving Images of The British Empire,” has been financed by an Arts and Humanities Research Council Major Resource Enhancement grant and is led by Lee Grieveson (University College London) and Colin MacCabe (Birkbeck/Pittsburgh). The project will lead to the production of a detailed catalogue of the entire corpus of films representing British colonies either factually or fictionally held by the British Film Institute, the Imperial War Museum, and the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum. The process of producing this catalogue, which aims to marry the most advanced academic knowledge to the best archival practice, has raised new questions both about British imperial history, the history of British cinema, and the history of didactic cinema.  The final catalogue will identify over 6000 films and some 10% of the collection will have enhanced entries bringing a wealth of detailed knowledge to illuminate particular films. In addition there will be entries on a series of broader topics relating to colonialism and British cinema. Two post-doctoral researchers have been examining these collections for over a year, and have been recently joined by a third, and the project runs until September 2010. The catalogue will be available online together with 30 hours of digitized film.

The production of the catalogue as a major academic resource is dependent on conferences that will make the richness of these collections available to the widest possible academic and archival audience. The first conference, covering the years 1896-1939, will be held in London on 8/9th July 2010, and the final conference will be held in Pittsburgh on 25/26th September 2010 and will focus on the years 1939-1965.

The deadline for call for papers has just passed however if potential delegates are interested in putting in a proposal it will be accepted in the next few of weeks. Proposals of 300-400 words and a brief biographical statement to be sent to Lee Grieveson at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or indicate your intention to send a proposal and the date by which you will be able to send it.