From 7 October 2016 – 27 January 2017, the Peltz Gallery at Birkbeck, University of London, are exhibiting a selection of curious, unseen works picked from the collections of The Cinema Museum. A Museum of Everyday Life: Cinephilia and Collecting show- cases the intricate handmade archives, indexes and scrap- books painstakingly recorded by film- goers and cinema obsessives, from World War Two to the present.
A Museum of Everyday Life showcases a selection of the Cinema Museum’s extensive array of personal archives and records built by amateur film enthusiasts, largely unnoticed by visitors and researchers until now. The exhibition looks at how these fascinatingly personal, creative and intricate collections begin to form a kind of life writing or autobiography, documenting the everyday lives of cinema enthusiasts. From Vic Kinson, an amateur cinephile, who amassed an archive of over 36,000 index cards – each card intricately detailing the careers and personal lives of the film stars he saw on the silver screen; Peter Ewing, whose scrapbooks and film diaries record his cinema-going teenage years in London through the Blitz and the remainder of the Second World War; to Graham Head, who painstakingly snipped off squares of celluloid from every reel of film he projected and kept them in little brown envelopes.
Matthew Harle and Jack Wormell, curators of the exhibition said: “Through the lens of this exhibition we can begin to explore the most popular past-time of the 20th century and its connection to everyday life, through the creative passions of these individuals and their approach to recording cultural memory.”
Read this article from Sight & Sound about the exhibition.
The exhibition will be complemented by a Cinephilia Film Programme at the Birkbeck Cinema on Friday 21 and Saturday 22 October 2016.
Address: Birkbeck, School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD
Opening hours: Monday-Friday: 10.00 – 20.00; Saturday: 10.00 – 17.00 (unless otherwise stated)
Curators:
Jack Wormell is a filmmaker and video editor and co-runs the short film night Brand New Blinkers. jackwormell.com
Matthew Harle works in the BFI Southbank’s Television Programming Unit, holds a PhD from Birkbeck, University of London and has taught English and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck and King’s College London.
This exhibition is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
About the Peltz Gallery:
The Peltz Gallery was founded in the School of Arts at Birkbeck, University of London in 2013 with the help of a generous donation by Elizabeth and Daniel Peltz. The Gallery showcases the creative interdisciplinary and experimental research produced by academic staff and postgraduates in the School of the Arts. It also provides curatorial and professional training in a venue attracting a wide public. The Gallery exhibits the work of emerging and established artists and commissions new work through artist-in-residency programmes aimed at provoking innovative intellectual interactions between academic and practitioner.
The Peltz Gallery is at the heart of a creative hub – Birkbeck Forum for the Arts – which includes the Peltz Gallery, Birkbeck Cinema and Performance space.
