British Silent Film Festival Symposium 2026

A one day event featuring 15 papers presenting the latest research on the history of cinema culture in Britain and its Empire before 1930.
This event functions as a prelude to the KENNINGTON BIOSCOPE SILENT WEEKENDER on Saturday and Sunday (book separately)

Draft timetable (subject to change)

9.00 – 9.30 WELCOME

9.30 – 11.00 SESSION 1

1. Yeadle, Peter – Recruitographs: a history of the war propaganda film

2. Cook, Malcolm – How To Stop Motor Cars: Revisiting the Modernity of Early British Trick Films

3. Slugan, Mario – Daniels’ Early Itinerant Showmanship in the Caribbean

4. Shail, Robert & Shah, Irfan – ‘Cradle of Light: Louis Le Prince and the Technological Aesthetics of Early Cinema’

11.00 – 11 .30 TEA BREAK

11.30 – 1.00 SESSION 2

5. Shail, Andrew – On finishing a job: some more evolutionary history of the UK’s first cinemas.

6. Bottomore Stephen – Walter Buckstone (1886-1963), pioneering cameraman

7. Brown, Geoff – The Alien Menace and the Hidden Hand: Xenophobia, Anti-semitism and British Cinema

8. Diment, Cole – The Rural/Modern Dichotomy in the South West Phantom Ride

1.00 – 2.00 LUNCH BREAK

2.00 – 3.00 SPECIAL PRESENTATION [+ comfort break 2.50-3.00]

9. Toby Haggith introduces Peace on the Western Front (1930) with accompaniment by Stephen Horne

3.00 – 4.00 SESSION 3

10. Johnson, Veronica – The Irish Limelight

11. Condon, Denis – Bombing Ypres in Dublin: Film, Anti-Imperialism and the Irish Free State in 1925

4.00 – 4.30 TEA BREAK

4.30 – 6.00 SESSION 4

12. Dawn, Ayan – Chaplin in 1920s India: Distribution, Exhibition and Politics of Censorship

13. Allison, Deborah – ‘More than a match for many men': Framing Femininity in the Boys’ Cinema Weekly

14. Haven, Lisa Stein – Marriage Farce as Transitional Tool: Monty Banks’ BIP debut films, 1928-1930

15. Wyver, John – British television and the end times of silent cinema, 1928-1930

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Host or Publisher Lawrence Napper