Jonathan Romney
"I first used the BFI Library early in the 1980s, when I was following a path towards being an academic in French - a path I strayed from as the film bug increasingly took hold of me. I was there to work on an academic paper on Paul Schrader's Cat People (of all things), the first (and probably only) time I'd ventured into academic film studies proper. That was when the Library was still in Charing Cross Road, and it was, I think, my only visit there - but enough to make me feel, looking back, that I have long roots in this institution and its shelves.
I started using the library regularly when I became a journalist in the mid 80s - and still use it regularly for the invaluable resource of the microfiches, which not only tell you what was written about particular films, directors and stars at particular times, but let you see it in the font and layout it originally appeared in. You somehow get a very tangible sense of history from this, however trivial, that will be lost as the microfiches bow out. Then again, I've probably reached the point at which my eyes can only handle squinting at blurry white-on-black for so long.
Working at Sight & Sound for two years as Deputy Editor in the early 90s, I had the incredible luxury of having this resource in the building I worked in, and often found myself using it several times a day. Later, I spent a lot of time in there working on my BFI book about Atom Egoyan, and thanks to the library's systematic listings of magazine articles, was able to work through pretty much all the known bibliography on this director - at least, all the material I didn't need to look for in Toronto.
Since 1997, I've been advising on the LFF's French programme, and use the library now as much as I ever did, however much more information is appearing online. Through the year I use French publications - Cahiers, Premiere but also industry titles such as Le Film Français to keep abreast of what's been released in France, and what's being made or is about to be. That way, when we draw up our wants list of films to watch on the annual scouting visits to Paris in July, I can at least take informed guesses about what the key titles are going to be.
I spent a number of years training to be an academic, and although I took a different path, the library habit itself is hard to shake off - which means that, for all the possibilities of online research, there's something extra to be had from consulting physical texts in a physical space. I can't imagine ever functioning as a film critic without the BFI Library as a resource."
September 2011.
Jonathan Romney is the Film Critic of the Independent on Sunday and programme advisor on the French Revolutions section of the LFF. He also writes for Sight & Sound, Film Comment and Screen International, among others.
