Who got that cash?

There is no obvious link between the Formula 1 racing driver Ayrton Senna and the great film director Alfred Hitchcock. Nor is there an obvious link between these two characters and East Anglia - except that their pictures appear in the extensive East Anglian Film Archive.

Senna was filmed by ITV Anglia when he was a young driver, a year before his Formula 1 debut in 1983. Hitchcock was filmed by the same company on a trip to Queen's College, Cambridge back in 1966.

Their pictures will now be carefully catalogued thanks to a resource enhancement grant of £412,910 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council awarded to the University of East Anglia.

The university's School of Film and Television Studies, which was awarded the top rating of 5* in the last research assessment exercise, is home to the archive.

Andrew Higson , head of the school, said: "This grant is part of a much larger cataloguing and digitilisation programme at the archive.

"At this stage we are seeking to catalogue the archive, to identify conservation requirements and to prioritise material for digitisation."

The collection contains more than 90,000 film and video items. This includes some 20,000 cans of film and 8,000 videotapes produced by Anglia Television between 1959 and 2000. These range from documentaries and films, to current affairs programmes, lifestyle programming and a small amount of drama.

"We also plan to record interviews with current and former Anglia staff, adding their personal memories of the production of many of the programmes," Professor Higson said.

The catalogue will be of immense value to all researchers, not only those interested in regional television history but also to historians, geographers and journalists.

"We are planning to hold a research symposium to draw attention to the academic potential of the collection towards the end of the project,"

Professor Higson said. "The catalogue should also make the collection more accessible to the public."