Archives

Seeing into the Near Future of Screen Pasts –The CATHI Archives Open Space

Nicola Wilkinson

The Cinema and Television History Institute (CATHI) is a centre of excellence in archival screen heritage. It specialises in evidence-based methods and oral history approaches to inform ground-breaking interdisciplinary research and RCUK-funded international collaborations.

The Institute boasts not only world-leading researchers, but a host of unique and valuable film and media-related archives that provide a veritable treasure trove of fascinating research materials to support innovative undergraduate teaching, engaging and educational public outreach events, and distinctive interdisciplinary postgraduate training.

Working alongside DMU’s Special Collections and the Centre for Adaptations, CATHI is home to unique collections overseen by Director of Archives Steve Chibnall, including the Hammer Script Archive, the Cinema Museum’s Indian Cinemas Archive, the Sir Norman Wisdom Collection, the Andrew Davies Archive, the Anita Anand Archive, the Palace Pictures & Scala Productions Archive, the Leicester Film Society and Phoenix Arts Centre Archives, and the Peter Whitehead Archive.

CATHI’s aim has always been to bring its research to new audiences (within and beyond the academic community), and impactful public engagement remains high on our agenda. Pre-COVID-19, the last twelve months’ calendar has included: Laraine Porter’s BFI British Silent Film Festival (September 2019); Claire Monk’s post-show interview with Hanif Kureishi at the stage version of My Beautiful Laundrette, The Curve, Leicester (1st October): Kieran Foster’s Vampirella live script reading, at the Regent Street Cinema, London (17th October); Steve Chibnall and Alissa Clarke’s Peter Whitehead Network film screenings at the ICA, London (7th and 9th November); Monia Acciari’s Kinaara Film Festival, Hyderabad, India (8th-10th November); Ulrike Kubatta’s DocHub@DMU screening and Q&A of The Hard Stop, Phoenix Cinema, Leicester (11th November); Claire Monk’s Introduction to a screening of Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You, Phoenix Cinema (13th November); Laraine Porter at the Phoenix Cinema’s 10th anniversary (19th November) and chairing a panel discussion following a screening of Half the Picture, Phoenix Cinema (26th November); DMU’s Cultural Exchanges Festival (24th-28th February 2020) – Leicester Film Society (Sue Porter), Joseph Bennett (Ulrike Kubatta), Vampirella (Kieran Foster); Stuart Hanson, Silver Screens and the Town: Critical Exchanges, Phoenix Cinema (11th March).

Despite COVID-19, 2020 has seen some exciting new developments and further expansion of CATHI’s holdings this year. During lockdown, Matt Jones, Ulrike Kubatta and Ellen Wright ran COVIDEODROME – a weekly Zoom discussion group bringing together undergraduates, post-grads and academics to debate a key film. Meanwhile,
Justin Smith and Deborah Cartmell (Director of the Centre for Adaptations) hosted an online ‘In Conversation’ with Honorary Professor and celebrated screenwriter Andrew Davies. As the new academic year approaches, our second
Archives Open Day (a half-day MSTeams interactive forum) – in partnership with the University of Leicester and supported by Midlands 4 Cities as an AHRC Dialogue Day – takes place on 11th November, and is open to anyone with an interest in archive-based screen media research.


Participants will discover more about the new projects and additions to our collections in this CATHI’s 10th anniversary year. The custodian of the Cinema Museum’s Indian Cinemas Archive, Monia Acciari, will be discussing scrapbooking Seeing into the Near Future of Screen Pasts – The CATHI Archives Open Space as a research tool and revealing more about CATHI’s new ‘Voices of Indian Cinema’ project, based on a new collection of landmark interviews loaned to DMU by film producer Mahmood Jamal. Kieran Foster builds on his post- doc project on Hammer’s unmade Vampirella, with fresh plans for a study of Palace Pictures’ unmade films, drawing on their back
catalogue. The Palace/Scala Archive will also provide a vital source for a new documentary about the company co-directed by Stephen Woolley and the late Nik Powell to be directed by Ben Wheatley. From DMU’s Centre for
Adaptations, Anna Blackwell and Lucy Hobbs will be joining CATHI Director Justin Smith to explore the challenges of creating a digital genetic edition of George Eliot’s Middlemarch, using materials from screen adaptor Andrew
Davies’ archive. And Smith will also be in conversation with former BBC Asian Network journalist and Assistant Head of Leicester Media School Gurvinder Aujla-Siddhu about an AHRC Midlands 4 Cities Collaborative Doctoral
Award to revisit the role of factual and news programming made by Anita Anand (then Zee- TV, now at the BBC) in the run-up to the 1997 General Election with South Asian communities in Leicester and Birmingham, in partnership with Asian Arts and Heritage hub Sampad. Building on the considerable success of last year’s oversubscribed Open Day, this year’s online archival training event will also open up a space for postgraduates and Early Career Researchers to explore the challenges (heightened by COVID-19) of researching online collections in an age of
digital plenitude, and will offer workshops on publication avenues and grant applications. CATHI’s track record of funded research offers specialist expertise and informed guidance in this area, as this list attests: Monia Acciari
(Multilingual Euro-Bollywood: an ‘Imaginative language’ workshop); Vicky Ball (Women’s Work and Working Women: A Longitudinal Study of Women Working in the British Film and Television Industries (1933- 1989) and
Play for Today at 50); Pier Ercole (European Cinema Audiences: Entangled Histories and Shared Memories and Mapping European Cinema: A comparative project on cinema going experiences in the 1950s); Stuart Hanson
(The silver screen and the town: Memories of cinema-going, community and the revival of the local cinema); Matthew Jones (Cinema, memory and the community); Laraine Porter (British Silent Cinema and the Transition to Sound);
and James Russell (Hollywood and the baby boom: a social history). It’s not hard to see why CATHI is the go-to place for supporting the next generation of screen history researchers.


Our approach focused upon ensuring Film and Media Studies learners are equipped with a workable, transferable skillset, ready for the job market, is embedded throughout our undergraduate provision, facilitating clear pathways via MA and MRes to our world-leading postgraduate archival research, through distinctive and innovative undergraduate modules on topics such as Global Film History, Film and Material Culture and the new undergraduate module currently under development, Film in the Archives, all of which build on CATHI’s unique experience and
expertise.

CATHI’s research facilities and training enable hands-on access to our rich array of archival treasures, aided by state-of-the-art scanning and tape digitisation technologies. And progress on our large-scale cataloguing system,
powered by sector experts Metadatis, promises open-access search-and-find in our future vision of the screen past.

Grey Data Analysis

Nicola Wilkinson

Most models in the current data analysis require perfect data without missing or incomplete data. However, the real-world data are in most cases are not perfect at all. Incomplete data are common in most situations. As a model dedicated to incomplete data, grey data analysis appears as a prospective model to deal with such data. This research originated from China during the 1970’s when China recovered from the cultural revolution. At that time, China faced a huge gap in available data in nearly all areas due to the significant interruption of the cultural revolution.
The theory of grey systems developed quickly in China and made a significant contribution to China’s economic boom from a seriously frozen economy. However, it is still relatively unknown outside China although it has achieved
significant success in China.


To further promote grey data analysis in the world, we successfully applied and secured an advanced Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship in FP7 for Prof. Sifeng Liu to join us at DMU for 2 years during 2015-2016. In this
project, the international incoming research fellow, Prof. Sifeng Liu, has spent two years at De Montfort University conducting the proposed research together with Prof. Yingjie Yang. They have published over 30 research papers in academic journals and conferences.

The research is going to have a significant impact in the development of grey systems and data mining both in China and Europe. As a developing subject, there are still gaps in grey systems both in theoretical and applied research, and they have restricted its further development in Europe. The progress made in this project has showcased the feasibility of grey systems in data mining and its great potential with limited and poor data. Given the big data-oriented research in Europe, this project fills the gap for data mining with limited and poor data and will contribute greatly to those areas with limited and poor data, such as social economic analysis, healthcare, new product development, etc. It is valuable, especially for business and corporate decision-makers, public policy makers
and public system managers to obtain useful information from limited and poor information.

Prof. Liu and Prof. Yang have made a number of outreach activities to deliver visits, seminars, and training courses. For example, they have visited and delivered seminars at Napier University, South Bank University, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Fuzhou University, Xiamen University, Lanzhou University, Shihezi University, Hebei University of Engineering, etc. They have also delivered several training courses at De Montfort University and Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Furthermore,
they organized the 2015 IEEE International Conference on Grey Systems and Intelligent Services at De Montfort University. They have also initiated the establishment of the International Association of Grey Systems and
Uncertainty Analysis in 2016. The results of this project will certainly help to establish a new subject in Europe and complement the existing big data initiatives.

Prof Liu has delivered a series of training events in grey systems at De Montfort University in 2015 and 2016, each training consisting of three days of intensive lectures, seminars and discussion sessions. The scientist in charge, Prof. Yingjie Yang, has also delivered equivalent training at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2015 and 2016 on uncertainty modeling. In addition to these training events, Prof. Liu has also been involved in PhD
supervision at De Montfort University (Archie Singh), Prof. Liu has contributed to research meetings at DMU and attended training sessions organized by DMU. As an active member, Prof. Liu has enjoyed close integration at DMU and participated in our research life actively. Prof. Yang and Prof. Liu had jointly supervision several PhD students at Grey Data Analysis

DMU and the University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Archie Khuman, Lifeng Wu, and Xiaojun Guo). Prof. Liu has also brought several visiting scholars from China to De Montfort University (Lifeng Wu, Chong Li and
Mingli Hu). Prof. Yang and Prof. Liu have also initialized several research proposal applications involving both European partners and Chinese partners.

The project has turned out to be a huge success. In the 2017 MSCA competition, The fellow, Prof. Sifeng Liu, has been ranked as one of the top 10 in Europe for his work in this project.

http://www.dmu.ac.uk/research/researchfaculties-and-institutes/technology/cci/projects/grey-systems-data-mining-anddecision-support

Prof. Liu has also been cited as one of the few Chinese scholars who had a significant impact on the world in Merkel’s speech in China in 2019.

The great success of the project has also attracted attention from industry in the world. For example, Surbana Jurong Consultants Pte Ltd from Singapore invited Prof. Yang to carry out a consultant project with DMU in 2018 where grey systems are applied to their data mining and decision-making practice.

IOCT is part of a pioneering team to shape how audiences experience live performance

Nicola Wilkinson

The lnstitute of Creative Technologies is part of
a unique team of creative industry specialists
who are working together to discover the next
stage of immersive performance experiences
for audiences around the world. DMU is one
of 15 specialist organisations taking part in
the Innovate UK project, which is being led
by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC)
and also includes Epic Games, i2 Media
Research Limited, Intel, Magic Leap, Manchester
International Festival, Marshmallow Laser Feast,
Nesta, Phi Centre, Philharmonia Orchestra,
Punchdrunk, University of Portsmouth and
The Space.

The £16 million investment is a key element of
the Audience of the Future programme, part of
the government Industrial Strategy Challenge
Fund, which is delivered by UK Research
and Innovation and was announced by the
government in March 2018 in the Creative
Industries Sector Deal. The consortium will
use their knowledge and expertise in theatre
and performance, the music industry, video
production, gaming and the research sector
to shape how audiences will experience live
performance in the future.

A transdisciplinary team of researchers from the
Institute of Creative Technologies are working
across digital performance, game development,
computer visualisation and creative AI, to
explore how technologies such as augmented
reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality
(MR) can be used in both the production
and reception of live performances. This
research is defining new audience experiences,
implementing new technologies, exploring
new commercial revenues and supporting
the UK’s growth in creative content, products
and services. This significant collaboration will
uncover the potential of real-time immersive
performance connected across multiple
platforms, creating opportunities for the UK

cultural sector to change the way audiences
experience live performance. Audiences will
no longer be bound by traditional performance
locations, but by using devices such as mobile
phones, Extended Reality (XR) headsets
and streaming into the home, audiences
will experience live performance like never
before. This has become especially relevant in
supporting organisation