Stanley Kubrik's Boxes

Last year, whilst listening to Adam Buxton's Big Mix Tape on BBC 6 Music, I was introduced to (albiet via the airwaves and not actually in real-life) journalist, documentary-maker and all round good-natured funny chap Jon Ronson. Even though I had seen the movie "The Men Who Stare At Goats" I really didn't know who he was, but immediately found his depreciating and softly-spoken style quite beguiling. Instantly I had to catch up on his BBC Radio Four broadcasts "Jon Ronson On" and got hold of his intriguing film documentary "Stanley Kubrik's Boxes"

As someone absorbed by curious obsessions, old junk, intimate collections and who generally adores rummaging through other peoples stuff, to me, Jon Ronson's Boxes documentary felt like a gift.

In 2001, Jon Ronson was invited to Childwick Bury, the home of Stanley Kubrik who had passed away 2 years earlier. It turns out that Kubrik, famous for writing and directing such masterpieces as 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange and The Shining alongside many others was a complete and utter hoarder. He kept everything.

Every intricate detail of a movie's preparation, photographs of possible sites for filming, photographs of potential props and clothing, fan letters, telexes, faxes, scripts, résumés, stationary, typefaces and other curios were delicately filed, catalogued and stored in boxes. None of your cheap crappy cardboard boxes either. Good boxes, designed by Kubrick himself, to his specifications.

A brief riffle through his estate could finally answer the questions many of us had all been asking over the years without response. Was Stanley Kubrik, as Jon Ronson puts it "like some kind of mad hermit genius" and "Would the stuff inside the boxes offer an understanding of his "tangled brain"?"

Museum Asleep For 100 Years

If the Cabinet of Curiosity had shelves of infinite proportions, I would like to put philanthropist Monsieur Mantin's mansion on display. There is something about this story, of the determination of one man to capture the collective memory of his home and his possessions for the benefit of others that I love. Obsessed by death and the passing of time, this eccentric French millionaire felt the most appropriate way to guarantee his legacy was to turn his late 19th Century townhouse into a time capsule.

On his death in 1905 and under the strict instruction in his Will, Louis Mantin's house in the town of Moulins, was sealed up in order that it could be reopened in 100 years times to show the people of today the life of a cultured gentleman a century ago. The house and its eclectic contents of archaeological relics, stuffed birds, medieval locks and keys, wooden sculptures, tapestries, masonic paraphernalia as well as the latest domestic inventions such as electricity and a flushing toilet were abandoned.

Despite decades of wood worm, water damage and rodent infestation, many of the unique features of the house and its content of curios survived. The mansion, finally bequest to the public has now been restored to a condition similar to that which it was on the day the Master of the house died 106 years ago. For more information visit the BBC's tour of the great house or National Geographic's photo story.