Documentation Editor
James has been a Documentation Editor at the BFI since 2012 and has previously worked in a number of curatorial roles, specialising in non-fiction and documentary moving images. He is the co-author/editor of Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-War Britain and a contributor to Yesterday’s News: The British Cinema Newsreel Reader. He is a writer for the BFI Player Britain on Film collection, BFI Screenonline, the BFI Mediatheques and has written contextual material for a number of DVD releases, including The Animals Film, Secrets of Nature: Pioneering Natural History Films, Portrait of a Miner: The National Coal Board Collection, This Working Life: Steel, If War Should Come and Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-War Britain 1951-1977.
James has a broad range of interests; he holds an MSc in Human Ecology from the University of Strathclyde, an MA in Film Studies/Film Archiving from the University of East Anglia and a BA in English and American Literature from the University of Warwick. He was the Audio-visual Archivist for the International Secretariat of Amnesty International and the first Archivist at The Media Archive for Central England. He has also worked for the BBC, the Imperial War Museum, Film London, the British Universities Film and Video Council, the Independent Cinema Office, World Images, and Winchester School of Art.
In his current role he creates records for the BFI’s Collection Information Database (CID), Sight and Sound magazine and programme notes for screenings at BFI Southbank.