Olwen Vaughan

Olwen Vaughan was the daughter of a Unitarian minister from Liverpool, Reverend Hemming Vaughan himself a cinephile who founded several film societies in the 1930s. She was appointed as the British Film Institute's Secretary in April 1935. In that capacity (and because she spoke excellent French), she represented the BFI on the international stage (rather than the Curator Ernest Lindgren, the Curator of the BFI's National Film Library) until her resignation in 1945. She negotiated, with Henri Langlois, Iris Barry and John Abbott, and Frank Hensel, the foundation of FIAF in 1938, oversaw the setting-up of the FIAF Secretariat, and attended the first FIAF Congress in New York in July 1939, when she elected the Federation's Treasurer. After she left the BFI in 1945 she set up the New London Film Society, with prints for her programmes often provided by the Cinémathèque française and MoMA. Her close friendship with Barry and Langlois after the war, at a time when she was no longer a member of the FIAF community, put a strain on Ernest Lindgren's relationship with her (and with Langlois).

"Olwen Vaughan", in Charles Drazin, The Finest Years: British Cinema of the 1940s, London: I.B. Tauris, 2007, pp.235-244