Meet the Team
South West Silents relies on a network of collaborators and helpers. At it’s heart are the group's three directors:
A film graduate from the University of the West of England (UWE), James Harrison works at BBC Bristol where he has been involved in numerous film and archive related documentary productions including How to be Sherlock Holmes, Epic: A Cast of Thousands!, A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss, Sound of Musicals with Neil Brand as well as co-productions with the British Film Institute and the British Board of Film Classification for the BBC. James has written articles about classic cinema and was a graduate of the Giornate del Cinema Muto Collegium (Pordenone Silent Film Festival) in 2005. He has been heavily involved with Bristol Silents, Slapstick Festival and is now Co-Director/ Co-Curator of South West Silents as well as being a co-founder of Cinema Rediscovered, Bristol.
Rosie Taylor is a film and media archivist and historian. She is currently Curatorial Specialist at the British Film Institute National Archive and Co-Director/ Co-Curator at South West Silents. Rosie is a graduate of The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman Museum, the Giornate del Cinema Muto Collegium and the University of Bath MA European Cinema Studies. In the past Rosie has worked as Assistant Curator and a Board Director at Afrika Eye Film Festival, as well as Assistant Curator & Head of Digital Media at Slapstick Festival. She is also co-founder of Watershed’s Cinema Rediscovered. Rosie produced Afrika Eye’s tour of Siliva the Zulu (1927) with a live score, and co-produced Slapstick Festivals 2016 Comedy Western programme. Her specialisms include Silent Westerns, film collectors and the history of British cinema.
With a doctorate in early cinema from the University of Sheffield, Peter Walsh works as a freelance researcher and editor. Having written and presented extensively on mapping the British film industry’s earliest years, his research has been the subject of a BBC radio documentary, and his most recent work investigated the archival impulse as manifest in online film communities. Having co-founded South West Silents and Cinema Rediscovered, Bristol, Peter is active in promoting film heritage through public screenings and events.