Time has flown by since our first quarterly blog from the Brynmor Jones Library Spotlight Team. We have continued with our year-long exploration of Spotlight on Sustainable Development Goals. In April, we focused on our Spotlight on Life Below Water, Life on Land, Clean Water and Sanitation and Climate Action. This was an excellent opportunity to highlight some of the outstanding University of Hull research in this area, such as the ‘Living with Water’ project and the ‘REWILD Research Cluster’, which you can find on our reading list. The theme also initiated several eBook purchases on Libby covering climate action and water.
It was particularly nice to see two of our work experience students, Ella and Lydia, get creative with our April Spotlight display.
Professor of Zoology, Sir Alister Hardy
We also took the opportunity to highlight the work of Sir Alister Hardy, Professor of Zoology at the University of Hull from 1928 to 1942, whose papers are held at the Hull History Centre. You can read about his pioneering invention the ‘Continuous Plankton Recorder’ on our reading list.
Spotlight on Contemporary Fiction
Throughout May, we will have a display in the Reading Room to accompany our reading list Spotlight on Contemporary Fiction.
We are aiming to raise awareness of our Leisure Reading Collection and the eBook resource Libby. Libby is a really good place to find new and recent fiction (and includes audiobooks). You can use the ‘sample’ function to read a section of a book or to listen to clips. If there is a book that you would like the library to purchase on Libby, just click ‘notify me’. We cannot guarantee that the book will be purchased, but it will be looked at by our Collections Team.
Our Leisure Collection will be moving from the mezzanine of the Reading Room to the main floor of the Reading Room behind the help points shortly (this is what library staff fondly refer to as ‘a big move’ and involves quite a lot of planning and teamwork). We hope this will help towards making the collection more accessible and visible to users but, if you do need help finding it, please speak to staff and they will be happy to assist.
If you are an avid reader with books to spare, we would welcome any fiction donations for the Book Swap Phone Box outside of the Brynmor Jones Library. Hopefully you will find something intriguing to swap it with!
In Celebration of Cinema and Film
We were really excited when the news came that Hull Independent Cinema would be screening some of their films on campus at Middleton Hall. Please check out their excellent programme here.
Kanopy
In celebration of films on campus, we decided to highlight one of our excellent moving image library resources, Kanopy.
Kanopy is a streaming service for films and documentaries that works on any device, including iOS and Android. The films can be discovered by browsing Kanopy, and they are also included in the results for Library search.
You can use additional features by creating your own account. These include: viewing history, your own dashboard, and watchlist. To create your Kanopy account, sign up with your University of Hull email address, and create a password. Kanopy will email you to verify your account.
Teaching staff, if you create your own account, you can create clips from films to show in class. You can embed clips into Canvas using the embed code functions.
Kanopy Staff Picks
If you have not seen them already (or if you think they were so good you want to watch them again!), you can find this year’s Oscar-winning film Anora, and Jon M. Chu’s 2024 fantasy blockbuster Wicked on Kanopy. Or, take a look at some of our ‘Kanopy Staff Picks’ from members of the Library team and Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies, Dr. James Zborowski:
Andrea Lamb (Customer Experience Advisor, Brynmor Jones Library and Hull History Centre):
Kajillionaire (2020)
I am very fond of this inventive film about two con artists and their monotoned voiced daughter Old Dolio. Directed by filmmaker, writer, and artist Miranda July, who also made a great documentary Fire of Love about volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, Kajillionaire also features a lovely, haunting score by Emile Mosseri.
The Holdovers (2023)
How could you not love The Holdovers?! With great performances from Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Paul Giamatti and Dominic Sessa, and a 70s movies visual palette, it is the perfect balance of humour and melancholy. Like a ‘Charlie Brown has grown up’ sequel, The Holdovers is now my favourite ‘it is not really a Christmas film’ Christmas film.
The Young Girls of Rochefort (1966)
Okay, so the plot might get a bit daft (they are pretty chilled out that a serial killer is on the loose), but this musical by Jacques Demy is a total joy. The song and dance routines of twins in search of romance, Solange and Delphine, played by real life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Francois Dorleac, plus a great score by Michel Legrand, are the perfect pastel coloured pick me up to any Sunday afternoon. Tragically, Dorleac died in a car accident shortly before the film’s UK premiere in 1967.
Ex Libris: New York Public Library (2017)
One of the best things about Kanopy Streaming is discovering things that you would otherwise never know about. One such discovery for me during Covid and lockdown was this brilliant documentary by Frederick Wiseman, quietly observing the people and communities that create a portrait of New York Public Library and its branches. As a testament to the importance of our cultural institutions, and the people who interact with them, it is a long watch, but you could probably dip in and out and still find something, or someone, interesting.
Neighbours (1952)
My cinephile daughter introduced me to this remarkable anti-war animation from 1952 by Norman McLaren. It starts with two men reading newspapers in their gardens when a flower sprouts up on their garden border. In just 8 minutes, it captures the absurd descent into conflict over possession and borders with an inevitable violent end. More than 60 years later the message is as potent as ever.
Laura Giles (Academic Services Library Manager and Hull Independent Cinema Volunteer):
Climax (2018)
Provocateur Gaspar Noé’s 2018 film about a group of dancers rehearsing in a remote house has one of the most exhilarating dance scenes ever captured on film. If you have a strong stomach, keep watching to see what happens when the punchbowl is spiked, unleashing a 42-minute, unbroken shot that sees every taboo imaginable shattered.
The Beguiled (2017)
During the American Civil War, young women at a Southern girls’ boarding school take in an injured Union soldier, ostensibly to help him recover. Colin Farrell is the cat amongst pigeons in this dreamy Southern Gothic, stylishly captured by Sofia Coppola.
The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)
This is a thoughtful film, touching on race, friendship, family and gentrification in San Fracisco as the lead character seeks to reclaim the house he grew up in. What emerges is a wistful, beautiful portrait of a city and its shifting communities.
BlacKkKlansman (2018)
An undercover black police officer infiltrates the KKK in this 1970s-set Spike Lee satire, based on real historical events but very pointedly taking aim at Trump (at the time of release, still on his first term and condemning displays of ‘hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides’).
Whitney ‘Can I Be Me’ (2017)
With Rudi Dolezal – known for directing music videos – the great documentarian Nick Broomfield co-directs this exploration of the life and heartbreakingly early death of Whitney Houston. It is a sensitively told but sadly familiar tale of extraordinary young talent marred by self-doubt, lack of freedom, rebellion and parasitic hangers-on.
Kitty Lees-Edmondson (Customer Experience Advisor, Brynmor Jones Library):
Curfew (2011)
Unconventional in its optimism given its troubled main character, Shawn Christensen’s 2011 short film Curfew explores themes such as alienation and family relationships. Christensen makes effective use of wide anamorphic lenses while shooting on wide apertures to create a dream-like state. Look out for the dance scene in the bowling alley; it could be a music video in itself!
Coda (2013)
This Irish animated short film with its simple narrative is impactful in its exploration of the fear of death and the desire for more time. At just nine minutes long, Alan Holly’s animation and accompanying score work together to emphasise the importance of memory and reflection when confronting our own mortality. Sometimes less is more.
Bonobo (2018)
Zoel Aeschbacher’s Student Academy Award-winning short film explores the intertwined stories of three inhabitants of high-rise public housing. A broken lift highlights the indomitable difficulty encountered by different representatives of vulnerable populations on the margins of society. The use of space (or lack of) alongside the intense score emphasises that the main characters are trapped by their circumstances.
The Letter Room (2020)
A bittersweet comedy that examines the injustice at the heart of the American system of mass incarceration. Oscar Isaac is compelling as a solitary corrections officer whose life is irreparably upturned when he is promoted to the role of ‘Director of Prisoner Communication’ and becomes invested in the correspondence received by a death row inmate. This short film addresses life in prison through a unique narrative that highlights the humanity in a section of society where often it is missing.
I’m Not a Robot: Ik ben geen robot (2023)
A darkly comedic and eerie examination of our current tech-driven world and both the dangers and (assumed) benefits of AI advancement. Failing multiple attempts at a captcha test has never been so tense! In trying to get the issue resolved, protagonist Lara finds herself beginning to question whether the unthinkable might be true.
Dr. James Zborowski (Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies, University of Hull):
Listen to Britain (1942)
There are plenty of British World War II documentaries, but most of them try to pep up their original wartime audience with presumptuous, patronising voiceover. This short piece dispenses with that, and builds a poetic assemblage of sights and sounds that captures people in their everyday dignity. They are not described, and they do not have to offer any account of themselves; they just have to be. ‘Only connect’ is the idea at the heart of this documentary, beautifully executed.
The Act of Killing (2012)
There is a genuine debate to be had about the ethics of this documentary. Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer helps unrepentant members of Indonesian death squads depict their past crimes in lavish style, as gangster movies and musicals. What possible justification could there be for this? The answer: by breaking so radically with typical notions of documentary sobriety – and decency – the film gets beyond the stalemates that can result from other ways of trying to do the work of getting to truth, justice, and reconciliation. Oppenheimer calls his film a ‘documentary of the imagination’, and it is through the perpetrators restaging their crimes and putting themselves in the position of their victims that they are finally moved to reinterpret and reckon with their actions.
Central Park (1989)
Frederick Wiseman has a huge body of work – most of it on Kanopy. He worked out his style early and has stuck with it, and it epitomises the mode known as observational documentary. For the most part, what we see in Wiseman’s documentaries is what would be happening anyway, even if the camera wasn’t there. Intervention and overt commentary are as minimal as they can be. The films are usually about institutions – schools, hospitals, welfare offices – often (but not always) American ones. Wiseman’s films are long. Sometimes they are even a bit boring. But they are boring in the same way democracy is, and for the same reasons – because listening to other people, carefully and at length, so that differing viewpoints can be heard and honoured, and decisions can be fairly and judiciously reached, takes time and effort.
Frantz Fanon Black Skin White Mask (1996)
Fanon is a central figure in twentieth century intellectual history. He wrote about the experience of racism, and he both participated directly in and wrote about Algeria’s decolonisation struggle against France. This imaginative documentary recruits key figures from cultural studies – including the always-eloquent and subtle Stuart Hall – to engage with the complexities of Fanon’s life and his philosophical ideas.
Nobody’s Business (1996)
There are plenty of documentaries about people who do not want a documentary made about them because they have something to hide, or to lose. And of course, there is endless factual content featuring people who invite the camera’s gaze and treat it as a prize, or their due. Nobody’s Business is a much rarer species: the main documentary subject, Oscar Berliner, just does not see why his life merits being put on screen. Mainly from offscreen, filmmaker Alan Berlinger keeps coming back at his ageing, grumpy, private, resistant father, showing him photographs of his ancestors and where they lived, and asking him about his life, including his divorce. There is mutual exasperation, but also always love, and towards the end one relative makes an observation borne out by what we have seen: although Oscar resists, he is at the same time rising to the occasion of these deep, authentic encounters with his son; they allow him to reveal his true, best, flawed self. Nobody’s Business is participatory documentary through and through. As with documentarians like Louis Theroux and (perhaps most wonderfully of all) Agnes Varda, truth is not some pre-existing thing that the documentary finds; truth emerges through the encounter.
We would love to hear about your Kanopy recommendations, so please share your comments at the end of this blog post.
Looking Ahead
As soon as our May Spotlight theme is up, the team immediately start planning ahead for our upcoming reading lists. In June, we can look forward to Spotlight on Pride 2025, and in July, we have Spotlight on Playwriting which will be a great opportunity to explore some of the excellent collections at Hull History Centre, such as the ‘Papers of Alan Plater’, as well as a chance to celebrate contemporary playwriters like Hull University Alumni, James Graham. Alongside those, we continue with our Sustainable Development Goals themes, including Quality Education, Decent Work and Economic Growth.
So, lots of work to do…!
Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. If you have any questions or comments, or would like to recommend Spotlight themes or resources, we would love to hear from you. Please comment at the end of this blog, or email us at spotlight@hull.ac.uk