Catherine McGahan - Curator, British Film Institute, Curatorial Unit
About the BFI National Archive
The BFI National Archive is one of the world's most significant collections of film and television. The majority of the collection is British but we also store films from around the world, particularly those featuring the work of key British actors and directors. The archive contains more than 50,000 fiction films, over 100,000 non-fiction titles - including newsreels, home-movies, scientific films and documentaries - and around 625,000 television programmes.
What does your job involve?
The BFI National Archive is split into three different operational areas: Fiction Films, TV and Non-Fiction. I am one of a team of six curators working in the Non-Fiction Unit at the BFI National Archives. As a curator here I am responsible for acquiring, looking after and promoting the Non-Fiction collection.
On the acquisitions side I respond to offers to donate films to the collection. This means I contact the donors and find out what they believe the films show. I then check the archive to see whether we have similar films and help decide whether the donation would add to the collection and adhere to our collections policy. Sometimes it is obvious the donation will, but in the case of home movies we have to be careful we are not duplicating existing material.
Before we can accept the donation we must draw up a donation agreement which is a legal document that outlines how the film can be used. This is not always easy as you don't only have to consider the copyright of the current owner or filmmaker, but in the case of a home movie the rights of the people shown in the film.
Once this has been sorted out we start accessioning the film. This can be very labour intensive as it means we have to bring in the films, we have to create a record of them, we have to check the quality of the film and determine whether they need to be restored, we have to then view the films and produce transcripts, shot lists and synopses as well as adding appropriate metatags to make sure the record is readily accessible to the public. Once again this is not always easy as we may have to do quite a lot of research to find out what the film shows and who is in it. You probably remember the Mitchell and Kenyon series of films which were featured in a BBC TV series. These were discovered during the demolition of a shop in Northgate, Blackburn and it took three years of research to catalogue, identify and contextualise the films.
Finally, once we have created a useful record we have to store the film properly. When it comes to restoration and copying, I do not carry out any of the technical work, but I do need to draw the technical department's attention to any potential problems, such as the type and condition of the film stock, that may need to be looked at.
All the curators have particular areas of expertise and we are responsible for promoting awareness of those areas. My knowledge is fairly narrow compared with the breadth of the collection. I specialise in government films, essentially these films sponsored by government departments and vary from training films to public information films such as the popular ‘Charley Says...' films from the 1970s made by the Central Office of Information.National Archives Website - Government Funded Films
Some of these films are considered to be public records just like written documents and so in this respect we are the Moving Image Storage agent for the National Archives. The type of public information films we hold include everything from Food Flashes from the Second World War, films reminding the public of the benefits of government and how Taxation paid for war debts, drama documentaries from the 1950s used to recruit nurses, films introducing decimal currency, ‘Don't Drink And Drive' films, the Green Cross Code and the ‘Charley Says...' series of health and safety animations for children. I also have worked on projects centred on the history of Sex Education films, how films are used as evidence, and the post-war documentary movement from 1950 to 1980.
Most of the promotion work targets the general public and the academic sector. At the moment I am working on a project which aims to contextualise government films in relation to Acts and the legislation being introduced by governments at the time.
For more information on Catherine's role, you can download the PDF below for the full interview:
Catherine McGahan Archive Case Study 2009
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