June OER of the Month – Eric Lucey Film Collection

Pink flower captured on old grainy film.

Our OER of the month for June is the Eric Lucey film collection.

As part of the University of Edinburgh Archives Collection, the films have been digitalized and made openly available on the Media Hopper Create site. Under Creative Commons attribution licenses, Lucey’s films can be downloaded, reshaped, and re-mixed. Therefore they provide a great opportunity for current and future filmmakers to incorporate Lucey’s incredible film work into new projects.

Lucey was a biologist at the University of Edinburgh throughout the 1950s and 1960s who incorporated advancing film techniques and camera technology into his research work. He experimented with different types of light and high speed cameras to create a variety of interesting films, such as this time-lapse of the crystallization of calcium, or the unfurling of this mimosa pudica. Some of Lucey’s work also serves as insights aspects of the University’s heritage. His 1968 film, ‘Edinburgh University Library: an Introduction’, for example, is an instructional film for students enrolled at the University half a century ago on how to work in the library and access resources.

A film celebrating Lucey’s work, ‘Interval and Instance: Time and focus in the films of Eric Lucey’, will be showcased as part of the Edinburgh International Film Festival at the end of this month.

Read more about Eric Lucey’s film collection

Access Eric Lucey’s film collection on Media Hopper Create

 

This article was written by Cecily Plascott, Open Content Curator Intern, 2018.