Analysing the Mitchell and Kenyon Collection in relation to regional and non-fiction films 1900-1911
The Mitchell and Kenyon collection has substantially challenged the traditional view of early cinema in that it has shifted the emphasis to exhibition and audience response away from film production and technique. The Collection has provided empirical evidence that the spread and exploitation of cinema in the first decade of the twentieth century outside the South East basis was primarily undertaken by itinerant showmen. Additionally, this will lead to material being available through the Collection for extensive regional and local histories so that the impact of Mitchell & Kenyon can be examined in more detail at a regional level. The contextual research has revealed a complex web of links between the exhibitioners (with some forty eight companies being associated with Mitchell & Kenyon), the place of exhibition (100 different locations being identified) and the corpus of material produced (estimated that the 838 reels is only twenty percent of the Company’s output). The implication is clear that traveling showmen played an important role in the exhibition, production and exploitation of early film by utilizing the ‘local’ topical as an essential element of the film programme. In addition the employment of subject specialists to contextualise the information and the utilization of this material in the edited collection The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon has resulted in wider collaboration between film scholars and historians of the period. Future articles have been commissioned by the Journal of Sports History for example on the material in the Collection to enable wider knowledge of this Archive. The BBC Series, although not an output listed in the AHRB application utilized the subject material and has brought the material to the attention of a wider audience that is local, national and specialist
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arts-humanities.net
*Vanessa Toulmin and Martin Loiperdinger, 'Is it You? Recognition, Representation and Response in Relation to the Local Film, Film History Volume 17, Number 1 (i2005): 7-18.
*Richard Abel (ed), Encyclopedia of Early Cinema (London: Routledge, 2005) on Mitchell & Kenyon, European fairground cinema and individual entries on showmen connected to Mitchell & Kenyon.
* Vanessa Toulmin, Electric Edwardians: The Films of Mitchell & Kenyon (London: British Film Institute, 2005), an introductory essay to accompany the DVD.
* Vanessa Toulmin, Simon Popple and Patrick Russell (eds), The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon: Edwardian Britain on Film (London: British Film Institute, 2004).
Vanessa Toulmin, Patrick Russell and Simon Popple, ‘Introduction to the Mitchell and Kenyon Collection, in Toulmin et (eds) The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon: Edwardian Britain on Film (London: British Film Institute, 2004): 2-6.
Tim Neal, Vanessa Toulmin and Rebecca Vick, Mitchell and Kenyon: A Successful, Pioneering and Travelled Partnership of Production, in Toulmin et al, The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon: Edwardian Britain on Film (London: British Film Institute, 2004): 6-12.
Vanessa Toulmin, ‘’We take them and make them: Mitchell and Kenyon and the Travelling Exhibition Showmen’, in Toulmin et al, The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon: Edwardian Britain on Film (London: British Film Institute, 2004): 59-69
Vanessa Toulmin, 'An Early Film Crime Rediscovered: Mitchell and Kenyon's Arrest of Goudie (1901)', Film History Vol 16, no 1 (2004): 37-53.
Vanessa Toulmin, Patrick Russell and Tim Neal, 'The Mitchell and Kenyon Collection: Rewriting Film History', The Moving Image: Journal of Moving Image Archivist (University of Minnesota Press 2003): 1-18.
Vanessa Toulmin, 'The Importance of the Programme in Early Film Presentation.' In KINtop 11:
Kinematographen-Programme, (autumn 2002): 19-34
Vanessa Toulmin, 'The Cinematograph at the Goose Fair', in Proceedings of the British Silent Film Weekend, ed. Alan Burton (Trowbridge: Flicks Books, in 2001): 76-86
Vanessa Toulmin, 'Local Films for Local People: Travelling Showmen and the Commissioning of Regional Films,' 1900 -1902', Film History, Vol 13, no 2 (Spring 2001): 118-138.
In press: *Vanessa Toulmin, Electric Edwardians - A Filmographic History of the Films of Mitchell & Kenyon, (London: British Film Institute, 2006).