In Time: An Archive Life

What would your life look like to others, had all your correspondence, personal notes, diaries and other ephemera painstakingly been collected, archived and made available to the public?

In Time: An Archive Life is an exploration of the personal archive of writer and filmmaker Paul Hallam – a leading figure in London’s gay culture for over four decades. Hallam’s extensive personal collection is now held at The Bishopsgate Institute, London, UK.

Alongside his own explorations of Hallam’s archive, the filmmaker invites visitors to the Bishopsgate Institute to pick an archive box of their choice to explore on camera. In addition to bringing alive fragments of Hallam’s own creative output, the film takes us on a journey through an eclectic landscape of personal correspondence, diaries, work notes, research material and ephemera accumulated over a lifetime. Part portrait, part cultural and social archaeology, In Time: An Archive Life invites us to reflect on the role of the archive as a public record and vehicle for subjective journeys.


In Time: An Archive Life by Lasse JohanssonLasse Johansson‘s film In Time: An Archive Life, an exploration of the personal archive of writer and film-maker Paul Hallam – a leading figure in London’s gay culture for over four decades.

Paul Hallam‘s extensive archive is held at The Bishopsgate Institute in Spitalfields, and in the work, Lasse Johansson invites artists Rasha Kahil, Jonathan Kemp, Stefan Dickers, Mukul Patel, Peter Bond, and Libby Hall to pick an archive box of their choice to explore on camera.

In addition to documenting fragments of Paul Hallam‘s own creative output, the film takes us a journey through an eclectic landscape of research material, work notes and ephemera accumulated over a lifetime. Part portrait, part cultural and social archaeology, In Time: An Archive Life invites us to reflect on the role of the archive as a public record and vehicle for subjective journeys.

rfwbs-sliderfwbs-sliderfwbs-sliderfwbs-sliderfwbs-sliderfwbs-sliderfwbs-sliderfwbs-sliderfwbs-sliderfwbs-sliderfwbs-slide