Michael Leader

📽️ New screenings! 📽️

On September 6th, we're taking over the BFI IMAX for an afternoon celebrating the early work of Mamoru Hosoda! 💫

Come join us for special screenings of THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME and SUMMER WARS on the UK's biggest cinema screen! 🍿

“Recent events have strengthened the need to keep Flash preserved—for example, shutdowns of the Cartoon Network’s website wiped out hundreds of Flash games and animations that only existed on the site, and will never show up on a DVD or streaming service.” Jason Scott Free-range archivist

Once the lifeblood of online creativity—from silly games to iconic animations—Flash has all but disappeared from the live web. 🕳️

In our latest Vanishing Culture essay, free-range archivist Jason Scott @textfiles.com explores why Flash deserves to be preserved.

🔗 blog.archive.org/2025/08/06/v...

Inside the Archive #14: Archiving in the age of (super) abundance In this special edition of the blog we reflect on the Archiving in the Age of (Super) Abundance symposium, which took place at BFI Southbank (and online) on 13 February.

Great read! Very relevant to the Our Screen Heritage project at the BFI Archive and our efforts to preserve online moving image. Badgers is now in the archive + lots more too. Here's a blog about the project and the symposium we held discussing many of the challenges: www.bfi.org.uk/inside-the-a...

Two months 'til the new book is out!

Ghibliotheque presents: Summer Wars + intro by Michael Leader and Jake Cunningham, co-hosts of the Ghibliotheque podcast | BFI IMAX London Mamoru Hosoda’s visually dazzling mix of meet-the-family hijinks and virtual reality spectacle.

🏡🎮🎟️ whatson.bfi.org.uk/imax/Online/...

Ghibliotheque presents: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time A teenager tackles trials of love and time travel in Mamoru Hosoda’s breakthrough feature.

⏰🔁🎟️ whatson.bfi.org.uk/imax/Online/...

📽️ New screenings! 📽️

On September 6th, we're taking over the BFI IMAX for an afternoon celebrating the early work of Mamoru Hosoda! 💫

Come join us for special screenings of THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME and SUMMER WARS on the UK's biggest cinema screen! 🍿

My latest curated collection for the BFI Mediatheque is a treasure trove for animation fans and researchers. Over 50 documentaries, interviews and behind-the-scenes specials celebrating the best of world animation and the genius artists who create it. 🎨📽️

I could go on... LFF and NFT Q&As with Makoto Shinkai, Lee Unkrich and Pete Docter; Barry Norman reporting on the making of Watership Down; some very of-their-time looks at manga and anime, feat. interviews with Hayao Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon (and @helenmccarthy51.bsky.social). Dive in!

Still from a documentary on animation, featuring a young man (Nick Park) standing in a cramped storage cupboard, holding a film reel. On a shelf in the cupboard, there is the model of his character, Wallace.

Also, several docs on/interviews with Aardman from across the studio's history - my faves being those from around 1989-1990, including one clip where Nick Park is seen clinging to the work in progress print of his then-unreleased film, A Grand Day Out.

Docs on artists and animators including Len Lye, Ladislas Starevich, Joanna Quinn, Art Babbit, Alison de Vere, Richard Williams, Norman McLaren, Dianne Jackson, George Pal, Brothers Quay, Kihachiro Kawamoto, Frederic Back, Bob Godfrey, Karel Zeman, Gerald Scarfe and John Halas.

It's not very easy to share a screengrab or full list of everything in the collection, but there's a wealth of documentaries from the heyday of Channel 4's commitment to animation, plus editions of the South Bank Show, Dope Sheet, Visions and Clapperboard.

My latest curated collection for the BFI Mediatheque is a treasure trove for animation fans and researchers. Over 50 documentaries, interviews and behind-the-scenes specials celebrating the best of world animation and the genius artists who create it. 🎨📽️

Screengrab of the "BFI Replay" website, featuring a collection titled Silver Screens: A Century of Cinemagoing, with the following introductory text: From the picture palaces of the past to modern multiplexes... The cinema has always been so much more than just a place to watch films. At the height of its powers, the silver screen stood for spectacle, sophistication, electricity and elegance as well as entertainment, and the very venues themselves were star attractions. These architectural marvels stood proud in cities and towns up and down the country, enthralling audiences in their thousands in the days when "going to the pictures" was a national pastime. For over a century, cinema has endured, and cinemas have changed with the times. The rise of television, video and home cinemas may have splintered the cultural dominance of the movies while bringing films to smaller and more convenient screens, but the thrill of the communal experience remains - as do many of the monumental structures themselves, whether they have been converted into bingo halls, renovated into plush modern picture houses, or left to loom over the high street. This collection celebrates the cinema as both a cultural icon and a haven for generations of starry-eyed dreamers, and documents the changing face of filmgoing from the bygone bioscopes and the lavish picture palaces of yesteryear to the sticky-floored multiplexes of today. So dim the lights, grab your popcorn, and lose yourself in the magic of the silver screen.

New curated collection by me over on BFI Replay, tracing the changing face of 'the cinema' as a cultural and architectural icon over the last 100 years, from grand picture palaces to sticky-floored multiplexes. Find it at your local library. 🍿

A cylindrical nuclear bunker in the East Anglian woods

This is a still from a video of a nuclear bunker, available via BFI Replay!

BFI Replay is a free to access archive of videos of things which defined Britain over the past 60 years. It is available on our public computers.

For more information about BFI Replay, visit: www.bfi.org.uk/bfi-replay

Wow! Book and exhibition sound fabulous.

You are not prepared for how gorgeous everything about this book is.

Hello! I'm afraid my Manchester memories are 20 years out of date but the revamped John Rylands library is well worth a visit and the reading room in the Central library is one of the great rooms of the world.

Chuffed to return to the pages of @sightsoundmag.bsky.social with a "hidden gem" recommendation for HEROIC TIMES, which you can see on the big screen at the Barbican in October, or watch at your leisure if you import the Blu-ray from @deafcrocodile.bsky.social!

Chuffed to return to the pages of @sightsoundmag.bsky.social with a "hidden gem" recommendation for HEROIC TIMES, which you can see on the big screen at the Barbican in October, or watch at your leisure if you import the Blu-ray from @deafcrocodile.bsky.social!

Detail of the Hungarian release poster for Dalias Idok (Heroic Times)

Still from the film Heroic Times, featuring a knight on horseback

Still from the film Heroic Times, featuring a character kneeling before a king

Still from the film Heroic Times, featuring a scene on a battlefield

The Animation at War season at the Barbican is expanding!

In October, we're screening József Gémes's medieval epic, HEROIC TIMES.

This is a glorious painted masterpiece of Hungarian animation, and to our knowledge this is the first time the film has been screened in the UK.

Has anyone lost their Wii Fit manual by the roundabout near the Tesco Express in Burgess Hill?

So glad to hear this. Can't wait to play it!

Heroic Times + Introduction | Barbican József Gémes’s painted masterpiece of Hungarian animation brings to vivid life a brutal and bloody period of Central European medieval history.

⚔️🎟️ www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/202...

Detail of the Hungarian release poster for Dalias Idok (Heroic Times)

Still from the film Heroic Times, featuring a knight on horseback

Still from the film Heroic Times, featuring a character kneeling before a king

Still from the film Heroic Times, featuring a scene on a battlefield

The Animation at War season at the Barbican is expanding!

In October, we're screening József Gémes's medieval epic, HEROIC TIMES.

This is a glorious painted masterpiece of Hungarian animation, and to our knowledge this is the first time the film has been screened in the UK.

I've often wondered when was the first time a Ghibli film was screened in the UK and I think I have an answer. 15th November 1987, Laputa at the London Film Festival.

("...a worthy successor to Warriors of the Wind"!)

The utterly delightful Ghibli gem WHISPER OF THE HEART was released 30 years ago today! 👒🎻

A stack of blu ray boxes: Robot Dreams, Memories of Murder, Flow, The Irish Folklore Trilogy, A Bittersweet Life, Crono, Of Flesh and Blood: The Cinema of Hirokazu Koreeda

Small but growing stack of disc releases I've been lucky to contribute to...

A really beautiful release for a great film!

Unfortunately, no. I'm UK exclusive!