Haphazard travels of Sirman Deville across the Isles

[Holdrüholoheuho]

Top 100 UK Films – SCFZ Poll ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... scfz-poll/

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

A/
Michael Anderson - SCFZ Directors Poll #110 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-110/
Anthony Asquith – SCFZ Directors Poll #149 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-149/
→ SCFZ poll: Anthony Asquith ... viewtopic.php?f=18&t=306

C/
Charlie Chaplin – SCFZ Directors Poll #132 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-132/

F/
Terence Fisher - SCFZ Directors Poll #235 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-235/

G/
Terry Gilliam – SCFZ Directors Poll #87 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... s-poll-87/
Peter Greenaway – SCFZ Directors Poll #61 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... s-poll-61/

H/
Alfred Hitchcock - SCFZ Directors Poll #81 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... s-poll-81/

K/
Stanley Kubrick – SCFZ Directors Poll #124 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-124/

L/
David Lean – SCFZ Directors Poll #222 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-222/
→ SCFZ poll: David Lean ... viewtopic.php?f=18&t=547
Mike Leigh – SCFZ Directors Poll #98 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... s-poll-98/
→ SCFZ poll: Mike Leigh ... viewtopic.php?f=18&t=83
Richard Lester – SCFZ Poll #191 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-191/
Ken Loach – SCFZ Directors Poll #84 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... s-poll-84/
Joseph Losey – SCFZ Directors Poll #128 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-128/

M/
Norman McLaren - SCFZ Directors Poll #189 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-189/

P/
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger - SCFZ Directors Poll #68 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... s-poll-68/

R/
Carol Reed - SCFZ Directors Poll #164 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-164/
Nicolas Roeg - SCFZ Directors Poll #208 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-208/
Ken Russell – SCFZ Directors Poll #118 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-118/
→ SCFZ poll: Ken Russell ... viewtopic.php?f=18&t=152

S/
Ridley Scott - SCFZ Directors Poll #62 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... s-poll-62/
Tony Scott – SCFZ Directors Poll #133 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-133/
→ SCFZ poll: Tony Scott ... viewtopic.php?f=18&t=255

[Holdrüholoheuho]

THE GREEN RAY (Tacita Dean, 2001)
https://vimeo.com/38026163

[sally]

scorsese's best british films

“Station Six-Sahara,” Seth Holt
“Nowhere to Go,” Seth Holt
“The Nanny,” Seth Holt
“Brief Ecstacy,” Edmond T. Gréville
“Halfway House,” Basil Dearden
“Went the Day Well?,” Alberto Cavalcanti
“Madonna of the Seven Moons,” Arthur Crabtree
“The Man in Grey,” Leslie Arliss
“So Long at the Fair, Terrence Fisher
“Stolen Face,” Terrence Fisher
“Four Sided Triangle,” Terrence Fisher
“Sound Barrier,” David Lean
“This Happy Breed,” David Lean
“Guns at Batasi,” John Guillermin
“Green for Danger,” Sidney Gilliat
“The Mind Benders,” Basil Dearden
“To the Public Danger,” Terrence Fisher
“It Always Rains on Sunday,” Robert Hamer
“A High Wind in Jamaica,” Alexander Mackendrick
“The Queen of Spades,” Thorold Dickinson
“Hue and Cry,” Charles Crichton
“Pink String and Sealing Wax,” Robert Hamer
“The Blue Lamp,” Basil Dearden
“The Good Die Young,” Lewis Gilbert
“Mandy,” Alexander Mackendrick
“Vampyres,” José Ramón Larraz
“Uncle Silas,” Charles Frank
“Legend of Hell House,” John Hough
“Burn Witch Burn,” Sidney Hayers
“The Flesh of the Fiends,” John Gilling
“The Snorkel,” Guy Green
“Scream of Fear,” Seth Holt
“These are the Damned,” Joseph Losey
“Plague of the Zombies,” Josh Gilling
“Quatermass and the Pit,” Roy Ward Baker
“Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde,” Roy Ward Baker
“The Devil Rides Out,” Terence Fisher
“The Asphyx,” Peter Newbrook
“Underground,” Anthony Asquith
“Shooting Stars,” Anthony Asquith
“Sapphire,” Basil Dearden
“Whistle And I’ll Come to You,” Jonathan Miller
“Dead of Night,” Anthology
“The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne,” Jack Clayton
“The Innocents,” Jack Clayton
“The Pumpkin Eater,” Jack Clayton
“The Seventh Vail,” Compton Bennett
“Yield to the Night,” J. Lee Thompson

[greennui]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBS3pRPT77s

[thoxans]

this thread needs more boaty mcboatface

[Holdrüholoheuho]

i remember only watching THE PUMPKIN EATER (Jack Clayton).
loads of films ahead!

[Holdrüholoheuho]

https://letterboxd.com/film/klipperty-klopp/
https://letterboxd.com/film/klipperty-klopp-2/

Klipperty Klöpp (1984) & Klipperty Klöpp 2 (2017)
https://vimeo.com/222834460

[sally]

it's all so drab & depressing & seedy & miserable & inadequate tho isn't it? even (especially) the funny/pythonesque stuff (and even more especially if you regard london as the vastly separate country/culture it really is)

i can't think of many warm, sincere, generous british films that are actually worth a mention....maybe winstanley? bill douglas? bill forsyth? margaret tait? jarman?

i wonder why we can't make movies. did we overextend ourselves in the 1890s?

[sally]

also hepworths helen of four gates (1920) was apparently filmed in hebden bridge so my plan last year was to go and take pics in the same places the film was - only it's like playing the eye-mouth-nose game with walls & skyline and intervening 100 year tree growth. i did not do very well. i did not do anything at all. maybe this year, if the plague carries on...

i mean, i couldn't even figure out where this is, and you've got a whole winding valley to align yourself with...

[Holdrüholoheuho]

I NEVER TELL ANYBODY ANYTHING: THE LIFE AND ART OF EDWARD BURRA (Phil Cairney, 2011)

Edward Burra (1905-76) was one of the most elusive British artists of the twentieth century.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1if7s4

[Holdrüholoheuho]

THE MAN WHOSE MIND EXPLODED (Toby Amies, 2012)
https://letterboxd.com/film/the-man-who ... -exploded/
https://youtu.be/WPoQuBaL8JY

[greennui]

i can't think of many warm, sincere, generous british films that are actually worth a mention

Had a look at my UK favs and yeah, endless cynicism.
https://letterboxd.com/greennui/list/cl ... er-layter/
Gonna make it a quest to find some good UK upbeat affairs.

[Umbugbene]

Top 100 UK Films – SCFZ Poll
https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... scfz-poll/

There are a few missing here:

Michael Anderson - SCFZ Directors Poll #110 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-110/
Terence Fisher - SCFZ Directors Poll #235 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-235/
Norman McLaren - SCFZ Directors Poll #189 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-189/
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger - SCFZ Directors Poll #68 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... s-poll-68/
Carol Reed - SCFZ Directors Poll #164 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-164/
Nicolas Roeg - SCFZ Directors Poll #208 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-208/
Ridley Scott - SCFZ Directors Poll #62 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... s-poll-62/

Ridley Scott began his career in his native England, but he's worked mostly in Hollywood. Likewise Norman McLaren started in Scotland before switching to Canada.

Not sure how you feel about including Charlie Chaplin (I don't think any of his films are British, though he is), Richard Lester, Joseph Losey, or Stanley Kubrick (U.S. expats living/working in England)

[Holdrüholoheuho]

thx, i will add all of them.
i am a hoarding type.
the other day i added to the East-Central Europe list of past polls Edgar Ulmer just because i figured out he was born in the Moravian city of Olomouc.

[Umbugbene]

SMH... How could I overlook Alfred Hitchcock - SCFZ Directors Poll #81 ... https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... s-poll-81/

[Holdrüholoheuho]

a minor Londoner who is easily overlooked.
a person hidden behind the shroud of birds.

[Holdrüholoheuho]

London Women's Film Group

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Political Film / Film as an Ideological Weapon
The Women's Movement was a major influence by the early 1970s and inspired the formation of women-only workshops, including the London Women's Film Co-op in 1972, Sheffield Film Co-op in 1975 and Leeds Animation Workshop in 1978. Two distributors specialising in women's films were established: Cow in 1977, Circles in 1979. ...
Workshops aimed to develop structures radically different from those of the film and broadcasting mainstream. Principles widely shared were collective management, integration of production, distribution and exhibition, flexible division of labour as opposed to rigid specialisms, continuity of employment as opposed to freelance working and non-hierarchical working relations, including relations between filmmakers, their subjects and audiences. —BFI

Women's Film and Video Collectives / Feminist Filmmakers Get Organised
In the 1970s and '80s, feminist film practice was foregrounded with the emergence of groups like the London Women's Film Group as the 'putting into action' of feminist film theory and attitude. Meanwhile, a new regionalism challenged the metropolitanised and patriarchal institutions of British culture. Groups developed in Cardiff, Leeds, Sheffield, London and across the country.
The desire to work collectively on films about the lives of women, and in particular working-class women, was facilitated by existing community organisations and a shared engagement with feminist politics. Such groups engaged in the politics of representation and social organisation and committed themselves to an integrated practice of production, exhibition and distribution, and to a collective or co-operative approach. —BFI


LONDON WOMEN'S FILM GROUP

Initiated in 1972, the London Women's Film Group came together through an advertisement placed by Midge MacKenzie, who was inspired by a screening of women's liberation films at the London Film School. Following a number of skill-sharing workshops, the group eventually consisted of Esther Ronay, Susan Shapiro, Francine Winham, Fran MacLean, Barbara Evans, Linda Wood and Midge MacKenzie. The members were by background sculptors, painters or photographers who were beginning to refocus their energies towards making film. Critical of the hierarchical and autocratic methods employed by conventional film crews, they worked collectively, in particular on The Amazing Equal Pay Show (1974), swapping roles of camera operator, lighting, sound etc. Their argument was that "a film should not be judged on its own merit regardless of the oppression that went into its making." —BFI

In 1975, the movement was given a powerful manifesto in the form of Laura Mulvey’s seminal Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, a polemic that demanded a reconfiguration of the patriarchal character of filmmaking and spectatorship, and supported the LWFG’s statement that ‘a film should not be judged on its own merit regardless of the oppression that went into its making’. Armed with this critical apparatus and the establishment of other feminist film collectives outside of London – notably in Sheffield, Leeds and Cardiff – the movement gained a momentum that projected it well into the 1980s. Indeed, with the establishment of Channel 4 in 1983, many members of these groups went mainstream taking production and commissioning roles. —Frieze, Issue 45, Article by John Douglas Millar, Mar 2012

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FILMS PRODUCED BY LONDON WOMEN'S FILM GROUP

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WHOSE CHOICE? (1976)

Production Company: London Women's Film Group
Production Company: British Film Institute Production Board
Activity not known: DAIN, Marion
Activity not known: EVANS, Barbara
Activity not known: DOVE, Linda
Activity not known: MacLEAN, Fran
Activity not known: RONAY, Esther
Activity not known: SHAPIRO, Susan
Activity not known: WINHAM, Francine

Ann Mason: MEADOWS, Anthea
Gynaecologist: POWELL, Peter
Boyfriend: CLARKE, Johnnie

Part fiction/part documentary structured around a young working class girl's attemps to get an abortion, the choices open to her and the fears and fantasies which colour her decision. —BFI

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ABOUT TIME (1976)

Director: RONAY, Esther
Production Company: London Women's Film Group
Production Company: London Wages For Housework Committee
Sponsor: Greater London Arts Association

Nurse: BARTLEY, Janet
Waitress: CALEY, Mila
Typist: FAIRWEATHER, Eileen
Pensioner: MacKAY, Brigid
Housewife: SPIKE, Annie
Teenager: GILLESPIE, Robin
Teenager: STEIGER, Anna
Passer by: KLAAR, Pien

Five women standing in a bus queue discuss their women's work both inside and outside the home. —BFI

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PUT YOURSELF IN MY PLACE (1974, 25 min)

Director: WINHAM, Francine
Production Company: London Women's Film Group
Producer: WINHAM, Francine
Helped By: BOSTON, Sara
Helped By: FARNHAM, Danny
Helped By: HARRISON, Tom
Helped By: HIRST, Bryan
Helped By: MATIAS, Diana
Helped By: WARD, Russell
Script: WINHAM, Francine
Photography: WINHAM, Francine
Decors: STEFANIDIS, John

Cast Member: GEESON, Judy
Cast Member: ROBERTS, Christian
Cast Member: FARNHAM, Danny
Cast Member: ADEANE, Philip
Cast Member: EASEY, Walter
Cast Member: KIDSTON, Glen
Cast Member: BOSANQUET, Felicity
Cast Member: HANSON, Penny
Cast Member: MORICEAU, Norma
Cast Member: PEPLOE, Cloe
Cast Member: Da GLORIA LOPES, Maria

Comedy about bourgeois marriage dream as perpetuated by the media, and the result when a husband and wife change roles. —BFI

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THE AMAZING EQUAL PAY SHOW (1974, 48 min)

Production Company: London Women's Film Group
Production Company: Women's Street Theatre Group
Music Performance: ARROW, Susan Straight

A political burlesque in seven tableaux, incorporating elements from the musical, horror film and crazy comedy. Examines the question of equal pay, women's participation in unions, and the status of women's work under capitalism. Made in cooperation with the Women's Street Theatre Group who originally wrote and performed the play in 1972. —BFI

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WOMEN OF THE RHONDDA (1973, 20 min)

Filmmaker: CAPPS, Mary
Filmmaker: KELLY, Mary
Filmmaker: DICKINSON, Margaret
Filmmaker: RONAY, Esther
Filmmaker: SEGRAVE, Brigid
Filmmaker: TREVELYAN, H. B.
Filmmaker: SHAPIRO, Susan
Production Company: London Women's Film Group

Cast Member: ADAMS, Doreen
Cast Member: BOXALL, Alice
Cast Member: DAVIES, Beatrice
Cast Member: DAVEY, Mary Elizabeth

Four women describe their experience of the General Strike and life in the 1930's in a South Welsh mining village, and the role of women in the mining community. —BFI

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FAKENHAM FILM (1972)

Director: SHAPIRO, Susan
Production Company: London Women's Film Group
Crew member: BALLANTYNE, Bob
Crew member: DUNSTAN, Carles
Photography: MacGRATH, Nancy
Photography: ROACH, Edna
Commentator: ENGLISH, Eileen

Documentary filmed during the 3rd and 4th months of a successful six month work-in by women workers at Sextons Shoe Factory, Fakenham, Norfolk. Faced with redundancy, the women employees of the shoe factory occupied the building and began producing leather goods as a co-operative. Shows the women at work and discussing the problems facing them such as the failure of the Union to support them, the lack of wages in the aftermath of the seizure of the building and the difficulties in achieving legal status for their business. —BFI

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SERVE AND OBEY (1972)

Director: DOVE, Linda
Production Company: London Women's Film Group

Uniformed, regimented schoolgirls file past the camera, while on the soundtrack they discuss the irrelevance of their education and how it differs from education boys receive. —BFI

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MISS/MRS (1972)

Director: DOVE, Linda
Production Company: London Women's Film Group
Assistant Director: HOOPER, John
Assistant Director: WALBY, Patty

A film that looks at various images of women: the stripper, the bride and the over-burdened housewife. The film explores how women are expected to conform to stereotypes which contrast sharply with their lived experience. —BFI

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[Holdrüholoheuho]

NAME INDEX:

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BOSTON, Sara
 
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CAPPS, Mary

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DAIN, Marion

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DICKINSON, Margaret IMDb

In 1983 Margaret Dickinson founded Marker Ltd. Its main business is the development and production of documentary films, specialising in social and political subjects. As well as making films, Margaret writes on film and film politics.

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DOVE, Linda (1948-2001) IMDb

The weekend before she died aged 53 from cancer, the award-winning film editor Linda Dove was helping to host a teach-in on Afghanistan at her home in Santa Monica, California. The gesture was typical of a woman who had been a pioneer in the world of film and television and had challenged injustice throughout her adult life.
In 1970, she became the first woman to be taken on by the BBC as a trainee film editor. She was a founding member of both the London Women's Film Group and the Newsreel Collective, two outfits that believed that film could be used to change people's perceptions of subjects few film-makers were then tackling. In 1978, she was part of the Newsreel Collective team that won first prize at the Oberhausen Film Festival for Divide And Rule?, a film about racism with a soundtrack that included the Clash, Steel Pulse and Tom Robinson.
She had also worked on the Newsreel Collective's Housey- Housey in 1975 and, in the same year, An Egg Is Not A Chicken, the latter becoming a major campaigning tool for the National Abortion Campaign. In the 1970s, she co-directed The Amazing Equal Pay Show for the London Women's Film Group, as well as Miss/Mrs, Serve And Obey and, in 1976, Whose Choice? She also worked on the well-regarded BBC television series About Men, years before such subjects became common topics in the mainstream media. The director Paul Morrison recalls her as "always the last to leave the cutting room", the ultimate praise for an editor.
Linda met the American film editor Bruce Green, who was to become her partner in life and work, in 1976 in Los Angeles, where she combined bringing up her two daughters, Mia and Abby, with a successful career as a film and television sound editor, and a continued commitment to political causes.
In 1980, she worked on the film Nine To Five, with Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton, and the television movie Attica, one of three Emmy nominations for sound editing with which she was associated, the others, in the late 1970s, being The Woman's Room and Ike, The War Years. The Panama Deception, on which she also worked, exposed the role of the United States' government in Panama, and won a best documentary Oscar in 1992. She was always tickled to have been a small part of television history as the sound editor responsible for the shot that killed JR in the television series Dallas.
In Los Angeles, Linda was active in the Motion Picture Editors Guild, and played a major part in the work of El Rescate, a group dedicated to exposing the human rights abuses of the civil war in El Salvador. She helped to compile a report on atrocities there and, in 1992, flew back to the country, camera in hand, with the FMLN general command after the successful peace talks in Mexico. Among the many tributes after her death was one from Salvadorans who recalled her presence on the victory march through San Salvador.
Born and brought up in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, the middle of five children of two teachers, Linda studied art at Goldsmith's College, London, and Ealing College, where one of her contemporaries was Freddie Mercury.
Her resilience remained with her throughout her long illness. She retained her sense of humour and her curiosity about life until the end and died with her closest family around her. She is survived by her husband and her daughters. —The Guardian Obituary by Duncan Campbell, 14 Dec 2001

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EVANS, Barbara IMDb

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JOHNSTON, Claire (1940-1987) Wiki

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KELLY, Mary (1941) Wiki

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MacLEAN, Fran

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MacKENZIE, Margaret (Midge) Rose (1938-2004) Wiki IMDb

Director: John Huston War Stories (1999) IMDb

Midge Mackenzie, who has died aged 65, was a documentary film-maker, writer and historian of film; energetic and determined in all her endeavours, she made uncompromising, honest and stylish documentaries about feminism, human rights and child abuse as well as many other subjects.
With her habitual Stetson setting off flame red hair, tight jeans, extravagant rings and cowboy boots, Midge Mackenzie's appearance reflected her originality and showmanship, but belied her strong principles and need to expose injustices. Film-making was her real passion, but in her work for the feminist and anti-apartheid movements in the 1960s and 1970s she cut a swathe, excited controversy and made a difference.
Margaret Rose Mackenzie was born in London on March 6 1938, the eldest of three children. After the war, which she spent in Dublin, cared for by a great-aunt, she attended a convent school in north London. But having been left to look after her brothers when her parents divorced, she was determined to escape her home life. She left school at 16 and went to work for an advertising agency in central London, which provided her with an entry into films.
Following a brief marriage to Peter Jepson-Henry, an antiques dealer, she moved to New York where she cut her teeth in film-making as a director of television commercials. Her reputation as a documentary film-maker was established in 1967, when her revolutionary, and widely acclaimed, multimedia Astarte for the Joffrey Ballet made the cover of Time magazine.
Three years later, she brought out Women Talking, a profile of the American feminists Sheila Allen and Kate Millet. Midge Mackenzie was a committed feminist, but she was uneasy with stereotypes and would attend women's lib demonstrations swathed in fur. "There was no such thing," she explained, "as politically correct then." Indeed, at a screening of Women Talking at the ICA in London she included a striptease act.
She showed a similar readiness to court controversy the same year when she successfully staged a re-enactment of the Sharpeville massacre at the Lyceum in London, making full use of the theatre's revolving stage and a contemporary soundtrack of the massacre.
In 1975 Midge Mackenzie released one of her most memorable works, Shoulder to Shoulder, a drama documentary series recounting the history of the Suffragettes, which she later turned into a book. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s she and her companion Frank Cvitanovich, a successful documentary film director, also made commercial films through their company Mohawk Films.
During this period, however, much of her time was taken up with their son, Luke (known as Bunny), who had been born prematurely, severely brain damaged and autistic. Midge Mackenzie unearthed a controversial "patterning" treatment then being pioneered in Pennsylvania, which required her son to have three helpers working on him for five hours every day.
It was a tribute to her resourcefulness, perseverance and organisational skills, and the vast network of acquaintances, friends and helpers she mustered, that the treatment was not only sustained but was successful. Bunny gained some coordination and balance, but died of cancer, aged 11, in 1978.
It was a time of extraordinary anguish for Midge Mackenzie. Her relationship with Cvitanovich had broken down and she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. But when she was offered a job teaching film history at Harvard University she managed to pick herself up and returned to America.
There followed a period of intellectual and professional fulfilment. An arresting sight on campus, hailing everyone with a cheery smile, and with her beloved dog, Tex, in tow, Midge Mackenzie loved teaching and relished the access Harvard provided to the intellectual heart of America.
A highlight of these years was the filming in Mexico of interviews with John Huston, talking about his suppressed war films; in 1999 she turned these interviews into a documentary for Channel Four.
In 1989 Midge Mackenzie returned to Britain, settling in Islington. There she would conduct long boozy lunches with her friends, surrounded by antique figurines and cans of archive film. She also continued to make documentaries that reflected her sense of community and social commitment.
Prisoners of Childhood, which she made in 1991, dealt with issues of child abuse through actors working with therapists to unlock their own childhood experiences. Three years later she set up the first Sheffield International Documentary Festival.
Her last finished work was a sensitive documentary about the London Hospital's facial reconstruction unit and the portraits Mark Gilbert had been commissioned to paint of its patients. These featured in an exhibition, Saving Faces, at the National Portrait Gallery in 2002.
The challenges she faced with her son went some way to prepare her for the ordeal she endured with the recurrence of throat cancer early last year. Her many friends rallied round. Though reduced to scribbling notes in hospital, she never lost her interest in people and her surroundings, and she filmed many of her consultations and treatment.
Midge Mackenzie died on January 28. —The Telegraph Obituary, 11 Feb 2004

Distilling the essential Midge Mackenzie, who has died aged 65, is not easy. She was a film-maker, film historian, director and writer who was determined to be seen and heard. She dedicated her working life to making uncompromising films about feminism, human rights and many other subjects she believed a civilised society should dwell upon.
Rangy and restless, she carried her hand-held camera around as others might a handbag, and was rarely seen without her trademark stetson hat, pulled low over red hair worn in a dishevelled bob. Dogged was the word when it came to getting the material she wanted. It took 17 years to persuade John Huston to be interviewed by her in 1985 and filmed by Richard Leacock for the documentary series War Stories, eventually shown on Channel 4 in 1999. When, afterwards she observed "he was a tough old bugger ... but enchanting" a friend commented that she could have been describing herself.
Feminism ran through her like the message in a stick of rock, a lifelong commitment from the heady days when she filmed a Boston women's collective, which included Betty Friedan and Kate Millett, for Women Talking and was at the forefront of demonstrators pelting Bob Hope with tomatoes at the Miss World contest in London. But that did not mean dressing in sexless sackcloth. She was an astute and witty showgirl who knew the value of being seen and admired. She adored dressing up, being in-your-face with her vivid clothes, skin-tight trousers, one of her wardrobe of exotic fur coats and an exuberance of silver rings the size of small birds perched on her fingers.
Getting noticed and admired in a world of film, where power was predominantly held by men, was sense, not compromise, in her book. She once said she didn't see the point in hostility towards men. Even so, showing the injustice that was too easily done to women in patriarchal societies recurred in her films, whether in the documentary she made for Amnesty about abuses against women or the hugely successful 1975 BBC2 drama documentary series Shoulder To Shoulder. She devised, developed and co-produced this story of the suffragettes' militant campaign, also writing the impressive book that accompanied the series.
Born in London, Midge was the eldest of three. She was evacuated to stay with a relative in Ireland during the war but returned to the family home in Kingsbury afterwards. She grew up in an environment where expectations were not great, left school at 16 and did typing jobs. One of these took her to Shaw Films in Soho, where she persuaded her employer to teach her line production. Next call was New York, where she worked in advertising and started making her own experimental films. Her big break was being asked, in 1967, to make the ground-breaking multi-media production Astarte for Joffrey Ballet, which made the cover of Time magazine.
There was a short marriage in the early 1960s to Peter Henry, and other relationships included "a week of non-verbal communication" with François Truffaut. But her big love was film-maker Frank Cvitanovich (obituary, August 14 1995). From 1967 they lived together for nearly a decade. The relationship was put to the toughest of tests with the birth of their brain-damaged and autistic son Bunny (Alexander). They were told that nothing could be done to improve the very bleak prospects for his quality of life, but in America they found a revolutionary programme devised by Drs Dolman and Delacato. And just as, in the last months of her life, a large network of close friends - the Midge Pack - made sure she was visited and cared for in hospital, so some 42 friends had a rota for doing the "patterning" exercises required for Bunny while Mackenzie worked.
The grief she endured when her relationship with Cvitanovich broke up and, a year later, in 1978, Bunny died, aged 11, in her arms - she spent the last days of his life lying in bed with him - was rarely alluded to. She went to New York and became a visiting fellow in 1980 at Harvard, where she taught film. Back in the UK, she later worked as media policy adviser to her close friend MEP Carole Tongue at the 1989 election and helped to draft the Public Service Broadcasting Report.
After reading the work of psychoanalyst Alice Miller she started exploring the meaning of her own childhood and from this came Prisoners Of Childhood, (1991) in which actors brought out themes of pain and damage from early years. She made the wonderful I Stand Here Ironing (1980) based on Tillie Olsen's stories, and in later years a trilogy of films looking at remote communities in Ireland, Scotland and Wales appeared. Saving Faces documented the patients whose faces had been reconstructed by surgeon Iain Hutchinson and he recalls: "She followed us around absolutely silently and made a film that said so much."
It was ironic that cancer took the voice of someone so articulate and with so much to say, but until the end she was communicating hectically on pads of paper, and the redoubtable spirit, sociability and wide roguish smile never went. —The Guardian Obituary by Angela Neustatter, 5 Feb 2004

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MATIAS, Diana

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MULVEY, Laura (1941) Wiki IMDb

Biography —BFI

Co-Director: Riddles of the Sphinx (1977) IMDb
Co-Director: Amy! (1979) IMDb
Co-Director: Frida Kahlo & Tina Modotti (1983) IMDb
Co-Director: Disgraced Monuments (1994) IMDb

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RONAY, Esther IMDb

Co-Editor: The Year of the Beaver (1985) IMDb

Esther Ronay joined the London Women's Film Group in 1971 and worked on all the group projects.

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SEGRAVE, Brigid (1940)

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SHAPIRO, Susan IMDb

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WINHAM, Francine IMDb

Director: Careless Love (1976) IMDb

Francine Winham was a still photographer in New York and London, and was a member of the London Women's Film Group between 1972 and 1977.

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WOOD, Linda

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BIBLIOGRAPHY:
 
1970s
Film Notes: Information Compiled by the London Women's Film Group
Publisher: London Women's Film Group, 1973
Pages: 25
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Author: Laura Mulvey
Originally Published in: Screen, Volume 16, Issue 3, Autumn 1975, pp. 6-18
Reprinted in: Sue Thornham (ed.), Feminist Film Theory: A Reader (Edinburgh University Press, 1999)
Feminist Politics and Film History
Author: Claire Johnston
Originally Published in: Screen, Volume 16, Issue 3, Autumn 1975, pp. 115-125
Women's Cinema as Counter-Cinema
Author: Claire Johnston
Originaly Published in: Notes on Women's Cinema (Society for Education in Film and Television, 1975)
Reprinted in: Sue Thornham (ed.), Feminist Film Theory: A Reader (Edinburgh University Press, 1999)
Women’s Happytime Commune: New Departures in Women’s Films Jump Cut
Author: E. Ann Kaplan
Originaly Published in: Jump Cut, No. 9, 1975, pp. 9-11
 
1990s
Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism
Author: Lester D. Friedman
Publisher: Routledge, 1993
Pages: 344
Publisher – 2nd Edition: Wallflower, 2006
Pages: 341
Social Process/Collaborative Action: Mary Kelly 1970-75
Authors: Mary Kelly, Judith Mastai
Publisher: Charles H. Scott Gallery, 1997
Pages: 135
Rogue Reels: Oppositional Film in Britain 1945-90
Author: Margaret Dickinson
Publisher: BFI Publishing, 1999
Pages: 330
 
2000s
Feminist Film Theorists: Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, Teresa de Lauretis, Barbara Creed
Author: Shohini Chaudhuri
Publisher: Routledge, 2006
Pages: 160
From Women's Work to the Umbilical Lens: Mary Kelly's Early Films
Author: Siona Wilson
Originaly Published in: Art History, Volume 31, No. 1, Feb 2008 , pp. 79-102
 
2010s
Working Together: Note on British Film Collectives in the 1970s
Authors: Ann Guedes, Esther Leslie, Peter Osborne, Nina Power, Steve Sprung, Humphry Trevelyan, Paul Willemen
Editors: Dan Kidner, Petra Bauer
Publisher: Focal Point Gallery, 2013
Pages: 224

[Holdrüholoheuho]

1943 poll rewatch:
CALLING MR. SMITH (Stefan Themerson, Franciszka Themerson)
https://letterboxd.com/film/calling-mr-smith/

https://youtu.be/kpKVKHk2ukU

[Holdrüholoheuho]

i noticed a hype about this film on Letterboxd...

1943 poll viewing No12:
POWER ON THE LAND: THE STORY OF THE MECHANISATION OF BRITISH FARMING (Ralph Keene)

https://vimeo.com/51529319

[Holdrüholoheuho]

1943 poll viewing No13-14:

LOOKING THROUGH GLASS (Cecil Musk)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5889968/

Looking through glass we see a brighter future!

https://vimeo.com/38986947

LESSONS FROM THE AIR (Harold Purcell, James Rogers)

https://vimeo.com/92721837

[sally]

i can't fuck up irish time

https://twitter.com/acefilmeu/status/13 ... 7446827013

[Holdrüholoheuho]

1943 poll viewing No20:
COASTAL VILLAGE (Stanley Irving)

https://vimeo.com/92657923

i wanted to watch two more (labeled by British Council as 1943) for the poll.
however, IMDb and BFI date them differently.
i watched them anyway...

LOWLAND VILLAGE (Darrell Catling, 1942)
lowland village shoe boozing.
the best beer is the beer drunk from a wellington.


https://vimeo.com/39187634

COUNTRY TOWN (Julian Wintle, 1945) ... tho it was probably shot in 1943.
pretty & healthy people, Boston, Lincolnshire, East Midlands.
3 cinemas in the town!
1 roller-skating rink.

https://vimeo.com/38633472

[Holdrüholoheuho]

(although some of the old paperbacks are beginning so smell a bit now, so it's stinky dreams when i finally do crack them open)

readings this (said in another thread) reminds me i forgot to share my two recent "isles" viewings...

1943 poll viewing No21:
THE LIFE CYCLE OF THE PIN MOULD (Mary Field)
https://letterboxd.com/film/the-life-cy ... pin-mould/

https://vimeo.com/38918045

detour viewing:
MAGIC MYXIES (Mary Field, F. Percy Smith, 1931)
https://letterboxd.com/film/magic-myxies/

https://youtu.be/04kdhZQTnIU

[sally]

1943 poll viewing No20:
COASTAL VILLAGE (Stanley Irving)

good grief. that was way more gorgeous than it had any right to be. ignore the narration and that's pretty much all i want from a film, i could almost smell the salt from my childhood holidays to the quaint places (recent british 'acclaimed' coastal village class war kitsch film, 'bait' (2019), take note!)

[Holdrüholoheuho]

taking note! bookmarked!
but rather due to reading "This movie feels like it shouldn't work, but it does. The rudimentary film process, and the awkwardly dubbed sound along with wooden acting all connects in some ethereal way" than based on your highly ambivalent claims full of heart-smilies and counterstrikes. Sometimes, i doubt if you have any patriotic feelings, Sally?!?!?

[Holdrüholoheuho]

to raise a bit the spirit of patriotism in this thread and to commemorate the Duke of Edinburgh who was known for his unique sense of humor (that helped him to win the heart of the Queen) i am going to watch the following film...

1943 poll viewing No24:
THE ROYAL MILE: EDINBURGH (Terry Bishop)
https://letterboxd.com/film/the-royal-m ... urgh-1943/

Three overseas servicemen take a tour of the Royal Mile – visiting the sights between Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace, and learning about the sometimes gruesome history of Scotland.

https://vimeo.com/39258114

[sally]

as patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel (a phrase from a certain british gentleman, as i proudly recall) it is with deep regret that i reveal that i am excessively patriotic, since it is a highly traditional (and therefore patriotic) british characteristic to be deeply ashamed to be british.



as for bait, i have no idea what the reason was for the stupid 16mm scratchy gimmick (maybe that was the 'bait'!) unless it was a meta commentary on the fake authenticity of the posh people in the film or the dodgy middle-class self-loathing construction of class stereotypes (saintly martyrdom of the working class, & goodness me, the posh impotent boy who might be a homosexual). in fact the movie was only bearable, very pleasantly bearable though, because of the seaside-ness, and the sexual catnip tom hardiness of the lead actor

[Holdrüholoheuho]

sincerely trying to get more familiar with the BDSM approach to patriotism (full of self-flagellation), i am going to watch 3 more films from 1943 produced by British Council.
1943 poll viewings No25-27.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (Bernard Mainwaring)
https://vimeo.com/38931780

HEALTH OF A NATION (Lister Laurance)
https://letterboxd.com/film/health-of-a-nation/
https://vimeo.com/40975102

THE SECOND FREEDOM (Lister Laurance)
https://letterboxd.com/film/the-second-freedom/
https://vimeo.com/39261633

[sally]

sincerely trying to get more familiar with the BDSM approach to patriotism (full of self-flagellation)

lol. tbh i think all that wretched kink (and associated delicious 'stiff upper lip' suffering stuff) was a result of too much internalising all The Empire propaganda we churned out to the colonies (it's not the winning, it's definitely not the winning, it's the taking part that counts) and we ended up colonising ourselves. sadly fading now and these days if the kids do indulge in patriotism (although why the fuck would you) it's just your everyday common (unpatriotically enthusiastic) patriotism that i assume we've imported from america. sad times, apart from when the last spurts of the old style flare up occasionally & we get boaty mcboatface.

(plus exceptions of a sort were made for war so '43 films will not give accurate impressions)

i think the hammer horror stuff is okay?