I loved the Museum of the Moving Image which opened in 1988 and closed down in 1999. The site has now become BFI Southbank (I recognise the door handles). Here are some things I still remember about it and wanted to write down before I forget, in no particular order:
1. The old-style cinema that showed all sorts of films to which you were admitted by collecting a proper old-fashioned ticket made of card.
2. The big glass doors leading into the main auditorium (I don't mean the ones at the main entrance though). More stairs.
3. Pretty sure there were some Daleks near the entrance - one of the events I went to see was called "Behind the sofa" which celebrated Doctor Who and had an exhibit which let you press a button to listen to the programme's theme tunes from different years.
4. There was massive truck - I think it had the letters RKO on it but could be wrong.
5. The blue-screen thing where you could pretend to be Superman etc. Fairly certain it was blue and not green, though I understand it's mostly green-screen these days or rotoscoping.
6. The kiosk where you could record yourself being interviewed by film reviewer and interviewer Barry Norman and watch the playback later, in public on a big screen.
7. Happening across animation cels of An Vrombaut's "Little Wolf" which was a cartoon I'd watched late one night and had completely failed to find out what it was. It's on YouTube. Apparently An was taking part in some sort of 'meet the animator' event and the cels were on the wall to illustrate that.
8. The projector that projected an endless loop of film - the loop was stretched across several bits of an installation so you could see the frames whirring past. It was hypnotic.
9. The actor-y bit where members of the public could join in with a pretend Hollywood Movie and where people got to say 'Action' and play about with clapperboards, wear costumes, play with cameras etc.
10. Photographs everywhere of Hollywood icons.
11. The exhibition on magic lanterns.
12. Were there people dressed up as Eadward Muybridge talking about how they recorded the horse with all four feet off the ground or was that somewhere else? I'm remembering a mechanical toy thing (a bit like the horse race game) which you could activate to show the cameras going off. Possibly I'm mis-remembering.
Videos
Barry Norman at the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) in London for Film 88 - filmed before it opened (4m 47s)
Museum of the Moving Images (MOMI) - filmed in 1993 (8m 31s)
Behind the Sofa exhibition at MOMI - filmed in 1991 (1m 41s)
Museum of the Moving Images.(MOMI) London - Recorded in 1993 (5m 40s)
And here is the clip (referenced in the comment below) from Four Weddings and a Funeral when Charles and Carrie are late to meet Charles brother David, outside BFI / MOMI which is on the right hand side.
See also - London cinema / film places
- BFI - I still love them, even though I understand they pulled the plug on MOMI
- The Cinema Museum, Elephant & Castle / Vauxhall
- London Film Museum (formerly Movieum, which moved from County Hall to Covent Garden)
Further reading
- 'Dismay' at film museum tragedy (BBC News, 2002)
- Museum of Moving Image: Culture Media and Sport (21 November 2002)
"Mr Derek Wyatt (Sittingbourne and Sheppey, Labour)
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what plans there are to (a) reopen the Museum of Moving Image; and (b) open a new Museum of Film and Television in London.
Dr Kim Howells (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Culture, Media & Sport; Pontypridd, Labour)
The British Film Institute (BFI), which is responsible for the Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI), has no plans to re-open it. However, the BFI is developing plans to open a new Film Centre on the South Bank which will incorporate not only the collections of MOMI, but also the existing National Film Theatre, National Film and Television library and the BFI's head office."
Other things that are much missed
• Somerset House and Film4's Summer Screen series of open air films in the courtyard (9 June 2022)
• The Bankside Frost Fair 2003 - 2008 (24 November 2020)
• Speechification, curated radio documentaries (9 January 2020)
• The National Geographic shop on Regent Street, London (4 January 2020)
• MOMI, London's Museum of the Moving Image (2 January 2014) - this post
Posts
I regularly took part in old hollywood musical re enactments at the Museum as a kid
ReplyDeleteIf memory serves, on a visit in the early 1990s we saw a very brief video (maybe two minutes) that related the history of the moving image. I would love to see that again, if it exists online somewhere. Also, I haven’t looked, but I don’t see a mention of the Four Weddings scene that took place on the doorway, right before the famous speech “in the words of David Cassidy, when he was in fact still with The Partridge Family”.
ReplyDelete