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Who we are
Who's who in the Curatorial and Technical Teams
Nigel Algar - Senior
Curator (Fiction)
Nigel worked briefly for Contemporary Films before joining The Other Cinema in 1971. In 1975 he joined the BFI with responsibility for the Distribution Library and the Central Booking Agency, servicing the 16mm non-theatrical market. In 1990, after championing the re-release of classic films, he left the BFI to work in TV. After four seasons on BBC2's Moving Pictures, he made standalone documentaries on subjects including the British gangster film and Bing Crosby. Nigel rejoined the BFI in 2005 to head the fiction curatorial team, where he has overseen the David Lean restoration programme.
Nigel Arthur - Curator
(Stills, Posters and Designs)
Nigel joined BFI Stills in 2001 and leads on the acquistion of stills collections. In 2009 he wrote and produced a documentary, Cornel Lucas: A Portrait for Sky Arts channel. He is a consultant for the Twentieth Century Fox Photo Archive in Los Angeles and an expert in identifying negatives from the Fox R series- a collection previously held by UCLA. Other areas of expertise include British stills portraits of the 1940s and 1950s and Polish film poster design.
Robin Baker - Head Curator
Robin has worked in film exhibition, distribution, marketing and archiving for 20 years. He has worked extensively as a film programmer, including as co-director of the London Children's Film Festival, co-programmer of the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and director of the Southampton Film Festival. In 2001 he was part of the team that established the Independent Cinema Office. In 2005 he joined to BFI to oversee the curation of the BFI Mediatheques. His recent research includes work on the BFI's extensive collection of non-fiction films shot in pre-Independence India. He has written and directed two short films, Seafood (UK Film Council/Film London, 2004) and Christmas Merry (BBC, 2005). His radio play Elephant and Castle was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in 2008. Robin wrote and presented the 13-part series The Art of Cinema (Artsworld) and was one of the presentation team of BBC2's The Home Movie Roadshow (2010).
Jo Botting - Curator (Fiction)
Jo joined the BFI in 1998 after working for Reuters and other moving image archives. As part of the Fiction team, she has programmed many archive seasons at the Southbank as well as contributing to the BFI's online and digital platforms. She has wide interests in British cinema, particularly the representation and involvement of women and the history of horror films, which was the topic of her MA, and on which she has written for many publications. She is currently doing a PhD in silent film at Royal Holloway University.
Steve Bryant - Senior
Curator (Television)
After ten years in the BBC's television archives, Steve joined the BFI in 1988 as head of the Archive's television team, the post he still holds. His BFI publication The Television Heritage (1989) was instrumental in achieving the statutory provision for TV archiving which has been the cornerstone of the Archive's television work. He has curated BFI television seasons on the South Bank, including classic comedy and chat shows, and was among the initiators of the BFI's Missing Believed Wiped campaign to find lost television programmes. He has been on the Executive Council of the International Federation of Television Archives since 1992, serving for two terms as General Secretary and currently chairing the Television Studies Commission.
Dylan Cave - Curator (Fiction)
Dylan worked for Oxford's Phoenix Picturehouse before joining the BFI National Archive in 1999. He develops, writes and presents on the archive's fiction collection and leads in the acquisition of new films. His current research interests are in contemporary production, British short film and aspects of moving image ephemera. He is co-programmer of the 'Projecting the Archive' strand at the BFI Southbank and regularly contributes to film journals including AMIA's The Moving Image, BFI Screenonline and Sight & Sound. In 2006 he produced Jean-Pierre Melville's L'Armée des ombres (1969) for DVD release.
Ros Cranston - Curator
(Non-Fiction)
Ros has been a cataloguer, acquisitions officer and curator since she joined the BFI in 1992. She is leader of the BFI project This Working Life, which celebrates Britain's coalmining, shipbuilding and steelmaking heritage on film. Ros's other interests include women documentary filmmakers, political film and the documentary and fiction work of Ken Loach. She has contributed chapters to Shadows of Progress: Documentary Films of Post-War Britain (2010) on the directors Peter de Normanville and Guy Brenton.
Bryony Dixon - Curator (Silent
Film)
Bryony has researched and written on many aspects of early and silent film and co-directs the annual British Silent Film Festival, as well as programming for a variety of film festivals and events worldwide. She co-edits the series of books arising from the British Silent Film Festival with Laraine Porter of De Montfort University. She programmes and gives papers at academic conferences on film and organised the first International Charles Chaplin Conference in 2005 as part of the BFI's Chaplin Project. Publications include Picture Perfect: Landscape, Place and Travel in British Cinema before 1930 (University of Exeter, 2007) and several articles and book chapters on silent cinema and archiving. Her book 100 Silent Films, in the BFI Screen Guides series, is scheduled for publication in 2011.
Frances Donaldson - Curator
(Television)
Frances worked for Kodak and in higher education before joining the BFI in 1999. As part of the television team she contributes to the selection of programmes for off-air acquisition, and liaises with the video unit over recordings. She has an all-round interest in television past and present, and has researched and written for BFI Inview, the Mediatheques and other projects.
Mark Duguid - Senior Curator
(Archive Online)
Mark has been editor of BFI Screenonline since its 2003 launch and, before that, was responsible for the project's 'pilot' phase since 1998. He joined the curatorial unit in 2009 to head the newly created Archive Online team, with responsibility for the BFI Mediatheques and the BFI's YouTube channel, as well as Screenonline and the representation of the BFI National Archive online. His areas of special interest include Ealing Studios, British Hitchcock, Powell & Pressburger and, particularly, British television drama. In 2010 he curated the BFI Southbank season Second Coming: The rebirth of UK TV drama. He is the author of the BFI TV Classics monograph Cracker (Palgrave/BFI, 2009), and sits on the TV Classics editorial board. He has also contributed to Sight & Sound magazine and the International Encyclopedia of Television. He is currently researching a book on contemporary British TV writers.
Helen Edmunds - Collections
Management Project Manager
Helen's first job at the BFI was paper keeper for Special Collections in 1991, before she moved on to work with the film and television collections. She coordinated preservation and curatorial work, including several major projects: the five-year, HLF-funded 'An Archive for the 21st Century', a David Lean restoration programme, collections stabilisation activity and the digitisation and access project BFI InView. She is currently project manager of the Screen Heritage UK sub-programme Collections Management for Securing the National Collection, with a new film store build and collection management system to be implemented in 2011.
Charles Fairall - Senior
Preservation Manager
Charles studied electrical & electronic engineering and trained as a videotape technician at the BBC's Lime Grove studios before he joined the BFI in 1986. Working closely with the curatorial team, Charles helped establish the BFI's television archiving function, and has contributed to technical aspects of many preservation, restoration and access projects. He currently manages preservation engineering to sustain the full range of historical and obsolete technologies encountered within the archive.
Jan Faull - Archive Production
Curator
Jan has previously worked as record keeper in the Archive's former Acquisitions Department - her first BFI job, in 1973 - and subsequently in the production library, before she became archival footage sales manager. As archive producer / development manager she was responsible for the development of the successful television co-productions The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon, The Lost World of Friese-Greene and The Lost World of Tibet (all BBC), Disappearing Britain (Five), Home Front Britain (Discovery) and The Queen In 3D (Channel 4). She curated the Mediatheque touring programme The Search for Shangri-La. Recent projects include a Secrets of Nature DVD and an interactive online project, London Recut. Her main interests include early colour processes, amateur film, natural history, exploration and anthropology film.
William Fowler - Curator
(Artists' Moving Image)
Will is a trained film archivist and Curator of Artists' Moving Image at the BFI National Archive. In 2009 he curated the BFI Southbank season An Intimate Cinema: the films of Stephen Dwoskin and the touring programme, DVD and restoration series Gazwrx: the films of Jeff Keen. He has also produced DVDs of Primitive London, Central Bazaar and The Gold Diggers and co-programmes the monthly BFI cult cinema strand The Flipside. He writes for Sight Sound, Vertigo and BFI Screenonline and wrote the archival information website Keep Moving Images for LUX in 2005. His specialist interests include underground film and the use and portrayal of landscape in British artists' moving image.
Sonia Genaitay - Curator (Fiction)
Sonia graduated from the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation in Rochester, NY and has been at the BFI since 2002, first as a moving image archivist and later as a curator of fiction films. Her interests are in film restoration, early colour processes and children films. She has written about the restoration of David Lean's 3-strip Technicolor film This Happy Breed (1944) for Sight & Sound and recently contributed to a special issue on cinema in colour for the Journal of British Cinema and Television.
Fiona Grimes - Curatorial
Co-ordinator
Fiona joined the BFI in 2007 as a Business Support Officer, providing and managing access to the Archive's collection. In 2010 she moved into her current role, co-ordinating film, video and digital preservation and restoration for a variety of projects including multi-title programmes such as Shadows of Progress and the Silent Hitchcock restorations. Her work involves the co-ordination of print research and the examination of existing materials, as well as keeping a close eye on budgets and project schedules and liaising with all departments to ensure delivery.
Gosta Johansson - Curator
(Television)
Gosta started out in moving image archives as a cataloguer for Swedish Television (SVT) in 1993 but left for England in 1995. In 1996 he became the Administrator for FIAT (International Federation of Television Archives) and has also worked the BP Video Library. After brief stints in broadcast and commercial video libraries he joined the BFI's TV Acquisitions department in 2001. Acquisition is still a major part of his responsibility, interspersed with occasional written contributions to the BFI Mediatheques and Screenonline, often sport related.
Ruth Kelly - Head of
Collections & Information
After graduating as a marine engineer, Ruth worked in engineering research and archaeology before moving into museums in 1986. She joined the BFI as Registrar in 2000. In 2003 she led a strategic review of the Archive, which led to a fundamental change from technically-led preservation by duplication to investment in quality storage environments, as well as founding the current curatorial team. Ruth played a key role in creating the National Strategy for Screen Heritage, attracting significant funding from government; completed analysis and early feasibility work for the planned new film store and led a review of policy for collecting, documentation and conservation and access, before taking up post as Head of the Archive and Library in 2010.
Lisa Kerrigan - Curator
(Television)
Lisa joined the BFI as a television curator in 2008, having previously worked for the British Universities Film and Video Council and at the BBC, where she catalogued Radio 4 news and current affairs. She currently selects television programmes for preservation in the BFI National Archive and assists with academic research into the Archive's television holdings as well as writing for the BFI Mediatheque and BFI InView. Her specialist interests include current affairs, lifestyle programming and social experiment television.
Kathleen Luckey -
Curator (Television)
Kathleen joined the BFI in 1990, starting in the Education Department before joining the Archive's television team in 1996 with responsibility for the acquisition of regional ITV programmes and recordings from the Parliamentary Recording Unit. She is interested in children's television and has co-programmed BFI Southbank seasons on children's television and science fiction/adventure television. She has contributed to the International Encylopedia of Television and to the BFI's Mediatheques and Screenonline.
Simon McCallum - Curator
(Mediatheque)
Simon joined the BFI in 2005, working closely on the launch and programming of the first Mediatheque at BFI Southbank. As Mediatheque Curator since 2008, he has overseen the launch of four further Mediatheques around the UK and a series of national touring programmes including The Big Smoke: Films from a Lost London and Brit Chic: Fashion on Film. Simon is a graduate of the University of East Anglia's MA in Film Archiving, during which he was the first archive intern at Francis Ford Coppola's production company American Zoetrope in San Francisco and wrote a history of the film studio at Welwyn Garden City. He recently undertook a secondment to the Screen Heritage UK programme, working with the BFI and Regional Film Archives on the 20-part BBC2 series Melvyn Bragg’s Reel History of Britain, to be broadcast in September 2011.
Katy McGahan - Curator
(Non-Fiction)
Katy has been with the BFI since 2001, working first as a cataloguer and then as a curator. Her main specialism is in the history of official films, and in particular the work of the COI from 1946 to the present. Other interests include films used as evidence in Courts of Trial, and the history of sex education and other health issues on film: she produced the BFI DVD release The Joy of Sex Education (2008). Katy has contributed chapters on the filmmakers Sarah Erulkar and Michael Orrom to Shadows of Progress: Documentary Films of Post-War Britain (2010).
Nathalie Morris -
Curator (Special Collections)
Nathalie joined the BFI in 2008. She worked at the East Anglian Film Archive before leaving in 2005 to write a PhD on Stoll Picture Productions, a major British studio of the 1920s. Nathalie's research interests include British cinema of the interwar period and women working in the British film industry. She has published book chapters and journal articles on various aspects of these, and has also written numerous articles for BFI Screenonline. Nathalie co-organises the biennial Women and Silent Britain events at BFI Southbank and is on the steering group of the AHRC-funded Women's Film History Network.
John Oliver - Curator
(Fiction)
John joined the BFI in 1996 and has worked in the Archive, initially as a cataloguer, ever since. Areas of interest include British cinema from the 1930s to the 1960s (with particular interests in the 1930s, wartime cinema and comedy); the multi-lingual mode of production in 1930s international cinema; the development of widescreen systems in the 1950s; Italian cinema; and the science fiction, Western and musical genres. He has worked on science fiction festivals in Trieste and Genoa, and published work includes an essay on the Aldwych farces for the book The Cinema of Britain and Ireland (2005) and numerous contributions to the reference works The Encyclopedia of British Film (2003- ) and Dizionario dei registi (2005).
Vic Pratt - Curator (Fiction)
Vic researches and develops the BFI's fiction collection. He has curated successful seasons of British B Pictures and Quota Quickies at BFI Southbank. With Will Fowler, he established and continues to programme the popular monthly cult film slot, The Flipside, and is closely involved in the BFI Flipside DVD offshoot. He writes about film history, has provided numerous articles for the BFI's Screenonline educational resource, and has produced and contributed essays to various BFI DVD releases. In 2009 he led a project to restore two early Peter Sellers films. He now leads an ongoing BFI initiative to re-release the output of Adelphi Films, a small British family-run production company, on Blu-ray and DVD.
Pam Rostron - Curator
(Television)
Pam joined the BFI in 1988 as a member of the TV section of the Archive. One of her first big projects was working on that year's One Day in the Life of Television. She has curated many one-off TV events at BFI Southbank, including Basil Brush, Bud Flanagan and French singers on TV. She is the author of Jack Hylton Presents (1995) and curated a related season at BFI Southbank. She has lectured on the history of variety on TV, was project champion for the BFI TV100 poll, has written for the BFI Mediatheque and Screenonline and also contributed to the International Encyclopedia of Television.
Patrick Russell - Senior
Curator (Non-Fiction)
Patrick has been at the BFI, where he heads the Non-Fiction curatorial team, since 2000. He has headed or contributed to several of the BFI's major archival projects of recent years. His interest is in all aspects of documentary and factual filmmaking, with an expert specialism in the history of sponsored and industrial films in Britain. He is the author of 100 British Documentaries (2007) in the BFI's Screen Guides series, and contributing co-editor of The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon (2004) and Shadows of Progress: Documentary Films of Post-War Britain (2010).
Jez Stewart - Curator (Non-Fiction)
Jez joined the BFI in 2001 as an acquisitions officer. As a curator, he has developed specialist expertise in the management and interpretation of the Archive's extensive collections of screen advertising; he also has a related interest in the history and development of British animation. Additionally, Jez has researched and programmed a series of screenings on the history of film and video activism in Britain. His currently focus is on building up the Archive's coverage of contemporary non-broadcast documentary.
Katrina Stokes - Donor
Access Officer
Katrina started at City Screen where, as house manager of the Oxford Picturehouse, she launched the city's first shorts film festival and hosted Q&As with figures such as William Friedkin and Sir Ian McKellen. After a spell at Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum, she joined the BFI's Donor Access team in 2001. She now runs the unit, liaising with donors and rights holders who want to access archive materials for re-release and restoration. Her current projects include working with the International Olympic Committee to restore The Glory of Sport, the Technichrome film of the 1948 London Olympic Games.
Becky Vick - Curator
(Non-Fiction)
Becky joined the BFI in 2002 as the project coordinator for the Mitchell and Kenyon project: coordinating technical work on this major collection and assisting with its curation, academic engagement and exhibition. As a curator, she has worked across the collection, with a particular interest in technical and collections management issues. Becky was a member of the core selection team for the BFI's InView project. Her essay on the documentary filmmaker Eric Marquis will be published in Shadows of Progress: Documentary Films of Post-War Britain (2010).
Kieron Webb - Technical
Projects Officer
Kieron co-ordinates the technical work on the Archive's restorations, including the identification of the best source materials and designing the approach of restoration work with all the other teams at the Archive's Conservation Centre. He has worked on the restorations of the first films of Charlie Chaplin and David Lean and led the restoration of Joseph Losey's Accident (1967). He is currently working on the digital restoration of The Great White Silence (1924), the film record of Scott's Antarctic expedition.
Sue Woods - Curator (Non-Fiction)
Sue has worked at the BFI for over 25 years. She has been an acquisitions officer and assistant keeper of the non-fiction collection. As well as having wide knowledge of the Archive's non-fiction holdings and extensive programming experience, Sue's specialist responsibility as curator is for overseeing, managing and expanding the Public Records collection of government films, in collaboration with colleagues at The National Archives. Drawing on this expertise, she was a member of the core selection team for the BFI's InView project.
