Chuck Norris hasn't died. He's just gone undercover in the afterlife so he can kick Death's ass.

BAFTSS Conference 2026 Welcome to the Homepage of the 2026 edition of the annual conference of the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies. This year's conference takes place at the Highcliff Marriott...

We are pleased to announce that the conference website, including the schedule is now live: www.baftss.org/conference-2...

Places are limited - register early to avoid disappointment.
Deadline: 8th March 2026.

Queries can be directed to baftss2026@gmail.com

Launch for Film Studios book in Bristol 20 Feb 2026!

My author copy of our STUDIOTEC project book arrived today. I'm pleased as punch to have been able to work alongside @sarahstreet.bsky.social, @eleanorhalsall.bsky.social, and many other brainy people in its creation.

There was one in Cambridge that was so pointlessly aggro that it got nicknamed Asbo

Two girls outside the cinema in Newlyn, later identified as Helen Francis, wearing a brightly-coloured Cryséde silk scarf, and her friend Winifred, applying scarlet lipstick.

Girls Outside the Gaiety Cinema, Newlyn
1925
Harold Harvey (1874–1941)
Private Collection

Sprung, about some prisoners given early release because of the pandemic, is good fun

Went through Bonnie Doon recently. Sang the song

Ah, Bonnie Doon!

There's a Butthole Lane in Shepshed

Our STUDIOTEC book on European film studios from 1930-60, a BFI imprint, is getting closer to publication. It's now listed on Bloomsbury's website:

www.bloomsbury.com/uk/search/?q...

Nerdy-cool is the best kind of cool

Reader, she did not resist.

Beyond Hollywood: inside Europe’s golden age film studios Discover how European film studios evolved from 1930-1960 and why their legacy matters in today’s film industry.,,,European Commission

STUDIOTEC’s results in brief article just published in 6 languages!

cordis.europa.eu/article/id/4...

Information for the Picnic @ 50 symposium, organised by the Sheffield Centre for Research in Film, which takes place on June 20th as a hybrid event. The poster mostly features text, as well as the title screen from Peter Weir's film Picnic At Hanging Rock, which will be the focus on the symposium.

Keep forgetting to post about it (everything's frantic, prepping for this + working to get the
@londonaustfilm.bsky.social
festival line-up sorted), but I'm doing my first keynote tomorrow, as part of the PICNIC @ 50 symposium at @sheffielduni.bsky.social, organised by Jonathan Rayner and SCRIF.

Look in the odd sock box you put together last year.

Requiem for a Film Studio: The Death and Afterlife of Denham London Film Productions’ Denham Studios were the largest and most advanced in Britain when they opened in 1936. Despite producing some of the best-known British-made films of the next 15 years, the...

Sound the new article klaxon again! My piece on the death and afterlife of Denham film studios is now available for FREE in Industrial Archaeology Review.

Features a wonderful picture of a pig in a mail coach and my usual erudite musings.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Death in Filmland: British Film Studios and 1930s Detective Fiction | Journal of British Cinema and Television British film studios enjoyed unusually high prominence in the 1930s, both as places where popular culture was produced and as elements of popular culture in their own right. It is unsurprising, then, ...

My article on Golden Age detective novels set in British film studios has just been published in the Journal of British Cinema and Television.

Come for the gruesome murders, stay for the cover art and searing analysis. [Login needed, sadly.]

www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/...

Strong sock game, there

Film Studios in Britain, France, Germany and Italy

If you'd like to know more about European film studios between 1930-1960, the STUDIOTEC book will be available from Bloomsbury early next year.

www.bloomsbury.com/uk/film-stud...

Film Studios in Britain, France, Germany and Italy

STUDIOTEC project book Film Studios now in production with Bloomsbury!

www.bloomsbury.com/uk/film-stud...

On VE night, British cinemas celebrated by switching on their external lights for the first time since the introduction of the blackout. Many children witnessed the 'strange miracle' of neon for the first time and crowds 'just stared up at the lights, their happy faces illuminated in the glare'.

There were a few Pokemon films that might run it close...

Congratulations!

@yaelrice.bsky.social and I co-authored this piece precisely to combat misguided work like this so people don't have to constantly rehearse the arguments about why it's specious. We laid it all out here for you!

hyperallergic.com/604897/how-s...

A Girl's Folly (1917) offers a behind-the-scenes look at a 1910s movie studio

He is very much our Rude Dog. (One for the kids, there)

This Studio is Dangerous! Hazards of Working in British Film Studios in the 1930s and 1940s This article examines the high number of fires in British film studios which occurred in the 1930s and 1940s. The reasons for studios’ vulnerability to fires, and other workplace accidents, are exa...

My latest article arising from the STUDIOTEC project on the dangers of working in film studios. It's Open Access so read for free!
doi.org/10.1080/0143...