The third of the three panel discussion held in Screen One of the Phoenix was about Feature Films. It was hosted by Prof. Justin Smith (CATHI), with guests Jo Botting (BFI), Dominic Simmons (IMAX), and Patrick Moules (Film Collector). 

Feature Films Host:

Prof. Justin Smith
Justin is a cultural historian with a special interest in post-war British cinema, television and popular music. His research interests embrace production, exhibition and reception practices, cult film fandom and stardom, and issues of cultural identity and popular memory. He was the Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded projects Channel 4 and British Film Culture, 2010-2014 and Fifty Years of British Music Video, 2015-2018. He is the author of Withnail and Us: Cult Films and Film Cults in British Cinema (2010), and the co-author, with Sue Harper, of British Film Culture in the 1970s: The Boundaries of Pleasure (2011). Justin is a member of the AHRC Peer Review College, the Royal Television Society and the Creative Industries Federation.

Special Guests: 

Jo Botting
Jo is a curator in the fiction team. She programmes the monthly screening Projecting the Archive strand and has also presented BFI Southbank seasons on Deborah Kerr, Margaret Lockwood, Vivien Leigh, Gloria Grahame and Alexander Korda. She has contributed to books on Alfred Hitchcock, Ealing Studios, Science Fiction and the Thriller. Jo has a broad interest in British cinema, particularly the representation and involvement of women. Outside the BFI, she writes on various film-related topics and contributes to blu-ray releases. She has a degree and MA in film and has completed a PhD thesis on British director Adrian Brunel.

Dominic Simmons 
Dom is the Head of Cinema Technology at the BFI. He has worked as a technical specialist in the cinema exhibition sector for over 20 years. Dom is currently responsible for the delivery of the four-screen cinema programme, and the BFI IMAX, managing the teams that bring to the screen formats ranging from 35mm nitrate and 70mm to 4K digital cinema and IMAX laser. He has technical oversight of the London Film Festival, including the temporary installation of a full cinema setup in the Royal Festival Hall. One of his key challenges is to ensure that the BFI remains at the cutting edge of cinema technology, whilst ensuring that the BFI is able to screen analogue film formats from the full history of cinema projection.

Patrick Moules
Patrick is one of the pre-eminent film collectors in the U.K., with a sizeable collection of important prints. He is also the editor of Flickers, the long-standing magazine for the vintage film circle.

Film is Fabulous! Preserving film treasures for future generations.

18th October 2023