Iris Barry | Silent London

Where would we be without Iris Barry? Where would all the films be, more to the point? Iris Barry was a pioneering film critic and film preservationist whose life is every bit as interesting as the plots of the movies that she championed and saved.

I am pleased to say that I have presented a BBC Radio 4 documentary on this wonderful woman, titled Iris Barry, First Lady of Film. The documentary will be broadcast on Tuesday 23 September at 4pm in the Artworks strand. Please do listen in to hear the story of the woman who wrote about cinema for the Spectator and the Daily Mail (who sacked her for dissing Elinor Glyn), co-founded the Film Society, and went on to start the world’s first film archive at MoMA in New York.

The documentary is the brainchild of producer James King and consultant Igor Toronyi-Lalic. It features contributions from Richard Brody, Bryony Dixon, Robert Sitton and Henry K Miller. Don’t miss it!

Listen to Iris Barry, First Lady of Film on BBC Radio 4, 23 September at 4pm. Is should subsequently be available on catchup.
Read about Iris Barry on the Women Film Pioneers Project.
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You may or may not know this, but when I started Silent London I was working at the Guardian newspaper. So, it was at this time, when I was reading and writing about the silent era, and sitting in the Guardian office (rarely at the same time, I hasten to add) that I first became just a little obsessed with C.A. Lejeune.

Caroline Alice Lejeune, pioneering press film critic, media celebrity, Manchester icon and one half of the Sunday Ladies, with the Sunday Times’s Dilys Powell, is a pet subject of mine. I find her writing to be witty and wise and gentle, and her story, of falling in and out of love with the cinema, to be absorbing and not a little moving. It is also fascinating to me how she first got her job as the first real film critic on the Manchester Guardian, and moved to the Observer for another three decades. So I have been doing a little research. Well a lot in fact.

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