Films with a Mission: Medical Films from the Catholic Mission Archives
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
No booking required
Films with a Mission: Medical Films from the Catholic Mission Archives 1930s-1960s
Birkbeck Institute of the Moving Image presents the third Films with a Mission screening event, which extends its focus this year to films on medical subjects from the Catholic missionary archives.
Screening rarely shown films from the Irish Film Institute (IFI) and the British Empire and Commonwealth collection at Bristol Museums, the symposium will discuss how Catholic medical orders used film to promote medical research and hospital practices. These films are part of a broader emergence of educational film at the time. They are significant for their involvement of filmmakers trained in documentary film in Britain during the 1930s and 1940s.
The films were widely circulated and exhibited on their release and over subsequent decades, not only in Ireland and Britain, but also across the US. The afternoon symposium will explore some of the key issues and questions in historically assessing missionary film archives. It will discuss how we can gain new perspectives in understanding the motivations, reach and transnational impact of these productions on local and global audiences.
Amongst the films shown will be:
Visitation: the Story of the Medical Missionaries of Mary (Andrew Buchanan, 1947, 60 mins) about the medical work of a women’s religious order: the Medical Missionaries of Mary, at their mission in Nigeria, Africa;
Aran of the Saints (London Catholic Film Society, 1930s, 21 mins) made on the island of Aran, Ireland, by the Missionary Sisters of the Divine Motherhood, and produced by the London Catholic Film Society, after the release of Robert Flaherty’s film Man of Aran (1934);
Ecce Ancilla Domini (FMDM,1950s; 54 mins) a recruitment film about the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of the Divine Motherhood (FMDM), Ladywell, Surrey, at their medical and educational missions in Northern and S. Rhodesia (Zambia, Zimbabwe), Nigeria, Singapore and Malaysia.
Speakers include: Dr. Emma Sandon, film historian and Dr. Carmen Mangion, historian of women religious, at Birkbeck, and they are joined by independent researcher, Edel Robinson, who catalogued the films in the IFI archive, and Isabelle Smyth, Writer in Residence, Medical Missionaries of Mary.
This event is run in collaboration with the Christian Missions in Global Historyseminar group, Institute of Historical Research, University of London; and supported by the Birkbeck Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund.
Booking essential. To reserve a place please follow the link:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/films-with-a-mission-tickets-60371587042
Contact name:
Birkbeck Institute of the Moving Image