The British premiere of the Hollywood Librarian passed off very well. Over sixty people came from all over the south-east to the University of Sussex for Monday evening's showing, in the company of the film's director Ann Seidl.
The film contrasts the portrayal of librarians in cinema with he realities of the modern information profession. So sequences from films such as the 1957 Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn vehicle Desk Set are cut with interviews with modern librarians of all types. We follow the struggle in Salinas, John Steinbeck's home town, to keep libraries open; a group of convicts in San Quentin, who benefit from the library's prison service, raise funds for the threatened libraries. The destruction and looting of Iraq's National Library and the fire at Alexandria are compared.
This is a brief account, so brief as to traduce a very rich film. I wondered how well a film about American librarians would be received by a British audience. But while some of the detail, for example the political processes that the Salinas campaign goes through, are specific to the USA, the problems they face, of closures, of a lack of understanding of what it is we do, of trying to run libraries as if they were supermarkets or fast food outlets, are universal.
I was disappointed to spot no reference to Peter Sellers' performance as a young librarian involved in an affair with one of his readers in Only Two Can Play, a film version of Kingsley Amis's That Uncertain Feeling, which owed a great deal to his friend Philip Larkin's experiences as a public librarian.
The audience last night were mostly librarians; but the film ought to be seen by those who use libraries and, most importantly, by those who fund them, or fail to.
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