We were delighted to host a public lecture at the museum on Tuesday 28 March at 6.15. Two talks looked at the history of cinemagoing through the collections of The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum. The main speaker was Dr Lisa Stead, now a Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of East Anglia. Lisa is the author of the recent book Off to the Pictures: Cinema-going, Women's Writing and Movie Culture in Interwar Britain published by Edinburgh University Press. In researching the book Lisa, who formerly worked here at Exeter, looked through hundreds of fan magazines, postcards, novels and other sources in our collection to understand the importance of cinema-going to women in Britain between the wars. There was also a talk from Chris Grosvenor, a doctoral student at Exeter and volunteer at the museum who will be discussing his research on military audiences for films in World War One, again using sources and artefacts from the museum.
It was a fascinating event of interest and a large crowd packed into Seminar Room A/B to hear how our collections had informed Lisa and Chris's research.
