North West Film Archive

The professionally recognised public home for the moving image heritage of the North West of England.

Programme of NWFA public screenings for 2010. 

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Moving Memories at the Monastery

Three short films that combine archive footage held at the NWFA with contemporary interviews were screened on Sunday August 1st in the wonderful surroundings of The Monastery in Gorton. Produced and directed by Karen Gabay, the films tell stories of Manchester’s recent past.

Tales from Moss Side and Hulme
Combining BBC archive footage and new interviews, this award-winning film recounts stories of local Caribbean, Sikh and Irish communities from the 1960s to the 1980s. (30 minutes)

Belle Vue: The Gardens That John Built
Recalling the heyday of Manchester’s Belle Vue – the Pleasure Gardens, the zoo, the fair and the circus – featuring interviews with people who spent happy times there. (14 minutes)

Ice Cream: Manchester’s Little Italy
The delicious story of the makers and vendors of ice-cream, told by the Italian families and their customers. (12 minutes)

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Better than Chalk and Talk

Celebrating the films of Sam Hanna

A screening of local films from the North West Film Archive collections featuring the work of Burnley filmmaker Sam Hanna, and with accompaniment from the internationally-renowned silent film musician Stephen Horne, took place at Burnley Mechanics on Wednesday May 26th at 7.45pm.

A display illustrating the life and work of Sam Hanna is now touring Lancashire with screenings and workshops in some venues.

Please click here for more details.

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'Gleaners'

The NWFA has teamed up with the AND Festival (Abandon Normal Devices) to present a new project , Gleaners.  The Festival has offered two filmmakers, Jenna Collins and Sam Meech, an opportunity to spend a month each within the Archive, exploring the collection and creating a new work.  Each filmmaker will be matched with a band/musician who will create the film's soundtrack. This project has been enabled by Vision+Media and the UK Film Council's Digital Film Archive Fund supported by the National Lottery.

Please click here to read the Gleaners blog.  The resulting work will be part of the AND Festival events across the north west from October 2010, starting with a live performance in Manchester.

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Funding Boosts NWFA Projects in Moss Side/Hulme and Burnley

Moving Memories - Tales from Moss Side and Hulme, the NWFA project that was chosen as one of the MMU's Public Engagement Fellowships in 2008, premiered at Afewe in Hulme on October 23rd 2009.

The new film, directed by Karen Gabay, is the result of taking BBC regional films - about the experiences of the first West Indian and Sikh families to come to Manchester in the 1960s to 1980s – back to the neighbourhoods where they were filmed, and recording interviews with people from different communities whose memories were sparked by the stories. The film will be screened in schools and colleges, libraries, community groups and to the general public to share the stories as widely as possible.

Watch this space for details of forthcoming screenings.

The project featured in an edition of BBC 1's Inside Out (North West) on Monday 25th January. BBC Manchester has a supporting story on their website with extracts from the film available to view online. MMU News also picked up on this story with background information on the project and more on the Public Engagement Fellowship Scheme.

More to come! A successful funding application for £60,000 to the MLA’s Learning Revolutions Festival means that the PEF has secured the support to develop the idea with two more films. 

Sam Joins the Revolution

A second strand of this ‘Reel Revolutions’ project is happening in the Burnley area, building on the Archive’s ‘Sam Hanna Online’ project.  Partnering with Lancashire’s heritage sector and the WFA in Hulme, adult learners will receive training to make new films in response to this fascinating film collection, creating contemporary reflections of life and work in Pennine Lancashire today.

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BBC North West Regional News and Documentary Film 1966-1986: Preservation and Research Access - the project is now complete! Try the BBC Collection online catalogues containing 16,000 items and sample clips. See an article on the project on the Critical Studies in Television website, featuring the showreel.

'LIVERPOOL ON FILM 1897 - 1967' DVD available from 22 August 2007 celebrating Liverpool's 800th birthday - only £9.99. See list of stockists

 The NWFA is part of Library Special Collections at Manchester Metropolitan University.

'25Clips' - click here for a glimpse of the Collection

Welcome About the Archive Collections Using the Collections Public Screenings Merchandise Contacts and Staff Related Sources BBC project Merseyside Survey Sam Hanna Collection Past News	Search the Online Catalogue You can search the catalogue of over 5,230 titles from the North West Film Archive's moving image collection.   Can I Hear That In Colour? World first research - read about the NWFA's ground-breaking work with visually and hearing impaired people. PLUS Action research towards the design and delivery of inclusive access to the collection of the North West Film Archive - led by people with a visual or hearing impairment