Daniel B Miller

This month we celebrate our 7th year anniversary, and I would like to thank all of our readers, followers, members and participants for a wonderful and truly overwhelming support received so far.

Film Dialogue had began as a hub for the latest film history and industry related news on twitter, and in its seven years it evolved into a fully developed on line film history magazine.

I am delighted to see that we are attracting new members and followers every day across all platforms, with twitter and Film Dialogue Cinematheque on You Tube being the most popular.

Our blog had received a lot of support from cinephiles around the world, and it was simply astonishing to learn that more than 20 000 film loving souls have read our illustrated biographies of film directors and stars.

Our original collection of silent film documentaries and audio files, has by now been replaced by the On Line Cinematheque Playlists. This has been our most successful introduction to date, as so many of you enjoyed finding some very rare films of all genres in our collection.

Silent and experimental films appear to be amongst the most popular.

Our instagram and pinterest pages have provided the readers with photographs, posters and other memorabilia, while facebook gave us a selection of articles on filmmakers from the best magazines and industry publications.

As we grow, we carefully consider all of the feedback received, and believe that now is the time to make our film loving hub even more interactive.

So here are the changes that we are planning to introduce.

Our daily recommendations will be provided in a different format from today, focusing on a greater variety of films and genres. However, it is our intention to continue recommending the films from the BFI Archive, BFI Mediatheque and BFI Player.

Many of those are rare and not accessible through any other on line forums.

All of you who are London based, will know that a great deal of investment has been made over the years by the BFI in order to create its own Mediatheque and live streaming services.

BFI Mediatheque provides us with a variety of films and documentaries of all lengths, and is based at the BFI Southbank. I feel privileged to have been able to use it from its very first day. One of my early explorations of its catalogue brought a delightful discovery of the early Graham Cutts films from 1920s that featured Alfred Hitchcock in the role of his main assistant.

Needless to say, exploring those service’s is truly a must.

BFI Player, the Institute’s live streaming service has been in operation for a few years by now, and it certainly delivers, with many feature films and documentaries on its lists. Britain on Film section is always of a particular interest as many of its titles are unavailable elsewhere and in many cases have not been seen since their original release date.

We have been recommending quite a number of films from its Forgotten Features and Unavailable on DVD collections, and will continue to explore some of their less well known titles.

It is tremendous, that we can now access previously unseen materials with such ease on line, compared to not so distant past, when they could be viewed only in film museums and cinematheques.

I would strongly encourage everyone to use and thoroughly explore those services.

In addition, our recommendations will also focus on cinema releases and tv programmes. We have been supporting Talking Pictures from their early days, and will continue to do so. We relish their daily screenings of long forgotten classics, and always look forward to their remarkable display of previously unseen features and rare titles.

There are many more articles to come your way on our blog, with illustrated biographies of Charles Chaplin, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, King Vidor, Clarence Brown, Michael Curtiz to name only a few.

We also have a podcast planned for the future months, and if successful, we may also run a live discussion forum on you tube and twitch, dedicated to cinephilia, film history and industry news.

Personally, I have found the new means of on line live interaction through twitch and you tube to be unparalleled with anything witnessed in the past. No longer do we need to go to our favourite haunts to meet the like minded souls who share our interests. Now we can do it from the comfort of our own home and even on a fully global level.

Film lovers from around the world can now join us at any time, from any place, with our discussions becoming more diverse and fertile than ever before. Seeing and hearing another viewpoint, that may be linked to a different geographical location does make all of our debates richer in content and significantly more educational.

Discussing films has now been promoted to the remarkable, thoroughly enjoyable, and truly dizzying new heights.

Let’s explore those new methods of communication, make new friends, share our deep seated film passions with others, remain kind and attentive, and by doing so make this world a better place for us all.