Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Not A Complete Idiot

Yesterday I had my upgrade meeting at the Uni. For those who don't know, the process of doing a PhD is an arcane one. When you register, you register as an MPhil student. After a certain period of time, you can try and upgrade to full-on PhD student. You do not, however, get the MPhil qualification.

Clear? No? Well, neither is anyone else.

The actual upgrade consists of a mini-viva, being questioned on my research by a panel of three experts. So yeah, Intimidating. I appear to have done all right, though, becuase they upgraded me with no real problems. Which is nice.

I also met up with Nick Gladden of the North West Film Archive, who was there to evaluate the film I found inthe BFU's basement room. Turns out it was some of the missing stuiff he was looking for.

All in all, a busy day.

Monday, November 14, 2005

Flicker

I don't think I mentioned it here, but I was asked a while back to locate some of the Basement Film Unit's films by the North-West film Archive and the Liverpool University Library. Most of the BFU film holdings went into the library archive a few years ago, but four reels, last seen in 1982, remain unaccounted for.

Tody I finally got round to doing it. In the Basement which gicves the BFU its name, I came across three reels. Two appear to be sound, and one colour film. I have no way of knowing what they are.

Also in the Basement is a locked door. It appears to lead into what used to be the projection room. I looked through the projection window by the light of my mobile-phone-torch, but couldn't see much. Then I had to stop doing that, because it was so creepy.

Damn horror films. Still, I left the basement without a zombie eating my face.