Vision On

The two cultures

One strand of my reading this week has been taken up with Tim Boon's new book Films of Fact: A History of Science in Documentary Films and Television. Wallflower Press has published this in the same series as my Vision On; there's also a tie-in exhibition at the Science Museum, plus this New Scientist video of very early science films, with an interview from Tim.

There's much that's really interesting in the book, but one of the things that particularly fascinated me was his exploration of the relationship between scientists and the BBC in the 1950s.

Could it be, could it be?

Sky Arts, for which we've just completed Art of Faith, is very savvy about securing press attention. And one of its smartest strategies is the Friday night "Hijack" slot. A personality chooses a run of programmes for the evening from the channel's catalogue. Marry this idea with a figure in whom the press is interested and it's a smart way of securing free column inches.

Announced today is the programmer for Friday August 22: Culture Secretary Andy Burnham, still somewhat of a mystery to those in the arts and broadcasting. So today the Guardian Culture blog and the Times ran pieces about what might be divined from his selection. And nestled in his quartet of announced choices is a half-hour documentary about Antony Gormley, an artist who according to Burnham achieves "the remarkable trick of being both utterly accessible and deeply mysterious at the same time".

Now could this be, could this possibly be, our film from theEYE series with Gormley? The Times describes the programme as an "interview" with the artist, which is a pretty fair description of our documentary, although it also features a really good and rather beautifully filmed selection of his works. And this EYE is under licence to Sky Arts. If it is, I have to say I'm rather childishly pleased with the idea -- and tomorrow I'll try to confirm whether this is the case. The picture incidentally is of one of Gormley's accessible-but-mysterious figures snapped at Roche Court earlier in the summer.

Update: Sky Arts have confirmed that Andy Burnham's choice is indeed our EYE film. Neat that, isn't it?

Watching the Qur'an on television

Last night I watched two hours of television straight through -- and it was just a single programme. Well, alright, I did make one phone call and I got up to get a drink at least twice. But devoting this amount of time to an off-air showing one film, and a documentary at that, is much rarer today than it once was.

Technology (from the VCR to the iPlayer) has combined with social change (too many other media demands) to reinforce forms of television directed primarily to the short attention span. So in both fact and fiction we have faster editing, busier shots with constant movement and frenetic graphics, plus ever-stronger verbal sign-posting. All of which --  one could argue (I would) -- drains meaning and the potential of complexity from individual images and their juxtapositions. And all of which is familiar, perhaps overly so. But it can take something that resists these pressures to expose their workings -- and that's certainly what Antony Thomas' film The Qur'an did on Channel 4 last night.

All you need is love

Congratulations to my friend Ian Macmillan (on the right) who entered into his Civil Partnership with Andy Hitchman today. It was a lovely, touching ceremony.

 

 

 

Ian made the film The Scholte Affair with me for the Tx. series, but this is the opening from his truly exceptional Channel 4 series with Matt Collings, This is Modern Art.

Postcard from Berlin, day 3

This is me today with Brecht.

Somehow the day took a long time to get started, but eventually we went first to the Filmmuseum in the Sony Center. The displays engaged us even if they didn't exactly overwhelm. There's a good use of mirrors to give the idea of the infinite and magical spaces of film and there's the expected mix of artifacts, photos and clips.

What's particularly striking (and odd) is that the display gives a good sense of German cinema through to the war, but then more or less stops, with just one gallery devoted to a simple display of stars in the post-war years -- and then an unremarkable attraction about science fiction and special effects.

Postcard from Berlin, day 2

Part of this relates to an earlier post, Why I write. Is it really useful or interesting for anyone else for me to relate what I'm doing in Berlin for a few days? Probably not, but even as a strictly personal note I'm pleased to do it. And if anyone's at all interested, then I'm happy to share it with you.

Slept like a log but woke to a final decision about whether or not to accept formally the invitation from Locarno for The Eternity Man to show in a Grand Piazza festival screening. Rosemary and I finally agreed by phone  that we should, right on the deadline. Out for breakfast with Ben in a café and then on to Kreuzberg.

Postcard from Berlin, day 1

I've come to Berlin for three days with my 14-year old, Ben. He's doing GCSE German and studying the Nazis for history, so the trip seemed like a good idea to encourage him. We went away like this two years ago to Munich, when we saw Bayern Munich vs Dortmund in the Olympic Stadium. And we had a really good time.

We flew out on Easyjet last night and got to the Hotel Intercontinental near the Zoo at about 11.30pm. This was also the last day's filming on our Art Race project in New York and LA, and there had been a time when I'd been going out to see the crew and our commissioning editor in LA. But Berlin won out, and I'm pleased (even though there's no football planned this time). We're here 'til Friday afternoon and we want to see a bunch of the obvious tourist sites. (Photos on their way.)

I've been to Berlin several times before.

One small idea (1.)

Walking around the Twombly exhibition I was struck by an idea for a series of television documentaries. There's a terrific group of canvases, Untitled (Bolsena), that was apparently painted in the summer of 1969 at a time when the artist was fascinated by television coverage of the first moon landing. And once you know that, you can see in the details suggestions of the craft and its path through to the moon and back.

I suddenly thought of making a film that brought together a range of artwork -- and not just painting but poetry, music and more -- that was directly prompted or influenced by Apollo 11. The catalogue references Robert Rauschenberg's Stoned Moon series of lithographs, and now I'm on the hunt for more. It seemed to me at that moment an excellent idea -- and one with a natural tie-in time next summer, when we have the 40th anniversary of the landing.

A hour or so later, I decided on a preliminary title, Inspired, and on the sense that it probably needed two companions to make into a short series (which is always more commissionable than a one-off). So why not apply the approach to two other key post-war post-war events, the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the 9/11 attacks?

I'm going to post occasionally as I develop the notion and see if I can find some funding and bring it to reality.

Cy and Marc

Tate Modern's exhibition of the work of Cy Twombly is, simply, glorious. After a clutch of early works, it concentrates on presenting groups of works made by Twombly at a specific moment -- and the galleries have rarely looked better. Indeed, perhaps the last time there was a show as simply visually as this was the Donald Judd exhibition back in 2004, also curated personally by Tate Director Nicholas Serota. These are cycles of great beauty and richness and poetry and wonder.

(My one caveat is, for the moment, about the sculpture. For me, the objects do far less than the paintings and drawings. I think I'd have preferred a show that featured fewer of these. The image Quattro Stagioni: Inverno, 1993-4 is © Cy Twombly, courtesy Tate Modern.)

I'll unquestionably return, and I hope on several occasions, before the show closes in mid-September. One of my interests is that more than a decade ago I produced a film about Twombly's work with the radical (and wonderful) director Marc Karlin.

Benny, Bjorn and Benjamin Britten

The movie version of Mamma Mia! opens wide next week, with one or two cinemas already offering special previews. Go see it.

The film, just like the theatre show, is irresistible: a joyful, delightful and occasionally poignant confection with reflections on age and youth, dreams and realities that remain just the right side of trite. Phyllida Lloyd directs brilliantly, drawing out a marvellous comic performance from Meryl Streep and finding a screen language that's direct but inventive, and that bounces satisfyingly between reality (well, sort of) and all-out fantasy.

I was particularly interested to see it because, just about a decade ago, Illuminations was working with Phyllida on the television film of Benjamin Britten's Gloriana.