Queer Lives in the Archives
The ‘Queer Lives in the Archives’ panel took place on the 23rd March as part of the Flare Film Festival, where I, alongside Topher Campbell (rukus!), E-J Scott (Museum of Transology), Stef Dickers (Bishopsgate Institute) and our host Chloe Turner (Writer and Researcher), spoke on all things…queer lives in the archives.
What started off as a nervous intro/questioning my ability to recall anything about the work we do turned into a beautiful conversation between panellists and a really engaged audience; topics ranged from cataloguing, language used and censorship to youth interest in archives, grassroots collectives and how institutions can work towards a better, more collaborative collecting process. The Our Screen Heritage project seemed to pique the curiosity of audience members and panellists alike, with there being an overarching interest in what it means to collect various forms of born-digital works, as well as the challenges that may come with this, especially in a time where there have been continued attempts to censor, restrict or shadow ban Queer and Trans content across online platforms.
While there was space to highlight the archival (such as my recent BFI Replay collection in celebration of LGBTQ+ History Month) and a chance to reflect on the queer and trans individuals who came before us, it was a special moment to consider our own lives and the stories documented online today as part of an ever-expanding, important ‘living’ archive.
This panel event was supported by the BFI Screen Heritage Fund, awarding National Lottery funding.
– Tosin Alapafuja, Assistant Curator (Platforms)
Liverpool – Two Tales of A City
Past, present and future came together neatly in a recent acquisition to the BFI National Archive.
I came to the 1929 documentary A Day in Liverpool through its director, Anson Dyer, who was a pioneering figure in early British animation. The film was added to BFI Player in 2015, and I wrote a blog post looking at how it fitted in with the genre of “city symphonies”. Almost a decade later, and Daniel Draper and Christie Allanson of Shut Out The Light took some inspiration from Dyer in their recent documentary about a year in the life of Liverpool.
Following their breakthrough 2017 film Nature Of The Beast, profiling the life and work of Labour politician Dennis Skinner, Daniel and Christie have collaborated on a series of feature-length documentaries set around their local Merseyside community. Liverpool Story: Portrait of a City was filmed throughout 2023 and forms a fascinating picture of a diverse set of communities and voices across the changing seasons.
Like Dyer’s film, name-checked at the film’s premiere, it is different than the city symphony, less interested in formal experiment and the dated modernist vision of the city as a machine. Portrait is the perfect term, and its subject isn’t so much the city as the people who make it such a unique and vibrant place, documented with a respectful, curious, and neatly observational eye.
Preserved in the BFI National Archive collection, both films are now safely secured as part of an evolving continuity of stories about the city, its communities, our times, documentary filmmaking, our heritage and our future.
– Jez Stewart, Curator (Animation)
The Inside the Archive blog is supported by the BFI Screen Heritage Fund, awarding National Lottery funding.
