Into the Archive: Re-Viewing Kubrick
Last February, Mexico City received the visit of eight members of the UAL staff, including Archives and Special Collections Centre Manager Sarah Mahurter, Professor Oriana Baddeley, Dean of Research UAL, Professor Paul Coldwell and Professor Jane Collins (CCW), as well as Dr Pratap Rughani, Reader (LCC) and Larra Anderson, Dean of the LCC Screen School to deliver the symposium ‘Into the Archive: Reviewing Kubrick’ as well as a series of workshops inspired by the work and the archive of Stanley Kubrick.
Organized by the British Council in Mexico with the support of Cineteca Nacional, which is hosting the Stanley Kubrick travelling exhibition until 29th May 2017, the symposium explored the ways in which the Stanley Kubrick exhibition and the Kubrick Archive throw light on debates around the practices that underpin both film production and creative practice. This was delivered through presentations which introduced the Archive and how it is used by students and researchers. Abraham Thomas, Curator-in-Charge at the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institute and José Antonio Valdés Peña and Juan Arturo Brennan from the Cineteca Nacional took also part in the conversation.
Furthermore, workshops developed themes of practice-related issues with practitioners and academics. These were attended by delegates from across Mexico, from as far away as the border with California. We even found out that one workshop delegate had sent Kubrick an audition tape for a part in ‘Full Metal Jacket’ in 1980.
The relevance and influence of Stanley Kubrick in today’s generation of filmmakers and cinephiles is still indubitable, and it could be ascertained due to the popularity both of the exhibition –which has attracted over 100,000 visitors to date– and of the symposium and workshops, which were oversubscribed and sold out after one weekend of being advertised.
