Scottish Consortium for Film and Visual Studies, 5^th Annual Conference

Film and Film Initiatives in Scotland

8^th June 2012

Birnam Institute, Dunkeld

Programme

10.00-10.30 Coffee and Welcome

10.30-12.00 Panel A: BAFTSS Strand: Local cinema

Chair: Tom Rice

Panellists: John Izod (University of Stirling), Jim Dunnigan (The Film Guild), Joshua Yumibe (University of St Andrews)

Panel B: Government and Cultural Policy

Chair: David Archibald

Panellists: Ana Moraes (University of Glasgow): UK Film Policy: Past and Current Funding Schemes; Linda Hutcheson (University of Stirling): Unfilmed, but Scottish Lottery-funded: Projects which Might Have Been; Nadin Mai (University of St Andrews): The Mobilized Venue – The Uses of the Cinema in Scotland, 1939-1945.

12.00-13.30

Panel A: BAFTSS Strand: Curation

Chair: Jane Sillars

Panellists: Hannah McGill (Former Director, Edinburgh International Film Festival), Rod White (The Filmhouse), Alice Black (Dundee Contemporary Arts)

Panel B: Texts and Genres

Chair: Jonny Murray

Panellists: Alistair Scott (Edinburgh Napier University): The Documentary – Still a Cornerstone of Scotland’s Filmmaking Community?; Karen Lury (University of Glasgow): The Problems of Micro-History and the Amateur Film; Lynn Sinclair (University of West of Scotland): A Textual Analysis of Screen Versions of Hamlet’s Soliloquy ‘To Be or Not to Be, That Is the Question’ to Explore Elements of the Process of Adaptation.

13.30-15.00 Lunch

15.00-16.00 Keynote: John Caughie and Maria Velez-Serna: Early Cinema in Scotland

Chair: Joshua Yumibe

16.00-16.30 Tea and Coffee

16.30-17.30 The BBFC Centenary Debate: Lucy Brett in Conversation

Chair: John Izod

* Panel A was sponsored by the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies. For more information or to join, visit www.baftss.org

Scottish Consortium for Film and Visual Studies

Report on the 5^th Annual Conference

Funded by the Carnegie Trust, the Scottish Consortium for Film and Visual Studies was instituted with the aim of facilitating links and knowledge exchange between Scottish HE institutions working in film and visual studies through the staging of a series of annual conferences.

The fifth and final conference was organised by the University of St Andrews and took place at the Birnam Institute in Dunkeld, Perthshire, on the 8^th June 2012. The theme of the event was ‘Film and Film Initiatives in Scotland’ – a subject deemed particularly fitting for the final conference in the SCFVS programme. The event attracted 35 scholars and postgraduate students from six Scottish Universities (Glasgow, Stirling, Edinburgh, Edinburgh Napier, St Andrews, Dundee) as well as contributions from a number of industry insiders from both Scotland and the UK as a whole.

The morning was made up of two sessions, each comprising two panels running in parallel. The Panel A sessions were sponsored by the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) and mixed industry representatives with academics. The first session on ‘Local Cinema’ explored how film culture takes place at regional level across Scotland and included interventions from John Izod (Stirling), who reflected on his experiences with repretory cinemas, Jim Dunnigan, who discussed his work for the Edinburgh Film Guild, and Joshua Yumibe (St Andrews), who talked about film culture in St Andrews and the research being carried out for the ‘Cinema St Andrews’ project. The second BAFTSS-sponsored panel looked at ‘Film Curation’ and drew on the expertise of Hannah McGill (former director of the Edinburgh International Film Audience), Rod White (The Filmhouse) and Alice Black (Dundee Contemporary Arts). Both of these panels instigated lively discussions with the audience, many of whom added valuable insights drawn from their own experiences.

Parallel to these sessions were two panels featuring academic papers on current research being carried out in Scotland. Topics covered included Ana Moraes (Glasgow) on ‘UK Film Policy: Past and Current Funding Schemes’, Linda Hutcheson (Stirling) on ‘Unfilmed, but Scottish Lottery-funded: Projects which Might Have Been’, Nadin Mai (St Andrews) on ‘The Mobilized Venue – The Uses of the Cinema in Scotland, 1939-1945’, Alistair Scott (Edinburgh Napier) on ‘The Documentary – Still a Cornerstone of Scotland’s Filmmaking Community?’, Karen Lury (Glasgow) on ‘The Problems of Micro-History and the Amateur Film’ and Lynn Sinclair (West of Scotland) on ‘A Textual Analysis of Screen Versions of Hamlet’s Soliloquy “To Be or Not to Be, That Is the Question” to Explore Elements of the Process of Adaptation’. These papers testified to the robust state of current research being carried out in Scotland on film and the visual media.

After a good opportunity for networking and catching up with colleagues over lunch, the afternoon got underway with a keynote address by Prof. John Caughie and Maria Velez-Serna (Glasgow) on ‘Early Cinema in Scotland’. The presentation drew on Velez-Serna’s PhD research on film distributioon networks as well as outlining the plans for the major, three-year AHRC-funded project on Early Cinema in Scotland, which will begin in August under the supervision of John Caughie. Judging by the evidence of this talk, the project is likely to yield exciting new insights that will allow us to rethink the history of early cinema in Scotland.

The final session was another encounter between industry and academia as Lucy Brett of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) delivered a presentation on the Board’s history and work and took questions from the audience. The session was both humorous and enlightening and gave all present a good snapshot of the Board’s current policies and how these are rooted in past-BBFC decisions as well as the changing social and political landscape.

Overall, the event was a fitting and successful end to the Scottish Consortium project, but not to the networks and collaborations it has helped to engender, which will hopefully continue to bear fruit over the years to come.