Today's show: Exploring the Smoking Cabinet

Today on Resonance FM at 3.30pm Alex Fitch is guest presenting Richard Thomas' show on Ephemera - Tight Pudding and is talking to Claire Cook, Simone Pyne and Kate Grove about the "Burlesque Cinema" weekend they've curated at the Curzon Soho Cinema and Volupte Lounge in London. The Smoking Cabinet mixes short films, features (The Blue Angel), live acts and talks to explore depictions of cabaret on film from the 1890s to the 1930s.

Podcast: The art of Andrzej Klimowski part 2 (Putting silent movies on the page)

Alex Fitch concludes his interview with artist, novelist and lecturer at The Royal College of Art, Andrzej Klimowski about his graphic novels 'The Depository', 'The Secret' and 'Horace Dorlan' plus his work on the 'Introducing...' / '...for beginners' books. Alex and Andrzej talk about the latter's artistic influences focussing in particular on his interest in silent movies.

Originally broadcast on Resonance FM on Thursday 4th October as part of Strip! (mp3 format, 15.1mb). Panel Borders is Alex's contribution to Strip! and will vary from week to week as a multiple of 15 mins within the hour...

To listen to the first half of the interview, please click here.

For more info and a selection of different file formats you can download or stream, please visit the home of this episode at www.archive.com

Links: Andrzej's biography as reported on his website
Review of Andrzej's exhibition catalogue and examples of his poster art
Interview conducted by Paul Gravett
Buy Andrzej's books at amazon.co.uk

Podcast: The current state of Silent Movies

Last week's show is now available for download... (mp3 format, 27.2mb)

N.B./ downloads are now housed at www.archive.org

Podcast: Scoring Silent Movies

The show broadcast a couple of weeks ago is now available to download... (mp3 format, 27mb)

Links: Info about tonight's performance at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol
Watch excerpts of The Seashell... with music performed by Minima
Watch the 30 min silent version of The Seashell... on youtube

Tonight's show: The current state of silent movies

Continuing our spurious anniversary month, tonight’s show coincidently coincides with the 8oth anniversary of the release of Hitchcock’s film 'The Lodger', so, to celebrate: having teased you with excerpts of our interview with Matthew Sweet – the writer and presenter of Silent Britain and Shepperton Babylon – for the past two weeks, tonight "I'm ready for my close-up" is proud to have Alex Fitch's full interview with him on the subject of silent movies.
If you're wondering whether the title of tonight's show is a contradiction in terms... Well, you'll just have to tune in to find out!

Regarding the podcast of last week's (and probably this week's) show... I'm having server problems at the moment, so there may be a bit of a delay. Sorry!

10.30pm GMT Resonance 104.4FM / www.resonancefm.com

Links: BFI page on 'Silent Britain'
Matthew's episode of Back Row on Radio 4
Article by Matthew on the late Ernest Dudley
Transcript of BBC Four interview with Matthew
Wikipedia page on Hitchcock's 'The Lodger'

Tonight's show: Scoring Silent Movies

It's the one year anniversary of "I'm ready for my close-up" (I'll track down a copy of Richard's first show on William Greaves soon for podcasting) - so to celebrate the occasion we have a couple of shows about the birth of cinema and how it is still relevant and appreciated today.
Tonight, Alex Fitch is talking to Alex Hogg from the band Minima who are touring the country with a print of the 1928 film 'The Seashell and the Clergyman' written by Antonin Artaud. The film was infamously banned on first release in this country with the BBFC quoted as saying: "This film is so obscure as to have no apparent meaning. If there is a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable".
Minima provide a terrific new soundtrack to the film and there will be extracts in tonight's show which concludes with the start of an interview with Matthew Sweet, author of Silent Britain and Shepperton Babylon, and this will be continued next week.

Links: Minima's myspace page which has info on forthcoming performances
IMDb page on 'The Seashell & the Clergyman'
Wikipedia page on Artaud
Download clips from the film from 'Expanded Cinema'
Director Germaine Dulac's battle for authorship

10.30pm GMT Resonance 104.4FM / www.resonancefm.com

Podcast: Restoring The Battle of the Somme

Tonight's show is now ready to download...
(mp3 format, 26mb)

Tonight's show: Restoring The Battle of the Somme

To (belatedly) co-incide with the 90th anniversary of 'The Battle of the Somme' (both the event and the film), Alex Fitch is discussing the silent movie and its recent restoration with Dr. Toby Haggith (Imperial War Museum) and Andrew Robertshaw (National Army Museum). To make the film more accessible to modern viewers Toby has been involved with the rediscovery of the film's original score and the commissioning of a new one, while Andrew has made a documentary re-editing the scenes of the movie into the order in which they were filmed to give the audience a unique insight into the making of the world's first feature length documentary.

10.30pm Resonance 104.4 FM / streamed at resonancefm.com

Links: Wikipedia page on the film
Andrew's page about the battle and the film at the National Army Museum website
Imperial War Museum microsite about the battle