The BSFFS started as a sort of spin-off from the British Silent Film Festival which had run at Nottingham and then Leicester since around 1998. The festival was once a mixture of films and academic papers, but the organisers asked me to run a separate event which emphasised the academic papers, enabling the festival itself to emphasise the films. Actually both events have continued to include both films and papers.
Having been tidying up my office, I have identified the paperwork for a variety of the symposium’s early years, and I’ve just scanned them and uploaded them here as a kind of archive of the presentations that were offered and the people that were present. It’s been a groovy fourteen years.
In 2020 the symposium was due to be hosted by Ian Christie and Malcolm Cook at Birkbeck for one year only, but of course because of Covid it wound up being online and I don’t have the programme for that year. I didn’t run it for a couple of further years because of Covid and because I was looking after Mark. It returned in 2024 and again in 2026. The ‘save the date’ for next year’s symposium is April 2nd 2027. It will take place at the Cinema Museum in Kennington.
Here are the past programmes as PDFs…
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2024
2026
At the Pictures 