Curating a Stateless Nation:
Selection, Access and Issues of National Specificity in
the Promotion of Scottish Film Heritage
Master Thesis Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image 30 September 2015
Faculty of Humanities Department of Media Studies
University of Amsterdam
Stephanie Cattigan (10619046) s.cattigan@hotmail.co.uk Supervisor: Dr. Eef Masson
Table of Contents
Introduction (3)Chapter 1 - Background: Discussing ‘The National‘ (9) 1.1 Defining National Specificity (9)
1.2 Britain & Scotland; State, Nation, Stateless Nation? (12)
Chapter 2 - Theoretical Framework: Reading & Interpreting National Heritage (17) 2.1 National Heritage & Canon Formation (17)
2.2 Modes of Interpretation (20) 2.3 Framing & Context (23)
Chapter 3 - Case Studies: British & Scottish National Contexts (27) 3.1 Introduction: Two National Archives (27)
3.2 Comparing Title Selections: (29) - Feature Film (30)
- Television/Broadcast (32) - Sponsored/Documentary (34) - Topical/Actuality (36)
- Amateur/Experimental (37) 3.3 Internal & External Framing (41) Conclusion (50)
Works Cited (55) Appendices:
A: SSA Exhibition Showreel Titles List (59) B: BFI ‘Scottish Reels’ Titles List (60)
Introduction
In the run-up to last year’s referendum on Scottish independence the UK media speculated heavily on the possibility of Scotland no longer remaining part of Britain, and the many hypothetical outcomes in this event. Everything from new passports, flags and currency to different dialling codes and time zones were flouted as conceivable side-effects of Britain ‘breaking up’. The status of several prominent British institutions such as the BBC, Tate Britain and the British Museum were also considered1. When asked his opinion on the implications of this the director of the British Museum is quoted as saying, ‘the British Museum is the first cultural evidence of the union. [...] It was marrying Scottish Enlightenment ideas to London's global contact, and it was a real expression of what that new country [Britain] was’2. It is interesting to note the use of the word ‘was’ here, as much of the debate and contemplation surrounding this ‘identity crisis’ leading up to the
referendum focused on the past, and on the idea of something (‘Britishness’) that had actually long since disappeared.
Sociologist David McCrone writes that historically British identity depended upon firstly ‘a powerful enough sense of ‘Britain’ to encapsulate the minor national identities of these islands’3 and secondly ‘upon the British Empire, the monarchy, and institutions such as the BBC’4. As the influences of these institutions has waned, so too has the shared sense of British national identity. McCrone also isolated the mobilisation of British nationalism by the Thatcher government as an important factor, stating that it ‘became clear - at least to the ‘periphery’ - that it had become an empty shell, or at least was indistinguishable from English nationalism’5. Taking these points into consideration prompts some important counterpoints to those hypothetical musings about the fate of the ‘British’ in the British Museum; is the concept of ‘Britishness’ still culturally relevant enough to have an impact on heritage provision? And would the removal of Scotland from this equation really make much of an impact on the way these national institutions manage and exhibit their
collections?
1 Jonathan Jones, ‘Would Scottish independence unleash a British art identity crisis?’, The Guardian, 10 September
2014, http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/sep/10/would-scottish-indepence-unleash-british-art-identity-crisis, (accessed 1 September 2015).
2 Charlotte Higgins, ‘What would be the implications for the British Museum if Scotland voted for independence?’, The Guardian, 25 June 2013,
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/charlottehigginsblog/2013/jun/25/british-museum-scottish-independence, (accessed 1 September 2015).
3 David McCrone, Understanding Scotland: The Sociology of a Stateless Nation. (London, Routledge, 1992): 209. 4 Ibid.
Britain remains happily married (or at least cohabiting tolerably) so these questions are still very much hypothetical in nature. But they do provide a jumping off point for what this thesis aims to address; the shared custody of national heritage and how it is cared for in different national
contexts. Because it is often the case that these ‘peripheries’ have their own ‘national’ institutions. As a result there are two ‘national’ institutions serving, in theory, the same country. For example, there is also a National Museum of Scotland to provide an equivalency to the aforementioned British Museum. A situation such as this prompts questions regarding the shared responsibility of these institutions, and how each fulfils a requirement to represent collections of national
importance. The difference being, this thesis assumes, the national context that surrounds this work: either ‘Scottish’ or ‘British’.
This thesis aims to address these questions within the field of film preservation and
archiving. Scotland also has its own film archive, established in 1976 in response to a ‘concern that Scottish cultural needs and Scottish cultural expression was not being met in the collection policy of the London [National Film] Archive’6. I will argue that national context has an important role in determining how film heritage is curated by focusing on the work of Scotland’s two national film archives; the Scottish Screen Archive and the BFI National Archive.
Hit with the realisation that much of early film history was lost forever through neglect or deterioration, early film archivists quickly put together their first preservation initiatives. Janna Jones recognises that ‘there was not a unified philosophy for preserving film in the early years of cinema collecting and archiving’ but recognises that ‘there was a nationalistic undercurrent that ran through much of early film collection rhetoric’7. Caroline Frick also explores the rationale behind preservation choices in the early days of film archiving in her book Saving Cinema. She identifies the focus on the national canon and the rise of ‘heritage’ as important socio-political concepts behind why early film archives such as MoMA and the BFI, ‘both defined and limited the range of material deemed worthy of preservation and future scholastic inquiry’8 In many cases, this narrow and highly limited national outlook was often problematic as it informed selection processes and resulted in the neglect of marginalised works and those deemed unsuitable for preservation.
There are several issues highlighted by these authors that explain why nationalism was important for early film preservation practice. Frick equates it predominantly with the rise of the
6 Janet McBain, ‘Film and History: An Interview with Janet McBain, Curator of the Scottish Film Archive’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies. 27.1 (2007). 97-8.
7 Janna Jones. The Past is a Moving Picture: Preserving the Twentieth Century on Film. (Gainesville: University Press
of Florida, 2012): 28.
heritage movement. She links the centrality of preservation (as opposed to access) within early film archives as being symptomatic of this era which ‘gave rise to the heritage phenomenon’9. In turn she comments on how heritage preservation was then and is now ‘inextricably’ linked to
nationalism (19). While this may be the case when it comes to the broader topic of heritage provision across a range of institutions, for the film archive specifically this link has weakened.
Jones writes, ‘the nationalistic discourse that helped to shape early film collections has significantly diminished. The meanings of the film archive became less and less controllable as the twentieth century progressed, helping to liberate the archive from its original inclinations towards historicism and its nationalistic underpinnings’10. There are several contributing factors as to why this influence waned. Most notably the role of the orphan film movement which has brought attention to the importance of different types of film, especially those which do not necessarily reflect the national or have direct importance for a national cinema or heritage.
However, as Frick notes, ‘prioritizing the preservation of, rather than the promotion of public access to, global film heritage “treasures” remains the foundation of contemporary motion picture archival practice and training’11. As a result, there does not seem to have been as much consideration of the role of nationalism and nationalist discourse in how preserved material is made accessible. This thesis will offer an example of one way that these issues can impact on access projects, as will be demonstrated in the analysis of two key case studies.
I intend to compare and contrast two examples of curated access projects dealing with Scottish film heritage; one from the Scottish national archive and one from the British national archive. The aim is to analyse each project to ascertain what differences and similarities arise from within different national contexts. The first case study is an exhibition that took place at the National Library of Scotland (NLS) and was co-curated in collaboration with the Scottish Screen Archive (SSA)12. The second is focused on the launch of a Mediatheque in Glasgow by the BFI, and will concern the ‘specially commissioned’13 collection of films that were made accessible to visitors as part of this project.
Both are launch projects and took place at roughly the same time. This provides a good impression of what each archive considers to be ‘essential’ Scottish film heritage. These case
9 Ibid., 18.
10 Jones, The Past, 51. 11 Frick, 19.
12 Re-branded as ‘Moving Image Archive of the National Library of Scotland’ as of 17 September 2015. This thesis will
continue to refer to the archive using the abbreviation ‘SSA’.
13 ‘Glasgow Mediatheque Introduction’,
studies bring together the disparate yet highly related ideas I have outlined so far. This thesis presents one example of how national issues are still present in the work of film archives, but the issue is further complicated and made more intriguing by the fact that Scotland has (technically) two national archives. This is not particularly unique considering that many countries have more than one film archive responsible for the safekeeping of the national film heritage14. However, the complicated structure of the UK and its fractured national identities introduce a range of concerns not often found in other countries. As I have already touched on though, the more pertinent issue that will be addressed in this thesis concerns the subject of national context and the required unpacking and deconstructing of different (and often taken for granted) terminologies that are used to discuss Britain and its ‘national’ institutions.
A complex methodology is required to attempt this unpacking of terminologies. As I have already alluded to thus far, this thesis deals with a range of different disciplines including nationalism studies, film preservation and the topic of national heritage. These concepts are all interlinked, but require an equally varied theoretical framework to enable a constructive and persuasive analysis of the aforementioned case studies.
The discussion of these cases can be split into two areas of consideration; selection and framing. I will pay close attention to the role of film canons and selection processes in film archives in order to compare and contrast the titles selected in each case study. I will then move on to how these selections have been framed within each project. This part will draw upon the work of film theorist Paul Willemen, his ideas on ‘national specificity’ and his interpretations of the work of semiotician Mikhail Bakhtin. Through Bakhtin’s work links can be made to the research of cultural theorist Mieke Bal who focuses specifically on the act of framing in curatorial work. I will consider both examples of external framing in the case studies (focusing on textual descriptions) as well as external framing (promotion and advertising).
There are of course limitations to this approach that I must address upfront. These case studies were chosen for their high profile status, and because they were both launch projects occurring within the same year. These factors indicate a fairly accurate sense of what each archive considered to be ‘essential’ Scottish moving image history at this time. This thesis can not speak to the wider representation of Scottish film heritage that each archive produces in smaller scale projects.
Another point to clarify is that this thesis is very much concerned with the specificity of the Scottish experience and the way that Scottish film heritage is managed and promoted within Britain. Any wider claims about the impact of national contexts on curating film within the wider field of film preservation are in this case are strictly tangential. What this thesis aims to demonstrate however is that ‘nationalist underpinnings’, whilst indeed not as relevant anymore in film
preservation for initial collecting work, can still be an important factor in the way that some film archives promote their collections when it comes to curated forms of access.
This thesis begins with an introduction to the concept of ‘national specificity’. This particularly useful concept encompasses some of the broader issues of nationalism and national identity, and provides a concise way of dealing with these particularly challenging ideas. It is beyond the scope of this thesis to detail the complex socio-economic ideas behind nationalism and national identity. However, key concepts from the field of nationalism studies will be explored in order to provide context. Of particular concern here are the various debates these scholars have established
concerning the ontology of seemingly everyday concepts such as ‘nation’ and ‘state’. Drawing on the pioneering concepts of theorists such as Benedict Anderson and Anthony D. Smith will provide a basis for much of the necessary deconstructionist work that is essential for a discussion of Britain and Scotland today, especially as the field is then further complicated by hybrid concepts such as ‘nation-state’ and ‘stateless nation’. The aim of this chapter is to provide some background information that will help establish what is meant by ‘national context’ within the confines of this research.
Chapter Two will then focus on the theoretical framework that this thesis will employ in order to ‘read’ and interpret its case studies, so as to ultimately make wider conclusions about the role of national context. Drawing again on the work of Willemen, and introducing some key concepts from cultural theorist Mieke Bal, this chapter will provide an overview of how ‘the national’ operates within heritage institutions. Particular attention will be paid to the process of canon building and the cyclical nature of national heritage formation, with specific references to how these issues have played out historically at a UK level, as well as within film archives. The concept of ‘framing’ and its practical use within curatorial work will be introduced here as a precursor to a more nuanced exploration of this practice when applied to the case studies.
The final chapter consists of an analysis of two case studies, each demonstrating a different national context. I will compare and contrast the selections made by each archive to represent five distinct categories: ‘feature film’, ‘television’, ‘documentary’, ‘topical films’ and ‘amateur films’.
Referring again to ideas relating to canon formation I will analyse what is included in each project, as well as what is neglected, in order to make broader claims about how each approaches the topic of Scottish film heritage. The second part of this chapter will focus on curatorial practice and issues of internal and external framing. Considerations of interpretation, tone and language choice will be analysed so as to better understand the motivations and rationale of each archive in their approach to the same topic within different national contexts.
Chapter I: Discussing the National
1.1 Defining National Specificity
Film theorist Paul Willemen first introduced his concept of ‘national specificity’ to the field of film theory in his 1994 book Looks and Frictions15. For the purposes of this thesis, the most useful aspect of Willemen’s term is that it ‘encompasses and governs the articulation of both national identity and nationalist discourses’.16 I suspect that these terms are often used in place of what would more accurately be termed ‘national specificity’. I myself encountered this pitfall when preparing to write this thesis. This is due in part to the axiomatic and confusing nature of these terms and because they are both linked. National identity is the ‘underlying ideology’17 of nationalism, and nationalism only ‘works because it is based on national identity’18. There is something of a ‘chicken and egg’ situation involving these two concepts with some believing that nationalism creates national identity, whilst others believe that national identity provides the motivation for nation building.
There has been an inability for most scholars to find or settle on precise definitions for these terms. On this subject, historian John Breuilly writes, ‘people do yearn for communal membership, do have a strong sense of us and them, of territories as homelands, of belonging to culturally defined and bounded worlds which give their lives meaning’19 but then punctuates his observation by stating, ‘ultimately, much of this is beyond rational analysis and, I believe, the explanatory powers of the historian’20. On the same topic Cubitt writes that it is a ‘concept more easily evoked than defined’21.
Academics have been trying to characterise nationalism for decades and have yet to settle on a common definition. I highlight these various acknowledgments of theoretical and semantic
difficulty surrounding the field because this act of grappling with terminologies and conflicting positions is an important aspect of this thesis. The intangibility of many of these nationalist ideas,
15 He later approached the subject again in a revised version of his original essay. Paul Willemen, ‘The National
Revisited’, in Theorising National Cinema. Eds. Valentina Vitali and Paul Willemen (London: British Film Institute, 2006):
16 Ibid., 34.
17 Robert C. Thomsen, Nationalism in Stateless Nations: Selves and Others in Scotland and Newfoundland (Edinburgh:
Birlinn Ltd, 2010): 12.
18 Madan Sarup, Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996): 130. 19 John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993): 401.
20 Ibid.
based so much on emotion, judgement, opinion and statements of value, can be hard to pinpoint and even harder to prove or define.
The concept of national specificity enables the consideration of both of these terms (‘nationalism’ and ‘national identity’) concurrently, and provides something of a concessionary framework to work within. To gain a grounding in the context in which Willemen applied his use of the term, it is important to first explore some of the ways that academics have attempted to define nationalism and national identity. I do not aim to provide a comprehensive guide to these complex terms, nor is it my intention to settle on any concrete definitions, but simply to consider why Willemen isolates these two areas as intrinsic to his definition of national specificity.
As a starting point I will borrow Anthony D. Smith’s working definition of nationalism, which he describes as, ‘an ideological movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity and identity for a population which some of its members deem to constitute an actual or potential ‘nation’’22. Smith also acknowledges how definitions of nationalism have tended to overlap and conflict, but offers this simple definition as a way of emphasising three things (national autonomy, national unity and national identity) as the main goals of nationalism. For the purposes of this thesis, national identity is the most relevant of these three, and will be explored further later in the chapter.
Broadly speaking, theories on the ideology of nationalism can be split into two major subcategories. The first focuses on primordial ideas of ethnicity and ancestry, and emphasises a nationalism where people feel a connection to their land of birth. Studies that fall into the second category focus on modernist interpretations of nationalism. Perhaps the most widely known scholar in the field of nationalism studies, Benedict Anderson, is aligned with this school of thought, along with other notable theorists such as Eric Hobsbawm and Ernest Gellner. In the most simplistic terms, the difference between these two camps is the belief that nations are made, not born.
Research on the topic of national identity can be placed within the traditions of both
nationalism studies and identity studies. Along with other modes of identity such as race, class, and gender, it situates the subject within a socially constructed, collective framework of identification. As I have already mentioned, national identity is inextricably linked with issues of nationalism and nationalist discourses. It is an extremely volatile phenomena, and one which Tim Edensor refers to as an ‘ever shifting matrix’23. As is inevitably the case though with identity searches, it is a source of continual preoccupation in academia and, it could be argued, everyday life.
22 Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism: Key Concepts (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010): 9.
To return to Willemen’s concept of national specificity. As I have outlined already this term incorporates both ‘the national’ and its various intertwined, complex discourses including
nationalism and national identity. Willemen gives several succinct examples to demonstrate this. Firstly, he discusses Black British cinema and remarks that, particularly in comparison with African-American cinema, these films are ‘strikingly British yet not nationalistic’24. Willemen highlights this to demonstrate that there is a difference between ‘the discourses of nationalism as objects of study or as a political project’ (33) and ‘the issue of national specificity’ (33). He argues further that there is a ‘crucial difference between nationalism and a concern with the ways a particular social formation functions’ (30).
With regard to national identity, Willemen uses Australia as an example, noting that ‘concerns with notions of Australianness and with national identity’ were only a ‘temporary
component of the dominant registers of Australian cultural specificity’(33). He uses this example to demonstrate that ‘other motifs and discourses’ (34) besides national identity can become intrinsic to national specificity, citing the example of preoccupations with immigration policy in Australia in the early 1990s. Willemen’s main goal is to further emphasise that the ‘concern with socio-cultural specificity is different from identity searches and debates’ (34). He continues, ‘the specificity of a cultural formation may be marked by the presence but also by the absence of preoccupations with national identity. Indeed, national specificity will determine which, if any, notions of identity are on the agenda’(34).
Willemen’s ideas are a starting point for this thesis, and will be built upon in order to progress towards a more thorough outline of what is meant by national specificity within the contexts of this research. Willemen acknowledges that he has borrowed ‘national specificity’ from the ‘vocabulary of modernism applied in the realm of political economy’ (33). Another field in which this term is used frequently is in translation studies. There are some useful concepts to be mined in this field that can help provide greater clarity to the concept of national specificity. In particular, Anthony Pym explores ‘the general notion or even feeling that such peoples might have about their
specificity’25. He explains his use of the term as dealing with ‘a unitary paradise able to motivate the way you or I or anyone else may manifest or interiorise a national cultural identity through
24 Willemen, 33.
25 Anthony Pym, ‘Coming to Terms With and Against Nationalist Cultural Specificity. Notes for an Ethos of Translation
adherence to specially marked action and thought’26. This outlook emphasises the idealism inherent in notions of national specificity, and the term ‘specially marked’ is also particularly relevant. The reason why becomes clear when focus is directed towards the ‘specificity’ part of this concept, which derives of course from the word ‘specific’ and means to have a ‘special determining quality’27. This thesis understands ‘national specificity’ as a concern with perceived special and specific qualities that are seen as particular to a specific nation (usually by those who identify with said nation). In other words, those elements that are seen as ‘quintessential’, and the aspects which are thought to reveal something about the character of a national people or national culture;
‘judgements of value’ rather than ‘judgements of fact’28. These values are usually seen in opposition to other nations; a quality which one national culture possesses that differentiate it from others.
1.2 Britain & Scotland: State, Nation, Stateless Nation?
In order to place this theory of national specificity within a UK context it is important to look briefly at the history of its formation. McCrone isolates three key dates that triggered new
definitions of ‘Britain’; 1707, 1801 and 192129. Britain officially became a sovereign state in 1707 when England and Scotland joined to form one kingdom, along with Wales which was already under English jurisdiction at this point. In 1801 Ireland joined and Britain became known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. When Ireland declared its independence in 1921 the arrangement of the UK changed again, with only the six most northern counties of Ireland
remaining. This is particularly succinct account of the development of the UK, but I include it to give a very rough idea of the different levels of constitutional change happening until fairly recently.
Robin Cohen describes identity in Britain as a ‘fuzzy frontier’30. This thesis will attempt to clear away some of this ‘fuzziness’ by focusing on particular discrepancies in the way the
terminologies surrounding Britain and its various identities are used. As a starting point I will focus on the observation by Willemen that, ‘British nationalism is in fact an imperial identification, rather than an identification with the British state. To complicate matters further, an identification with the British state is, in fact, an English nationalism, as opposed to Welsh, Cornish or Scottish
26 Ibid.
27 "specific, adj. and n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, §1a. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/185999?
rskey=XDCeIc&result=2&isAdvanced=false#eid (accessed 2 July 2015).
28 Pym, 49.
29 McCrone, Understanding Scotland, 97.
nationalisms, which relate not to a state but to nations’31. For the purposes of this thesis I will use these observations (British nationalism as an imperial identification, British state identification as English nationalism and identification with the nation of Scotland as Scottish nationalism) to reconsider the terms ‘Scottish’ and ‘British’ and make clearer what I mean by national context. In order to do so it is important to look more closely at the terms ‘nation’ and ‘state’.
What is a nation? This is the question at the forefront of nationalism studies. Perhaps the most widely known and heavily utilised answer to this question is Benedict Anderson’s concept of the ‘imagined community’. For Anderson, nations are ‘imagined communities’ because ‘members of even the smallest nation will never know most fellow members’32. He stressed that because it is imagined does not mean that is it false, because ‘communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined’33. When it comes to the topic of British nationalism it is possible to adapt an Orwellian turn of phrase and acknowledge that
although all nations are imagined, some are more imagined than others. By this I do not mean to be facetious, but simply to acknowledge that in the case of the UK there is an added layer of
complexity deriving from its imperialist past and the concept of Britishness. In order to fully explore this yet another term (‘the state’) must be deconstructed.
Anthony D. Smith offers a perspective on what differentiates the state from the nation, positing that a nation is ‘not a state, because the concept of the state relates to institutional activity, while that of the nation denotes a type of community’34. Whether Britain can officially be called a nation or a state is of course further complicated by its imperialist history and as such terminologies have been offered by leading nationalism scholars in order to help cross this ‘fuzzy frontier’.
McCrone describes Britain as a ‘state-nation masquerading as a nation-state’35. By viewing Britain this way, he explains, ‘we are alluding to the fact that it was a state first, and only later (if at all) a nation. At no time can one seriously consider Britain as a ‘nation-state’, that is, a homogenous cultural grouping which mobilized that homogeneity to become a state’36.
There are many of these hybrid terminologies used in Scotland’s case also. In particular the term ‘stateless nation’ has come to be used to signify something of the Scottish situation. The term is by
31 Willemen, 33.
32 Benedict Anderson. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso,
1983): 15.
33 Ibid.
34 Smith, Nationalism: Key Concepts, 12. 35 McCrone, Understanding Scotland, 97. 36 Ibid., 98.
no means unique to Scotland, and has been applied to many disparate minority groups within a larger, dominant state who seek the establishment of a state of their own. However, as Tom Nairn stipulates, ‘there are many stateless nationalities in history, but only one Act of Union’37. He is referring here to what he labels ‘a peculiarly patrician bargain between two ruling classes’ (129). The 1707 union of Scotland and England was of mutual benefit to both parties, and despite the current political drive for autonomy within the country, Scotland was a willing participant. This has come to be referred to as a ‘marriage of convenience’, a favourite phrase in the media rhetoric surrounding last year’s referendum on Scottish independence. Nairn identifies the period in which this union took place as particularly opportune as it took place after the age of ‘absolute monarchy’ but before the ‘age of democratic nationalism’ (129) had arrived. The particular effects of this endeavour lie in ‘the results of the bargain: a nationality which resigned statehood but preserved an extraordinary amount of institutional and psychological baggage normally associated with
independence - a decapitated national state, as it were, rather than an ordinary ‘assimilated’ nationality’ (129).
Nairn stresses that Scotland’s cultural development has not been ‘normal’ and refers to the condition of culture in Scotland as ‘stunted’ and ‘caricatural’ (143). He writes that because of the aforementioned ‘psychological baggage’, Scotland has not developed a culture that is not
‘straightforwardly nationalist’ and can only described as ‘sub-nationalist - in the sense of venting its national content in various crooked ways - neurotically, so to speak, rather than directly’ (144). I would contend also that it is a culture that can be described as nationally specific. As I have explained, national specificity does not have to focus on identity searches or issues of political nationalism. Yet it still very much expresses a continual preoccupation with, and reflection upon, certain aspects of national culture. This constant rumination ties in with Nairn’s psychologically worded metaphors on the state of Scottish culture. Similarly, McCrone refers to the image of Scottish society as ‘schizophrenic’ because of the ‘separation of state (British) from society (Scottish)’38.
Much of this ‘neuroticism’ is triggered by imprecise terminologies. Let us return to the observations made by Willemen at the start of the chapter and look at them in turn. Firstly, the idea that British nationalism is in fact an imperial identification. This alludes to the fact that, as
McCrone writes, ‘Britishness was almost wholly a political rather than a cultural phenomenon. It became a mobilising device, almost entirely defined by its external relations, without a substantive,
37 Tom Nairn. The Break-Up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-nationalism (Norfolk: Lowe and Brydone Printers Ltd, 1977):
129.
cultural content’ (210). In Scotland’s case this resulted in the formation of a ‘unionist’ strain of nationalism, which focused on Scottish cultural achievements and participated in the activity of a shared, unique national culture without any of the political implications. This was a time of temporary fixity within Britishness for Scots, facilitated through a ‘post-Union attachment to
imperialist militarism’(105). McCrone notes however that ‘By the first half of the twentieth century, British national identity was exposed for what it was - a supra-national identity deriving from an imperial past’ (104).
It is this development which allows for the possibility of holding both a Scottish and a British sense of identity simultaneously or, in some cases, to choose between them:
Being British is a sort of umbrella identity sitting loosely upon the older territorial identities of England, Scotland and Wales. Simply put, you can be both English and British, Scottish and British, Welsh and British; these may be seen by academics and the person in the street alike as nested identities, complementary, not contradictory, although in practice people sometimes see them as alternatives depending on context.39
If we heed McCrone’s advice that, ‘it is important to remember that nationalism, or national identity, is not characteristic, but imputes a relationship between different identities. To be Scottish, for example, is to be not English’40, then we are able to work towards a diagnosis regarding
Scotland’s ‘schizophrenic’ tendencies regarding national identity. Willemen equates an
identification with the British state with English nationalism. Therefore, an identification with Britishness is far simpler in the English case. English expression of national identity is streamlined through identification with the British state. It is incorporated into a larger entity because as
McCrone writes, ‘Englishness became submerged into a wider, and more artificial, sense of Britishness because, as the overwhelmingly dominant nationality within the state, its assertion, in the context of the Union, would have been divisive’41. Scottish expression of national identity however, as we have already touched on, is not able to gel quite so seamlessly, as ‘the Scottish masses were not socialized into a unitary national culture. Inevitably they were forced to compose for themselves a bastard product that was part ‘indigenous’ - expressing the still quite different life and social ethic of the country - and part Great-British, or imperialist’42.
39 Frank Bechhofer and David McCrone. Eds. National Identity, Nationalism and Constitutional Change (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2009): 1.
40 McCrone, 207. 41 Ibid., 210. 42 Nairn, 167.
These ideas simply create frameworks for the study of the wider, more generalised issue of national identification. They of course do not allow room for the more subtle nuances of individual
subjectivity. Hill acknowledge this aspect of identity studies and refers to the ‘suppression of difference’43 that is inherent in the structure of other collective identities such as gender, race etc. He does note however, that ‘in the case of Britain this suppression of difference is all the greater in so far as there is more than one national community within the boundaries of the nation-state and, therefore, no obvious alignment between ‘national culture’ and nation-state of the sort assumed by nationalist ideology’44.
Andrew Higson picks up on a similar issue which incorporates the homogenising tendency of collective identities and explains it as a process of ‘displacement and condensation’ which can be found in ‘the slippage from the South County to England, from England to Britain, from urban to rural, from class antagonism to patrician authority, and thence to organic community, and from the interests of one class to national interest’45. These accidental processes of overlapping and
condensation, and perhaps even in some cases through a deliberate effort to simplify discussions of British structure and identity, have resulted in this range of synecdochical terminologies.
This chapter has functioned as an opportunity to provide necessary background information that will prove useful in the later analysis of case studies in Chapter Three. The subject of national specificity, which as we have explored combines elements of nationalism and national identity, deals with values rather than fact and refers to the ‘special’ or ‘marked’ qualities of national cultures that are perceived as distinctive from others. Placing this concept within a UK context led to a discussion of the terms ‘Scottish’ and ‘British’. The ideas explored here draw attention to how these concepts which, although seemingly commonplace, cannot be taken at face value. The term
‘British’ is complicated by its status as a ‘state-nation’; ‘Scottish’ by its status as a ‘stateless nation’. These issues, together with the theoretical concepts outlined in the next chapter, will combine in the analysis of the case studies in Chapter Three.
43 John Hill, ‘The Issue of National Cinema and British Film Production’, in New Questions of British Cinema. Ed.
Duncan Petrie (London: BFI, 1992): 15.
44 Ibid.
Chapter 2: Reading & Interpreting National Heritage
2.1 National Heritage & Canon Formation
Having explored the topic of national specificity and national context in the previous chapter, I now shift focus to the second part of my question. The term ‘heritage’ is equally as loaded, and also often taken for granted like the term ‘national’. I will explore the importance of heritage and the role of the institutions that are responsible for it. Finally I will move on to some exploration of the methodology and theory behind how curatorial work in the heritage field is carried out.
On the topic of heritage Frick writes:
much contemporary analysis of heritage discourse focuses upon the concept’s uniting capacity and potential within a largely socio-economic context. Oppositional, and even adversarial, interest groups can join together behind the rubric of heritage and its emotional, if indefinite, nature. The term’s very imprecision makes “heritage” as acceptable and useful as it is.46
Here Frick has zeroed in on the difference between the term heritage and the issues surrounding nationalism explored in the last chapter. It is a far less divisive term that can generally be applied without the baggage of nationalism. It is, as Frick stresses, a ‘naturalized concept’ (13), which can be misleading.
As Frick points out however, ‘the preservation of so-called national or state heritage is not, and never has been, a neutral concept, although it is presented as such by politicians, the press, intellectuals, and archivists. Moreover, heritage preservation, as a primarily nineteenth- and twentieth- century mode of dealing with history, remains inextricably related to nationalism’ (19). In her book Uses of Heritage, Laurajane Smith explores how the dominant conversations and practices surrounding heritage (what she calls ‘Authorized Heritage Discourse’) have identified the key role of nationalism, ‘The AHD was itself both constituted by, and is a constitutive discourse of, the ideology of nationalism. In identifying ‘national heritage’, the ‘nation’ is symbolically and imaginatively constituted as a real entity’47.
Indeed, the term ‘heritage’ has been a popular topic in academia and Frick identifies the mid-1970s as important, writing that since then it ‘has become an important sociocultural and
46 Frick, 15.
economic force. A significant amount of literature has been produced for heritage management, for and by heritage practitioners’48. This was an important time for heritage in a UK context also, as there were differences in the way this movement developed in the UK. The National Heritage Acts of 1980 and 1983 were important, and as Andrew Higson explains, ‘these acts reworked concepts of public access and use in terms of commodification, exhibition, and display, encouraging the
forthright marketing of the past within a thoroughly market-orientated heritage industry’49. This commodification was highly linked to the Conservative government of the time. However, Higson stresses that ‘the heritage impulse is not confined to Thatcherite Britain but a ‘characteristic’ feature of postmodern culture’ (112). This is very much linked to a preoccupation with nostalgia and a desire to recycle culture, and reflect on highly self referential elements of national heritage. As Higson writes, ‘the past is reproduced as a flat, depthless pastiche, where the reference point is not the past itself, but other images, other texts’ (112).
The concept of national specificity shares many of these preoccupations. To reiterate, national specificity pertains to what is seen as special or unique to a national culture. It has strong links to national identity and nationalistic discourse, but these issues are not necessarily always at the forefront of this concept. Issues of national specificity often makes up what is considered national heritage. Heritage institutions show the public what they recognise to be traits, values, achievements and aspects of culture that are perceived to be specific to the experience of belonging to a certain nationality, and capable of only being produced within said national context. To
understand fully the link to heritage and its status as somewhat superficial and self referential we must look in more detail at the institutions which not only protect national heritage, but also have a hand in producing it.
Institutions play a defining role in establishing national heritage and identity. To return once again to Willemen’s article, ‘it is my contention that the formation, imposition, and indeed the acceptance of, or consent to a ‘national identity’, is to be tracked in the addressing dimensions of institutions set up and maintained to select a cluster of ‘differentiae’ [...] decreed to be ‘our’ inheritance by those social groups or power blocs who seek to perpetuate their dominance’50. Referring
specifically to museums, Smith explains how narratives of ‘national and cultural identity became embedded in exhibition and collection practices’51. She also notes how they ‘took on a regulatory
48 Frick, 15-16.
49 Andrew Higson, ‘Re-presenting the National Past: Nostalgia and Pastiche in the Heritage Film’, in Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism. Ed. Lester D. Friedman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1993): 112. 50 Willemen, 30.
role in helping to establish and govern both social and national identity’52. These authoritative images of national culture produced within heritage organisations are created with the education of the public in mind. Ernest Gellner labelled these modern institutions as existing within ‘garden cultures’, and described them as possessing a ‘complexity and richness, most usually sustained by literacy and by specialized personnel’53. As Edensor writes, ‘a mass education system binds state and culture together, canons are devised, museum are established, official histories written,
scientific bodies set up to subtend the propagation of ‘official’ knowledge, so that specific bodies of knowledge, values and norms are ingested by all educated citizens’54.
Canon formation is an interesting aspect of the work of heritage organisations. Smith writes, ‘it is now widely recognised that the idea of a canon is linked closely with that of nation, and that canons might be understood to represent ideological tools that circulate the values on which
particular visions of nationhood are established’55. The use of the word ‘circulate’ here is key as, in many ways, the process of canon formation within cultural heritage organisations is a
self-sustaining cycle, and one that can lead to the displacement of ‘the material dimensions of historical context’56. By this I mean that this ‘differentiae’, the nationally specific, distinguishing features of a national culture are first designated as such within institutional contexts. As Eric Hobsbawm notes, ‘the ideology of nation, state or movement is not what has actually been preserved in popular memory, but what has been selected, written, pictured, popularized and institutionalised by those whose function it is to do so’ 57. If these images are then ‘ingested’ by ‘educated citizens’ and become part of the national imagination, they become one step removed from their original context. Which is not to say that canons are blindly accepted. They are also ‘digested’ and reflected upon. As Liz Czach writes, ‘the formation of a canon is not an automatic, innate procedure but rather a
contested cultural process’58. Edensor also picks up on this idea, writing that ‘a national cultural hegemony must be achieved, must offer plausible points of identification’59. In other words it must appeal to that which is nationally specific which as, Willemen stipulates in his description of the
52 Ibid.
53 Ernest Geller, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publisher Ltd, 1983): 50. 54 Edensor, 3.
55 W.J.T. Mitchell, ‘Canon’, in New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Eds. Tony Bennett,
Lawrence Grossberg and Meaghan Morris (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005) 20.
56 Higson, ‘Re-presenting the National Past’, 112.
57 Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1983):
13.
58 Liz Czach, ‘Film Festivals, Programming, and the Building of a National Cinema’, The Moving Image. 4.1 (2004):
78.
term, does not necessarily focus on national identity but ‘will determine which, if any, notions of identity are on the agenda’60.
This process of canon building is equally important within film archives and Frick advocates for awareness surrounding their role in ‘creating, solidifying, and promoting film canons’61. As Czach highlights, the formation of film canons includes ‘processes of inclusion and exclusion’62. This leads to the areas of film archival work I am most concerned with; selection. Janna Jones writes, ‘collection, inspection, cataloguing, storage, preservation, restoration, exhibition and duplication - these are ways the archive shapes history’63. It is noticeable that the important process of
‘selection’ is missing. This may have something to do with the specific history of film preservation. As Karen F. Gracy reminds us, in ‘the historical genesis of many film archives, appraisal has largely resided in the activity of preservation, not selection. Most archives collected with abandon because so much moving image heritage had been lost to deterioration or destruction by studios’64. Selection is a more prominent concern for film archives when it comes to the process of making their
collections accessible. As I have outlined in my introduction, there is an argument to be made that issues of national specificity are very much at the forefront of these selection decisions, even if they are no longer as relevant in the initial archival chain of collection and preservation.
2.2 Modes of Interpretation
My methodology for analysing and interpreting my chosen case studies rests on another theory introduced in Willemen’s essay. Drawing on the work of social theorist and semiotician Mikhail Bakhtin, Willemen introduces three modes of interpretation ‘which correlate with three different ways of framing relations with other socio-cultural networks’65. For the purposes of this thesis, these ‘socio-cultural networks’ will consist of national institutions and their associated national heritages. I aim to connect these ideas (which I will outline below) with the concepts I have already covered relating to national specificity, different national contexts and the role of cultural
institutions in absorbing and producing heritage canons.
60 Willemen, 34. 61 Frick, 7.
62 Czach, ‘Film Festivals’, 78. 63 Jones, The Past, 21.
64 Karen F. Gracy, Film Preservation: Competing Definitions of Value, Use and Practice (Chicago: Society of American
Archivists, 2007): 81.
Willemen labels the first mode of interpretation that he outlines ‘project appropriation’, which he describes as projecting beliefs from one culture or context on to another. He links this to a process of what he calls ‘internationalising ways of making sense’ (36). Using Indian cinema as an example, Willemen describes this mode as employing ‘scornful amusement’ (38) and is often dismissive. The second is described as becoming a ‘mouthpiece for others’ and is therefore labelled ‘ventriloquist identification’ (36). Willemen associates this with a sense of ‘imperialist guilt’ (37) and the false assumption by academics that in India for instance, the popular cinema represents ‘the people’s cinema’ in the same ways as it does in Hollywood (38).
Willemen then describes a ‘transitional’ mode which bridges a gap en route to the third and final mode. This particular approach is the most useful for the purposes of this thesis. This is a traditional scholarly method that pays attention to trends and historical narratives. Willemen highlights that this mode is useful because it provides essential information, however we should be cautious of this narrative as it is ‘riddled with elements of the populist (i.e. ‘ventriloquist
identification’) and the ‘projectivist’.(38). He writes:
This is a transitional moment in the process of engagement with otherness, because it still maps the familiar Western reductive paradigms onto, for instance, the development of the Indian film industry. But to the extent that the effort is genuinely scholarly, this type of historiography is also bound to register areas of difference where the object of study resists the interpretive framework projected upon it (39).
The final mode avoids the pitfalls of the two previously outlined as it does not appropriate nor does it subordinate the culture concerned. Willemen refers to this as ‘creative understanding’ but
acknowledges that this approach more commonly falls under the Bakhtian term ‘dialogic’ (37). He states though, that this is in fact a misunderstanding as ‘dialogism is inherent in all language and communication’ (37). He defines this approach as one ‘which concentrates on the need to
understand the dynamics of a particular cultural practice within its own social formation. However, that social formation is simultaneously taken as a historical construct, and thus as an object of transformation rather than a given essence hiding deep within the national soul’ (40). The final part of this definition refers to common debates within nationalistic discourse that we have already covered; the gradual shift in academic study of nationalism as a primordial awakening as opposed to a modern imagining.
By way of a concession, it must be noted that Willemen concentrates on the way that Western scholars theorise and interpret other cinema cultures from within their own culturally specific frameworks. It is important to tread carefully when arguing any of these positions in the discussion of the place of Scotland within Britain. These approaches are designed to address and compensate for the uneven balance of power that imperialism has created. Although Willemen cites examples where this approach can be used other than in interactions between western and non-western cultures (Britain and Ireland; Japan and Korea), there is still a postcolonial factor and therefore an imbalance of power. This situation between Scotland and Britain is not directly comparable, and situating this argument within any sort of postcolonial discourse would be extremely problematic as historically Scotland has been part of colonisation processes. As Michael Gardiner explains,
Scotland can neither be ‘identified as coloniser or colonised - to believe it was definitively indefinable as either would be to misunderstand it fundamentally as a nation’66. That is not to say that these approaches can not be applicable when analysing the relationship between Britain and Scotland, as there is still an argument to be made regarding an imbalance of power.
The way to address this imbalance according to Willemen depends on the ability of the analyst to engage with other cultures whilst also reflecting on their own socio-cultural context. He explains that, ‘we are talking here about a double outsideness: the analyst must relate to his or her own situation as an other, refusing simple identifications with pre-given, essentialised socio-cultural categories’67. He warns that, ‘if this cross-eyed dialectic is forgotten, the term ‘specificity’ loses any meaning and any notion of creative or diagnostic understanding. That would be unfortunate, since a position of double outsideness, that is to say, of in-between-ness, is the precondition for any useful engagement with ‘the national’ in film culture’68.
Above all it is important not to lose track of this notion of national specificity, and not to assume that one culture can be framed in the same context as another. I intend to use these
approaches to analyse the curatorial and promotional work of the Scottish and British national film archives, focusing mainly on selection choices.
66 Michael Gardiner, ‘Literature, Theory, Politics: Devolution as Iteration’, in The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature. Ed. Berthold Schoene (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007): 45. 67 Willemen, 40.
2.3 Framing & Context
As I have outlined in the previous chapter Willemen draws heavily on the work of semiotician Mikhail Bakhtin, as well as borrowing terminology from other academic fields in order to make observations about the national in film culture. Cultural theorist Mieke Bal has famously advocated for the usefulness of this interdisciplinary approach in her book Travelling Concepts in the
Humanities which explores the ways in which concepts from other fields can be employed in
cultural analysis. In her work Bal also draws on the work of Bakhtin, and the wider fields of linguistics and semiotics, in order to theorise curatorial practice and reflect on the ways that
heritage and culture are exhibited. I intend to combine concepts from these two scholars in order to form a theoretical framework that will enable me to analyse my case studies as well as the wider topics of both the ‘national’ and the ‘curatorial’.
Mikhail Bakhtin is a philosopher and semiotician whose work is predominantly occupied with the analysis and ontology of language and discourse, and is known in particular for his theories on ‘dialogism’. Bakhtin’s theories centred around the idea that ‘meaning is established through dialogue - it is fundamentally dialogic. Everything we say and mean is modified by the interaction and interplay with another person. Meaning arises through the ‘difference’ between the participants in any dialogue. The ‘Other’, in short, is essential to meaning’69. Given the nature of most curatorial work and its impulse to compare and contrast it is easy to see why Bal draws on concepts such as the ones originated by Bakhtin to explore the field of museum studies.
Bal writes, ‘a museum is a discourse, and exhibition an utterance within that discourse’70. The idea of the ‘utterance’ is very important in Bakhtin’s work. Another area that Bal focuses on is rhetoric. In her analysis of an exhibition she attended she talks about ‘selective rhetoric’. By this she means that the language used by curators tells a very purposeful story or ‘narrative’. She writes that, ‘rhetoric helps us to “read” not just artefacts in the museum, but the museum and its
exhibitions themselves’71.
It is this progression towards the importance of ‘reading the museum’ that sparked what was coined ‘the new museology’, of which Bal states, ‘should be an interdisciplinary study of the institution of the museum within the dual framework of critical anthropology and discursive
69 Stuart Hall, Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: SAGE Publications Ltd,
1997): 235-6.
70 Mieke Bal, ‘The Discourse of the Museum’, in Thinking about Exhibitions. Eds. Bruce W. Ferguson, Reese
Greenberg and Sandy Nairne (London: Routledge, 1996): 153.
analysis’72. It is this duality that Bal outlines that is most directly relevant for this thesis. Firstly, I am interested in the institutional national context and how it impacts on curatorial work. Secondly I want to draw attention to the ways in which this curatorial work can be studied through the analysis of issues such as framing and context, both of which are important aspects of ‘discursive analysis.’
As Rhiannon Mason points out, previous writings on communication theory and museums ‘do not focus adequately on the importance of contexts within which acts of communication occur’73. This is precisely what this thesis aims to explore through looking at the use of framing within national institutions that align themselves with different aspects of British identity, which as we have already explored previously, is very complex. Of course, in this case my focus in on the work of film archives and how they have curated their collections. However, Bal’s work on
museums and exhibitions is still extremely relevant with many of her key points easily transferrable to this topic, as I will explain in more detail shortly.
The terms ‘framing’ and ‘context’ are often used interchangeably, an issue that literary theorist Jonathan Culler discussed in his seminal text Framing the Sign. On the subject of context he writes, ‘context is not fundamentally different from what it contextualises; context is not given but
produced; what belongs to a context is determined by interpretive strategies; contexts are just as much in need of elucidation as events; and the meaning of a context is determined by events. Yet when we use the term context we slip back into the simple model it proposes’74. He proposes that we use the term ‘framing the sign’ instead. Bal on the other hand acknowledges that, ‘the concept of framing has been productively put to use in cultural analysis as an alternative to the older concept of context’75, referring here to Culler. She however argues for a specific use of the terms ‘framing’ and ‘context’ and is careful not to argue for the use of one over the other. This idea, that we should consider terminologies and concepts in relation to their surroundings and on their own terms, is integral to Bal’s work. Along these lines I will differentiate between framing and context for the purposes of analysing my case studies. I refer to ‘context’ particularly in my discussion of different national outlooks within institutions responsible for national heritage. In my discussion of acts of ‘framing’ I will use this term to mean the curatorial practices carried out within these national contexts.
72 Ibid., 148.
73 Rhiannon Mason, ‘Museums, Galleries and Heritage: Sites of Meaning-Making and Communication’, in Heritage, Museums and Galleries: An Introductory Reader. Ed. Gerard Corsane (London: Routledge, 2005) 221.
74 Jonathan Culler. Framing the Sign: Criticism and Its Institutions (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988): ix.
75 Mieke Bal. Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002):
This chapter began by emphasising how the term heritage, despite being very much linked to the concept of nationalism, avoids much of the baggage associated with it. It has a vague, imprecise quality and as a result has been somewhat exploited. The impulse to capitalise on heritage, seen predominantly in the UK from the 1970s onwards, saw the recycling of elements of culture that were subsequently reduced to what Higson termed flat pastiches. Much of this activity takes place in heritage institutions which cultivate and circulate these elements of culture. They are complicit in both forming canons and and are informed by them. These issues are important within film
archives, and whilst adherence to national canons is not as prevalent in preservation work, this thesis aims to highlight that it is still important in terms of access, as the case studies in the next chapter will explore.
Willemen’s modes of interpretation have been outlined in this chapter as useful methods of considering the way heritage institutions engage with cultures outside of the national context within which they operate. He outlines three separate modes; ‘projectivist’, ‘ventriloquist’ and ‘creative understanding’. These correlate, respectively, with the act of projecting views from one culture on to another, acting as a ‘mouthpiece’ for other cultures, and entering into a process of understanding other cultures on their own terms by first considering one’s own culture as ‘other’. An auxiliary fourth mode is also outlined and labelled as ‘transitional’ because it fills a gap between the second and third mode. It is a traditional, scholarly approach which is useful for providing necessary information but falls into the pitfalls of the first and second modes. As I will explore in the next chapter these ideas are most relevant when considering the BFI project. This is an peculiar example of a case where the national culture explored (Scottish) is both ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ the national context (British) within which it is interpreted. I will explore how this is managed and make reference to the concepts outlined here.
Finally, following on from the Bakhtin inspired work of Willemen, the final part of this chapter outlined key ideas related to context and framing through the work of another theorist who draws on the work of Bakhtin; Mieke Bal. This thesis will compare and contrast case studies in order to gauge how each archive has approached the subject of Scottish film heritage within its respective national context. I will pay close attention to which titles have been selected by each archive as representative of Scottish film heritage, and will discusses these choices in relation to the ideas on national heritage canon formation that I have outlined at the beginning of this chapter. My
descriptions, how each project is promoted and synopsised by its curators, and how analysis of these aspects enable these events to be ‘read’.
Chapter 3: British & Scottish National Contexts
3.1 Introduction: Two National Archives
The BFI National Film and Television Archive (BFI) was officially established in 1935 and was then known as the National Film Library. Along with the MoMA in New York and the
Cinémathèque Française in Paris, the BFI was very significant in the early days of film preservation. The archive was established as part of an initiative by the British Film Institute. Established in 1933, the Institute aimed to ‘promote the various uses of film as a contribution to national well-being’76. The organisation was, as Frick stresses, ‘from its inception [...] concerned specially with education, culture, and, most importantly, the nation’77.
As I have already explored, nationalism and nationalist sentiment and rhetoric were very much intertwined in the early days of film archiving. However, although the BFI was established with a nationalist agenda in mind, its history is very much bound up with the history of the film archiving profession itself and the much larger, international scope of film preservation.
The central figure at the inception of the BFI archive was Ernest Lindgren, its first curator. His rivalry with Henri Langlois, and their differing and often combative approaches to preservation, are the issues most commonly fixated upon when one reads about the founding on the BFI archive. Former BFI curator Patrick Russell commented that, ‘in the folklore of the profession, the
‘Lindgren v Langlois’ morality play has the character of a national foundation myth: real historical persons yet also symbolic figures, competing for control of the curatorial soul’78.
The Scottish Screen Archive (SSA) is a fairly new organisation. It was formally established in 1976 as part of Scottish Screen, a governmental organisation supporting the screen arts in Scotland. A large part of its collection was inherited from the Scottish Film Library (SFL), a small collection established in the mid-1950s with support from the British Film Institute. The SFL was set up because it was felt that there was a greater need in Scotland for a collection separate from the British one held in London than for the rest of the UK. Its collection consisted mainly of educational films and was part of a government initiative to use film as a pedagogical medium; therefore only certain aspects of Scottish film culture were collected. Upon the discovery of a large
76 Frick, 89. 77 Ibid.
78 qtd. in Geoffrey Nowell-Smith and Christophe Dupin, The British Film Institute, the Government and Film Culture, 1933-2000 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012): 65.
trove of film cans in a shed on the premises of the Scottish Screen agency, an archivist was hired to catalogue and assess the state of Scotland’s film heritage collection.
The SSA is a founding member of Film Archives UK; an organisation set up to foster cooperation between the UK’s network of national and regional film archives. The labels ‘national’ and ‘regional’ pose a problem for the SSA because, as one member of staff commented, ‘We are sometimes, rather annoyingly, slotted in to become a ‘region’ of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland when it suits, but we do preserve a unique collection of images related to Scotland and the Scottish people’79. In 2007 the SSA collection became a part of the National Library of Scotland.
My first case study is the BFI Mediatheque project in Glasgow, and more specifically the ‘Scottish Reels’ collection which was specially curated for its launch in 2012. In 2007 the BFI launched its first Mediatheque in London: a library of moving images freely accessible to the public. It consists of a selection of curated collections organised thematically, with such titles as ‘Silent Britain’ and ‘Animated Adventures’. In addition to the first one in London, the Mediatheque project had been rolled out in four other cities before reaching Scotland: Cambridge, Wrexham, Newcastle and Derby. Since then many more have been opened in cities such as Manchester, Bradford and Birmingham.
My second case study focuses on the 2012 exhibition, ‘Going to the Pictures: Scotland at the Cinema’ which was co-curated by the Scottish Screen Archive in collaboration with the National Library of Scotland. This exhibition ran from 15th June to the 28th October 2012 and was curated in order to mark the Scottish Screen collection becoming a part of the National Library. Like the BFI ‘Scottish Reels’ collection, its focus was on displaying over one hundred years of Scottish cinema history. It was equally diverse with attention paid to images of Scotland on screen, Scottish life and Scottish cinema, as well as displaying movie posters and memorabilia collected by the National Library. The exhibition attracted over 40,000 visitors and was one of the most successful exhibitions held by the National Library of Scotland at their location in Edinburgh.
3.2 Comparing Title Selections
Categories
It is interesting to compare and contrast which titles were selected as representative of Scottish film heritage by the BFI for their project, and which were selected by the SSA for theirs. Of course there are some differences to disclaim first, mainly concerning the different scopes of each project. There is a greater selection of film titles for the Mediatheque and less in the case of the SSA exhibition. The type of films included is also of course very different, and this can mainly be attributed to the different collecting purviews of the respective archives. The BFI’s collecting remit includes feature film and television material whereas the SSA is geared far more towards historical and actuality material dealing with everyday Scottish life.
There are a total of 83 titles included as part of the ‘Scottish Reels’ list on the Mediatheque system which are organised in alphabetical order80. As for the SSA exhibition I will mainly be looking at the selection of titles included as part of showreels that were screened during the exhibition, and later distributed by the archive in the form an accompanying DVD81. I will also refer to various titles that were part of the exhibition but were not able to be made available on the DVD due to copyright issues. When relevant I will also refer to titles mentioned throughout the exhibition, but not necessarily screened82.
The ‘Scottish Reels’ list features a diverse range of titles that I have categorised to the best of my ability, mainly as a way of structuring my comparisons. Of course, these are quite broad categorisations and in some cases titles may fit into more than one category. There are twenty-three feature film titles, twenty-three that can be categorised as television material, twenty-three that belong to the category of ‘sponsored film’, ten titles that can best be described as historical footage and a final five titles that encompass experimental and amateur film. I will take each of these categories in turn and analyse them in comparison with how they are represented in the SSA exhibition. My main focus is on the significance of these titles when considering the national context in which they were curated.
80 See Appendix B for full list. 81 See Appendix A for full list.
82 Title examples can be found at ‘NLS Exhibitions Description’. http://www.nls.uk/exhibitions/cinema (accessed 23
