Documentaries mid 70's to early 90's

Starting with Chinese Comics, a student project in 1976, this prompted an abiding interest for me in trying to understand what was going on in Geo-politics over the years. Vida were myself, Penny Dedman and Anthony Cooper. There are a set of documentaries here where we not only found our feet, we were suppliers to Channel 4 (and I directed also for the BBC) and I have to say that all of our Channel 4 Dos were to regularly get pick of the day - often in all the broadsheets and many of the tabloids. These were heady days and you'll see that we were unafraid of getting in big names as VO for these as most often actors such as Bille Whitelaw, Bob Peck, Bernard Hill and Tilda Swinton leaned leftward. Part of being unafraid came from an externisve exposure to big names from music as we were working for MTV and then Universal International.
CHINESE COMICS  1976

Directed by Penny Dedman, I shot this for her in 1976 and we edited it together. We'd been taken under the wing of two people Tony Wickert (who was in Whiplash in 1960) and Tony Nicholls from Liberation Films who'd come into the university to teach TV production. It is lacking technically, but as an early document of Chinese thinking and our relationship to it, there is little else around.
TALKING HEADS 1978/1979

​The early Video Group Vida (Vida meaing "Look at This!") gave over 150 video shows between 1977 and 1980) as we decided that without showing the work, it is irrelevant.

Talking Heads was our analysis of the problem that media brings to people's live. Wee wrote: Perhaps we can develop an ecology of the mind to accompany our ecological views - but we were unaware at that time that the lobbys are so powerful that our earths ecology would be trashed...

​So Talking Heads represents our starting position.
INSIDE COMICS 1978
Our documentary work from 1978 got a scoop on Neil Adams, the Artist who worked on the Angry Superman' - and who discovered Siegel and Schuster -who had invented Superman working as doormen at DC comics - which in itself was a a terrible indictment of DC's treatment of the originators of their IP content. We then mistakenly showed it to the BBC and they promptly made an Arena from our idea - having said they were not interested in the subject.

If you listen to Adams in 1978, he presages the massive success of Marvel and DC in the future. We were learning as we went
Eisenstein: Programme of Attractions - 1979 - 33 minutes 6 projector tape/slide

A very important childhood which affected one of our greatest filmmakers
Money Talks 1979 - 1983 25 minutes 30 seconds

It would be true to say we did not know what we were doing - but our hearts were in the right place. When I saw this again in preparation for placing it here - at several points I couldn;t help but burst out laughing at our inadequacies and intellectual limits - but at least we were trying to get beneath our own prejudices. At that time we wanted to make explorative documentaries and we had not yet seen Louis Malle's work (Phantom India) but we had seen Chris Marker's Le Jolie Mai) so we knew something was to be had - and we set out to investigate 'Money'... this is unfinished as we were on the brink of a new stage of investigation which had not yet crystallised in our minds. It is not entirely impossible that we were being influenced by capricious substances - maybe in the last interview. Anthony was very brave in placing himself under the microscope at the end - of which there are two endings - both exactly the same. 
​​​1980  Documentary Rape KQED SF, KABC LA, KTTW Chicago, The Tate

Though the use of the the term 'rape' is a dangerous one, we felt that the news/documentary system was irresponsible in its use of information. We took a comedic position in this which was to be broadcast across one half of America (From KQED San Francisco, to KABC Los Angles and across to WTTW Chicago)...
HEALTH EMERGENCY 1982 - bought by Channel 4 for Transmission

There were a variety of projects between America and this work - but here we engage with the beginning of the destruction of the National Health Service  under Thatcher - a subject we returned to over the next 20 years. Channel 4 purchased and screened this documentary in the Eleventh Hour strand and this began our journey with them.
MAKING NEWS  1983 - Eventually picked up by the BBC as a key training tape for journalists​

Made for the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom and financed by about 5 unions, this was Vida - now Triple Vision - putting into practice what we'd theorised in Talking Heads - We decoided we would take apart news strategies and reveal just exactly what facts theyed gathered and what accusations they'd made - the outcome was sobering. In fact the BBC did not like this doc at all and we received visits from NUJ and the ACTT and we were threatened with having our union membership taken away if we went ahead with this - and we thought, if they're willing to do that we must be on to something. Some years later the BBC decided to use this doc to train new reporters. 
​ THE COLD WAR GAME - The USA   1986/1987 - Channel 4

When three of us formulated Triple Vision around 1983/4, Renny Bartlett, Penny Dedman and myself came together and Renny by 1985/6 had pulled a commission to examine American Foreign Policy in the Third World. Renny directed and I did camera on the interviews and one day Renny introduced me to someone as Noam. This took some editing as the history was so complex. Voice by Bernard Hill.
THE COLD WAR GAME - The USSR  1987/1988 - Channel 4

For some time we'd looked for a director that would satisfy Renny's specifications and by elimination that came down to myself  with Penny Dedman and myself producing but also writing with Jonathan Steele of the Guardian. This achieved pick of the day in all of the Broadsheets and the tabloids - and got a commendation and a mention in the House of Lords as understanding of the Russian mentality. In this work we realised that much of the footage available to illustrate the early years in Russia was from Eisenstein (Drama) or Vertov (constructed documentary) - so we formulated a plan to fictionalise out way of conveying facts about Russia such that our dramatisation was in black and white. AT the very end, in an interview with a Kremlin advisor on American affairs, we shot the documentary in colour and in English and slowly dissolved to Black and white and Russian to make the point that everything we know or believe these days is a narrative. What we were saying here is to understand Russia's petulant advances, we have to understand how they perceive our treatment of them. Voice by Bob Peck and Billie Whitelaw. ​
Intensive Care Part One Health 1990 - Channel 4

​For Channel 4 a hiostory and an analysis of the te4ncencies behind the health service and how the COnservatives were cuttin g away at the NHS even then.

​V/O Tilda Swinton
Intensive Care Part Two: Care 1990 (Excerpt 20 mins) - Channel 4
​
​​V/O Tilda Swinton
Intensive Care Part Two: Care - Second part (Excerpt 40 minutes) - Channel 4


​V/O Tilda Swinton
To Stand and Stare: A Somerset Landscape 2011 - 2020

70 minutes

Co-Directed with Charlotte Humpston