To mark Preston Guild 2012, the first Guild of the 21st century, the North West Film Archive at Manchester Metropolitan University is proud to present a 20th century story of Preston and its Guild, as told through unique archive film. Narrated by Roy Barraclough MBE, and produced in collaboration with the Harris Museum & Art Gallery, the DVD is official Guild merchandise.

'Preston and Its Guild' will have its premiere at the Charter Theatre, Preston, on Tuesday 13th March at 7.30pm - more information here.

Watch the trailer for this all-new DVD here!

Three fascinating Film Show Discussions took place at the WFA Media & Cultural Centre in Hulme on consecutive Saturday evenings in December 2011. Three compilations were premiered that feature records of campaigns, protests and marches in Manchester, filmed by the WFA, during the politically-charged decade of the 1980s. For over 33 years in Manchester, WFA has filmed many key events which now comprise a film archive of over 1,000 analogue video tapes. With support from the NWFA, Screen Heritage UK and the Heritage Lottery Fund, WFA has catalogued and digitised over 250 tapes with the intention of making them accessible and preserving them for future generations to learn from. More details of the events can be found here.

After a lot of hard work all around the UK (and especially here in the North West, of course!) there are some new and exciting opportunities being launched which will help everyone to find and to see archive films, many of which are available for the first time. Thanks to an award of £247,000 from SHUK’s Revitalising the Regions strand, the North West Film Archive has digitised a further 80 hours of film and added 400 new titles to the online catalogue – making even more material accessible for education and enjoyment, some of it in amazing HiDef quality. In a collaboration with the WFA Media & Cultural Centre in Hulme, we have also been able to facilitate the preservation and digitisation of diverse cultural films of the 1980s/90s. Free advice surgeries took place in October and November at the WFA including an illustrated talk and screening by the NWFA on November 3rd.
We’ve provided some real gems to the Reel History of Britain, which ran on BBC Two during September 2011 - presented by Melvyn Bragg, this 20-part series travelled the length and breadth of Britain to reveal some of the fascinating stories and individuals behind key archive films from the UK’s collections. NWFA had footage in 10 episodes - including this 1915 film of the Accrington Pals from the WWW1 programme. BBC Learning ran 'Hands on History' events around the region linked to the programme for which we provided lots of films - venues included BBC Radio Lancashire, Queen Street Mill Textile Museum, Crosby Plaza and libraries in South Cumbria.
And there's more! You can now search our catalogue alongside everyone else’s through the combined facility of Search Your Film Archives – which brings together information about film from the North West Film Archive, BFI National Archive, English regional film archives and partners across the UK and is funded by the DCMS. The BFI has also built a new storage facility - securing their collection of the nation’s film heritage for the future.
Delivered by the Screen Heritage UK project: a partnership between the BFI, Screen Yorkshire and English regional film archives, to safeguard the future of the UK’s national and regional film heritage, funded by the DCMS.

We are delighted to be supporting the highly-original work of Dave Griffiths in Babel Fiche, the first in a series of new web-based projects commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and launched on 18 March 2011.
Dave summarises the aims of the project :
"For this collaborative film, I invite members of the public during 2011 to gather and select a set of amateur video clips that describe contemporary, everyday life around the Earth. These movie fragments will be transformed into a set of colour microfiche films – a photographic medium capable of lasting 500 years and simply requiring light and a lens to expand its contents. This analogue throwback might even outlast our current reliance on fragile digital storage.”
You can read more about this work on Dave's blog.

On Tuesday 12th April, BBC's The One Show featured the results of MMU's research into mould on film. Mark Bodner, Jo Verran, and Gavin Bingley have been researching the reasons for and effects of mould growth on archive film, and the story went global last year when the results were presented at a specialist international conference. The story was filmed in the labs and at the Archive with The One Show's science specialist, who appeared on the sofa to explain further.

MMU Film and Media welcomed New York Film Archivist Dennis Nyback and North West Film Archive Director Marion Hewitt to screen and discuss a programme of transatlantic animation from the archives.
Dennis Nyback is an independent film archivist who curates feature length programs from his personal collection of rare short films and presents them around the world. For this event, he presented examples of 'Subversive Animation'.
Dennis was joined by Marion Hewitt from North West Film Archive who screened a selection of UK animation from the NWFA collection based at MMU in Manchester.

A screening of this award-winning film, produced and directed by popular culture specialist and broadcaster Karen Gabay, that mixes historic BBC footage held in the North West Film Archive with contemporary interviews.
This free event was held at the Zion Arts Centre in Hulme as part of its centenary celebrations.
You can watch a short clip of the film here.

Cinema met live music at this hybrid event mixing found footage with electric results. Experimental filmmakers Jenna Collins and Sam Meech presented two new kaleidoscopic short films, made during their Gleaners residencies in the North West Film Archive at Manchester Metropolitan University, with live soundtracks from cutting edge North West musicians. The screening also included Louise K Wilson's 'Euphony' and Jordan Baseman's 'Inside Man' - both artists made their films using NWFA collections.
Diving into the amateur fiction footage within the archive, Jenna Collins' new film, in equal parts hypnotic and disruptive, was accompanied by a performance by multi-instrumentalist Seaming To, regular collaborator with Graham Massey and Homelife (Ninja Tune).
Using dozens of archive clips Sam Meech, built up a classic narrative with a dream-inflected twist.  This epic journey was narrated live by poet Nathan Jones of the Mercy collective with a score by Carl Brown of Wave Machines (Neapolitan).
http://gleanersarchive.wordpress.com/events/
Commissioned by AND Festival, Gleaners is a filmmaker-in-residence scheme at the North West Film Archive at Manchester Metropolitan University, curated by Kate Taylor.  This project has been enabled by Vision and Media and the UK Film Council's Digital Film Archive Fund supported by the National Lottery.

An exhibition at Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry, curated by MIRIAD's Steven Gartside, used archive footage held at the NWFA to create a 'filmic city' within the 1830 Warehouse building. Multiple screens displayed films of urban life in Manchester and other cities over the past century, in an exhibition designed to highlight the similarities of these environments. 'Accumulation: Experiencing The City' ran from 22nd October 2010 to 2nd January 2011.

'A Day in the Life of Bolton', a 1927 nitrate film about the town, was given its first public screening in decades as part of the NWFA film show in Bolton on November 23rd. The event attracted a lot of interest with articles in The Bolton News and on the MMU website. You can find out more about forthcoming NWFA public screenings here.