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Basil Wright
Basil Wright (12 June 1907, Sutton, Surrey – 14 October 1987, Frieth, Buckinghamshire, England) was a documentary filmmaker, film historian, film critic and teacher. Biography After leaving Sherborne School, a well known independent school in the market town of Sherborne in Dorset, Basil Wright was the first recruit to join John Grierson at the Empire Marketing Board's film unit in 1930, shortly after he graduated from Cambridge University. Wright's 1934 film ''Song of Ceylon'' is his most celebrated work. Shot on location in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) the film was completed with the composer Walter Leigh at the GPO Film Unit in London. At the GPO, Wright acted as producer and wrote the script for '' Night Mail'' (1936) for which he received a joint directorial credit with Harry Watt. Wright had introduced his friend W. H. Auden to the film unit and the poet's verse was included in the film. Wright left the GPO to form his own production company, The Realist Film Unit (RFU ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Basil Wright, Joris Ivens, Elmar Klos I Jerzy Toeplitz - Film Nr 55-56 - 1948-12-23
Basil (, ; ''Ocimum basilicum'' , also called great basil, is a culinary herb of the Family (biology), family Lamiaceae (mints). It is a Hardiness (plants), tender plant, and is used in cuisines worldwide. In Western cuisine, the generic term "basil" refers to the Variety (botany), variety also known as sweet basil or Genovese basil. Basil is native to tropical regions from Central Africa to Southeast Asia. In temperate climates basil is treated as an annual plant, however, basil can be grown as a short-lived Perennial plant, perennial or Biennial plant, biennial in warmer Hardiness zone, horticultural zones with Tropical climate, tropical or Mediterranean climates. There are many List of basil cultivars, varieties of basil including sweet basil, Thai basil (''O. basilicum'' var. ''thyrsiflora''), and Mrs. Burns' Lemon basil, Mrs. Burns' Lemon (''O. basilicum var. citriodora''). ''O. basilicum'' can Cross-pollination, cross-pollinate with other species of the ''Ocimum'' genus, p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Film Centre
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere through the use of moving images. These images are generally accompanied by sound and, more rarely, other sensory stimulations. The word "cinema", short for cinematography, is often used to refer to filmmaking and the film industry, and to the art form that is the result of it. Recording and transmission of film The moving images of a film are created by photographing actual scenes with a motion-picture camera, by photographing drawings or miniature models using traditional animation techniques, by means of CGI and computer animation, or by a combination of some or all of these techniques, and other visual effects. Before the introduction of digital production, series of still images were recorded on a strip of chemically sensitize ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, distribution, and education. It is sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and partially funded under the British Film Institute Act 1949. Purpose It was established in 1933 to encourage the development of the arts of film, television and the moving image throughout the United Kingdom, to promote their use as a record of contemporary life and manners, to promote education about film, television and the moving image generally, and their impact on society, to promote access to and appreciation of the widest possible range of British and world cinema and to establish, care for and develop collections reflecting the moving image history and heritage of the United Kingdom. BFI activities Archive The BFI main ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic literary revival, Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. He was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize. He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivien Greene, Vivien Dayrell-Browning. Later in life he took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic". He died in 1991, at age 86, of leukemia, and was buried in Corseaux cemetery. Early years (1904–1922) Henry Graham Green ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Spectator
''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world. It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''The Daily Telegraph'' newspaper, via Press Holdings. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture. It is politically conservative. Alongside columns and features on current affairs, the magazine also contains arts pages on books, music, opera, film and TV reviews. Editorship of ''The Spectator'' has often been a step on the ladder to high office in the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom. Past editors include Boris Johnson (1999–2005) and other former cabinet members Ian Gilmour (1954–1959), Iain Macleod (1963–1965), and Nigel Lawson (1966–1970). Since 2009, the magazine's editor has been journalist Fraser Nelson. ''The Spectator Australia'' offers 12 pages on Australian politics and affairs as well as the full UK ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Ayrton
Michael Ayrton (20 February 1921 – 16 November 1975)T. G. Rosenthal, "Ayrton , Michael (1921–1975)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2008accessed 24 Jan 2015/ref> was a British artist and writer, renowned as a painter, printmaker, sculptor and designer, and also as a critic, broadcaster and novelist. His varied output of sculptures, illustrations, poems and stories reveals an obsession with flight, myths, mirrors and mazes. He was also a stage and costume designer, working with John Minton on the 1942 John Gielgud production of Macbeth at the age of nineteen, and a book designer and illustrator for Wyndham Lewis's '' The Human Age'' trilogy. An exhibition, 'Word and Image' (National Book League 1971), explored Lewis's and Ayrton's literary and artistic connections. He also collaborated with Constant Lambert and William Golding. Life and career Ayrton was born Michael Ayrton Gould, son of the writer Gerald Gould a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It has 193 member states and 12 associate members, as well as partners in the non-governmental, intergovernmental and private sector. Headquartered at the World Heritage Centre in Paris, France, UNESCO has 53 regional field offices and 199 national commissions that facilitate its global mandate. UNESCO was founded in 1945 as the successor to the League of Nations's International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation.English summary). Its constitution establishes the agency's goals, governing structure, and operating framework. UNESCO's founding mission, which was shaped by the Second World War, is to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights by facilitating collaboration and dialogue among nations. It pursues this objec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Rotha
Paul Rotha (3 June 1907 – 7 March 1984) was a British documentary film-maker, film historian and critic. Early life and education He was born Paul Thompson in London, and educated at Highgate School and at the Slade School of Fine Art. Career Rotha was a close collaborator of John Grierson, and Wolfgang Suschitzky was one of his cinematographers. He directed and produced dozens of documentaries including ''Contact'' (1933), ''Air Outpost'' (1937) ''The Face of Britain'' (1935),'' World of Plenty'' (1943), ''Land of Promise'' (1947), ''A City Speaks'' (1947) and many others. ''The World Is Rich'' (1947) and '' Cradle of Genius'' (1961), both of which were nominated for an Academy Award, and feature films including the BAFTA-nominated '' No Resting Place''. Rotha was Head of BBC TV's Documentaries Department between May 1953 and May 1955. Rotha shared with Otto Neurath an interest in the techniques of visual communication, and the two men worked together on several films, wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Festival Of Britain
The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition and fair that reached millions of visitors throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951. Historian Kenneth O. Morgan says the Festival was a "triumphant success" during which people: Labour cabinet member Herbert Morrison was the prime mover; in 1947 he started with the original plan to celebrate the centennial of the Great Exhibition of 1851. However, it was not to be another World Fair, for international themes were absent, as was the British Commonwealth. Instead the 1951 festival focused entirely on Britain and its achievements; it was funded chiefly by the government, with a budget of £12 million. The Labour government was losing support and so the implicit goal of the festival was to give the people a feeling of successful recovery from the war's devastation, as well as promoting British science, technology, industrial design, architecture and the arts. The Festival's centrepiece was in London on the South ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Young Person's Guide To The Orchestra
''The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra'', Op. 34, is a 1945 musical composition by Benjamin Britten with a subtitle ''Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell''. It was based on the second movement, "Rondeau", of the '' Abdelazer'' suite. It was originally commissioned for the British educational documentary film called ''Instruments of the Orchestra'' released on 29 November 1946, directed by Muir Mathieson and featuring the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Sargent; Sargent also conducted the concert première on 15 October 1946 with the Liverpool Philharmonic in the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, England. The work is one of the best-known pieces by the composer, and is often associated with two other works in music history: Saint-Saëns' '' The Carnival of the Animals'' and Prokofiev's '' Peter and the Wolf''. This piece is also commonly played as the intro for british band Yes' live tours, starting in the 2000s. Instrumentation ''The Young Person's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. His best-known works include the opera '' Peter Grimes'' (1945), the '' War Requiem'' (1962) and the orchestral showpiece '' The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra'' (1945). Born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, the son of a dentist, Britten showed talent from an early age. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London and privately with the composer Frank Bridge. Britten first came to public attention with the ''a cappella'' choral work '' A Boy was Born'' in 1934. With the premiere of ''Peter Grimes'' in 1945, he leapt to international fame. Over the next 28 years, he wrote 14 more operas, establishing himself as one of the leading 20th-century composers in the genre. In addition to large-scal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Defeated People
''A Defeated People'' is a 1946 British documentary short film made by the Crown Film Unit, directed by Humphrey Jennings and narrated by William Hartnell. The film depicts the shattered state of Germany, both physically and as a society, in the immediate aftermath of World War II. The narration explains what is being done – and what needs to be done – both by the occupying Allied forces and the German people themselves to build a better Germany from the ruins. Synopsis The film opens with a map of the German zones of occupation with the British zone highlighted. Voiceovers in a variety of English class accents offer a snapshot of what is being said about Germany in Britain ("They asked for it and they got it!", "You can't let them starve", "As far as I can see it'd be a good thing if some of them did die"). A series of images shows the country's shattered infrastructure, with destroyed roads, bridges, railway lines and factories. This is followed by shots of missing persons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
