Film-maker acclaimed as one of Britain’s finest directors of documentaries
John Krish, who has died aged 92, was one of Britain’s finest documentary film-makers, with a long list of credits that stretched from the 1940s to the 80s and across a staggering variety of subjects. His career began in the Crown Film Unit during the second world war, where he assisted Harry Watt on the propaganda film Target for Tonight (1941) and Humphrey Jennings on Listen to Britain (1941) and Fires Were Started (1943).
After serving in the Royal Artillery, he was posted to the Army Film Unit and was one of the editors on The True Glory (1945), the film of the allied invasion of Europe. Invalided out of the army in 1944, he edited newsreels for the Office of War Information, the Us equivalent of the Ministry of Information.
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John Krish, who has died aged 92, was one of Britain’s finest documentary film-makers, with a long list of credits that stretched from the 1940s to the 80s and across a staggering variety of subjects. His career began in the Crown Film Unit during the second world war, where he assisted Harry Watt on the propaganda film Target for Tonight (1941) and Humphrey Jennings on Listen to Britain (1941) and Fires Were Started (1943).
After serving in the Royal Artillery, he was posted to the Army Film Unit and was one of the editors on The True Glory (1945), the film of the allied invasion of Europe. Invalided out of the army in 1944, he edited newsreels for the Office of War Information, the Us equivalent of the Ministry of Information.
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- 5/23/2016
- by Kevin Brownlow
- The Guardian - Film News
For years the essay film has been a neglected form, but now its unorthodox approach to constructing reality is winning over a younger, tech-savvy crowd
For a brief, almost unreal couple of hours last July, in amid the kittens and One Direction-mania trending on Twitter, there appeared a very surprising name – that of semi-reclusive French film-maker Chris Marker, whose innovative short feature La Jetée (1962) was remade in 1995 as Twelve Monkeys by Terry Gilliam. A few months earlier, art journal e-flux staged The Desperate Edge of Now, a retrospective of Adam Curtis's TV films, to large audiences on New York's Lower East Side. The previous summer, Handsworth Songs (1986), an experimental feature by the Black Audio Film Collective Salman Rushdie had once attacked as obscurantist and politically irrelevant, attracted a huge crowd at Tate Modern when it was screened shortly after the London riots.
Marker, Curtis, Black Audio: all have...
For a brief, almost unreal couple of hours last July, in amid the kittens and One Direction-mania trending on Twitter, there appeared a very surprising name – that of semi-reclusive French film-maker Chris Marker, whose innovative short feature La Jetée (1962) was remade in 1995 as Twelve Monkeys by Terry Gilliam. A few months earlier, art journal e-flux staged The Desperate Edge of Now, a retrospective of Adam Curtis's TV films, to large audiences on New York's Lower East Side. The previous summer, Handsworth Songs (1986), an experimental feature by the Black Audio Film Collective Salman Rushdie had once attacked as obscurantist and politically irrelevant, attracted a huge crowd at Tate Modern when it was screened shortly after the London riots.
Marker, Curtis, Black Audio: all have...
- 8/3/2013
- by Sukhdev Sandhu
- The Guardian - Film News
(Humphrey Jennings, 1944-51, BFI, E)
Jennings was killed filming in Greece in 1950 aged 43, bringing to a premature end the career of one of the major figures in British cultural life of the 1930s and 40s. Poet, painter, designer, surrealist, Blakean social visionary, he brought all his gifts together as a documentary film-maker. He was, according to Lindsay Anderson, "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced".
The crucial second volume of his collected works included his wartime masterpieces, Listen to Britain (1942) and Fires Were Started (1943). Volume three rounds out the war with The True Story of Lili Marlene (1944), his odd recounting of how the German soldiers' favourite ballad was taken up by the British squaddies, and A Diary for Timothy (1945), a film about the last year of the war and the prospects for the future, its delicate script written by Em Forster and beautifully read by Michael Redgrave.
Jennings was killed filming in Greece in 1950 aged 43, bringing to a premature end the career of one of the major figures in British cultural life of the 1930s and 40s. Poet, painter, designer, surrealist, Blakean social visionary, he brought all his gifts together as a documentary film-maker. He was, according to Lindsay Anderson, "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced".
The crucial second volume of his collected works included his wartime masterpieces, Listen to Britain (1942) and Fires Were Started (1943). Volume three rounds out the war with The True Story of Lili Marlene (1944), his odd recounting of how the German soldiers' favourite ballad was taken up by the British squaddies, and A Diary for Timothy (1945), a film about the last year of the war and the prospects for the future, its delicate script written by Em Forster and beautifully read by Michael Redgrave.
- 7/27/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
(Humphrey Jennings, 1944-51, BFI, E)
Jennings was killed filming in Greece in 1950 aged 43, bringing to a premature end the career of one of the major figures in British cultural life of the 1930s and 40s. Poet, painter, designer, surrealist, Blakean social visionary, he brought all his gifts together as a documentary film-maker. He was, according to Lindsay Anderson, "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced".
The crucial second volume of his collected works included his wartime masterpieces, Listen to Britain (1942) and Fires Were Started (1943). Volume three rounds out the war with The True Story of Lili Marlene (1944), his odd recounting of how the German soldiers' favourite ballad was taken up by the British squaddies, and A Diary for Timothy (1945), a film about the last year of the war and the prospects for the future, its delicate script written by Em Forster and beautifully read by Michael Redgrave.
Jennings was killed filming in Greece in 1950 aged 43, bringing to a premature end the career of one of the major figures in British cultural life of the 1930s and 40s. Poet, painter, designer, surrealist, Blakean social visionary, he brought all his gifts together as a documentary film-maker. He was, according to Lindsay Anderson, "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced".
The crucial second volume of his collected works included his wartime masterpieces, Listen to Britain (1942) and Fires Were Started (1943). Volume three rounds out the war with The True Story of Lili Marlene (1944), his odd recounting of how the German soldiers' favourite ballad was taken up by the British squaddies, and A Diary for Timothy (1945), a film about the last year of the war and the prospects for the future, its delicate script written by Em Forster and beautifully read by Michael Redgrave.
- 7/27/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
(John Krish, 1959-77; BFI, 15)
John Krish entered the cinema as a teenager early in the second world war, working for the Crown Film Unit (on Harry Watt's Target for Tonight and Humphrey Jennings's Listen to Britain) and the Army Film Unit (as an editor on Carol Reed and Garson Kanin's The True Glory), before joining British Transport Films. It was with the latter group that he made his classic The Elephant Will Never Forget (1953), a beautiful movie about London's last tram journey. It was shown in a much acclaimed quartet of his pictures that travelled the country in 2010, and was included, along with his infinitely moving I Think They Call Him John (1964), in Shadows of Progress, the BFI's four-disc survey of postwar British documentary.
Now, in Krish's 90th year, the BFI help clinch his reputation as one of Britain's most distinctive and distinguished documentarians with a compilation of his work,...
John Krish entered the cinema as a teenager early in the second world war, working for the Crown Film Unit (on Harry Watt's Target for Tonight and Humphrey Jennings's Listen to Britain) and the Army Film Unit (as an editor on Carol Reed and Garson Kanin's The True Glory), before joining British Transport Films. It was with the latter group that he made his classic The Elephant Will Never Forget (1953), a beautiful movie about London's last tram journey. It was shown in a much acclaimed quartet of his pictures that travelled the country in 2010, and was included, along with his infinitely moving I Think They Call Him John (1964), in Shadows of Progress, the BFI's four-disc survey of postwar British documentary.
Now, in Krish's 90th year, the BFI help clinch his reputation as one of Britain's most distinctive and distinguished documentarians with a compilation of his work,...
- 4/27/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
After much media hoopla about "Vertigo" toppling "Citizen Kane" in its poll, Sight and Sound magazine have now released the full version of its once a decade 'Top 250 greatest films of all time' poll results via its website. The site also includes full on links showcasing Top Tens of the hundreds of film industry professionals who participated in the project.
For those who don't want to bother with the individual lists and to save you a bunch of clicking, below is a copy of the full 250 films that made the lists and how many votes they got to be considered for their positions:
1 - Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958) [191 votes]
2 - Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) [157 votes]
3 - Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953) [107 votes]
4 - La Règle du jeu (Renoir, 1939) [100 votes]
5 - Sunrise: a Song for Two Humans (Murnau, 1927) [93 votes]
6 - 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968) [90 votes]
7 - The Searchers (Ford, 1956) [78 votes]
8 - Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929) [68 votes]
9 - The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer,...
For those who don't want to bother with the individual lists and to save you a bunch of clicking, below is a copy of the full 250 films that made the lists and how many votes they got to be considered for their positions:
1 - Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958) [191 votes]
2 - Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) [157 votes]
3 - Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953) [107 votes]
4 - La Règle du jeu (Renoir, 1939) [100 votes]
5 - Sunrise: a Song for Two Humans (Murnau, 1927) [93 votes]
6 - 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968) [90 votes]
7 - The Searchers (Ford, 1956) [78 votes]
8 - Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929) [68 votes]
9 - The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer,...
- 8/18/2012
- by Garth Franklin
- Dark Horizons
(1941-43, BFI, E)
Created in 1930 by John Grierson, the British documentary movement reached its apotheosis during the second world war as the Crown Film Unit. Its dominant figure was Humphrey Jennings, "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced", as Lindsay Anderson put it in the influential 1954 Sight & Sound essay reprinted in the excellent booklet accompanying this outstanding second part of the BFI's three-volume collection of Jennings's work.
The war transformed the Cambridge literary scholar and surrealist painter into a great artist, his heart beating with that of the nation in five masterly movies. First came two 10-minute patriotic-propagandistic films: The Heart of Britain (1941) (narrated for its American audience by Ed Murrow) and Words for Battle (1941), where Laurence Oliver reads from Milton, Blake, Browning, Kipling, Churchill and Lincoln. These were followed by the near flawless Listen to Britain (1942), a paean to communal music-making; Fires Were Started (1943), a feature-length...
Created in 1930 by John Grierson, the British documentary movement reached its apotheosis during the second world war as the Crown Film Unit. Its dominant figure was Humphrey Jennings, "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced", as Lindsay Anderson put it in the influential 1954 Sight & Sound essay reprinted in the excellent booklet accompanying this outstanding second part of the BFI's three-volume collection of Jennings's work.
The war transformed the Cambridge literary scholar and surrealist painter into a great artist, his heart beating with that of the nation in five masterly movies. First came two 10-minute patriotic-propagandistic films: The Heart of Britain (1941) (narrated for its American audience by Ed Murrow) and Words for Battle (1941), where Laurence Oliver reads from Milton, Blake, Browning, Kipling, Churchill and Lincoln. These were followed by the near flawless Listen to Britain (1942), a paean to communal music-making; Fires Were Started (1943), a feature-length...
- 5/5/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
★★★★★ The Complete Humphrey Jennings Volume Two is the second DVD /Blu-ray collection of the British documentary director's work from the 1941-3 period, including two of his most iconic films, Words for Battle (1941) and Listen to Britain (1942). Jennings' work cannot be overvalued for their historical significance and cinematic skill, and this collection provides a series of short documentaries that explore every corner of British life.
Read more »...
Read more »...
- 4/24/2012
- by CineVue
- CineVue
Catch up with the last seven days in the world of film
The big story
Ladddddiiiiiessss and gentlemennnnnn. Are you ready for an auteur smackdown? The Cannes 2012 line-up has been announced. Let's. Get. Ready. To rrrrrrrrrrrrr-read about lots of potentially brilliant films from great directors.
Top of a bill rammed with arthouse heavyweights are Jacques "The Warden" Audiard and Michael "Pain for pleasure" Haneke. The big-name brawlers enter the crowded ring with Rust & Bone - Audiard's drama about a killer whale trainer (Marion Cotillard) who loses her legs on the job - and Love, Haneke's film about a woman (Isabelle Huppert) who moves back in with her parents after her mother suffers a stroke.
Other fighters looking to make their mark on the canvas include Ken "The Realist" Loach (The Angels' Share), Walter "Highwayman" Salles (On the Road) and "Massive" Abbas Kiarostami (Like Someone in Love). They'll be heading into...
The big story
Ladddddiiiiiessss and gentlemennnnnn. Are you ready for an auteur smackdown? The Cannes 2012 line-up has been announced. Let's. Get. Ready. To rrrrrrrrrrrrr-read about lots of potentially brilliant films from great directors.
Top of a bill rammed with arthouse heavyweights are Jacques "The Warden" Audiard and Michael "Pain for pleasure" Haneke. The big-name brawlers enter the crowded ring with Rust & Bone - Audiard's drama about a killer whale trainer (Marion Cotillard) who loses her legs on the job - and Love, Haneke's film about a woman (Isabelle Huppert) who moves back in with her parents after her mother suffers a stroke.
Other fighters looking to make their mark on the canvas include Ken "The Realist" Loach (The Angels' Share), Walter "Highwayman" Salles (On the Road) and "Massive" Abbas Kiarostami (Like Someone in Love). They'll be heading into...
- 4/19/2012
- The Guardian - Film News
Humphrey Jennings's work for the Crown Film Unit in the 1940s gives us a fascinating insight into Britain during wartime. Here, in a clip from his 1942 short film Listen to Britain, we get a glimpse of his talent for picking out the details in the lives of ordinary people that was acclaimed by the likes of Lindsay Anderson and Kevin Macdonald.
• Volume two of The Complete Humphrey Jennings is out via the BFI on 23 April...
• Volume two of The Complete Humphrey Jennings is out via the BFI on 23 April...
- 4/16/2012
- The Guardian - Film News
(1934-40, E, BFI)
A pupil at Cambridge of the great critic I A Richards, Humphrey Jennings (1907-50) was a surrealist painter, a poet and a documentary moviemaker. He died in a freak accident while scouting locations in Greece, and in 1954 he was famously called "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced" by his admirer Lindsay Anderson. His great period was the second world war when he directed Listen to Britain, Fires Were Started and A Diary for Timothy. This first volume of an invaluable three-volume edition of his work covers his career from joining the Gpo film unit up to his first four wartime movies, culminating in the influential classic on the 1940 blitz, London Can Take It!, co-directed by Harry Watt and narrated by the American journalist Quentin Reynolds. Most of the prewar films are fairly impersonal but all are of interest, most especially perhaps a colour film on his Cambridge contemporary,...
A pupil at Cambridge of the great critic I A Richards, Humphrey Jennings (1907-50) was a surrealist painter, a poet and a documentary moviemaker. He died in a freak accident while scouting locations in Greece, and in 1954 he was famously called "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced" by his admirer Lindsay Anderson. His great period was the second world war when he directed Listen to Britain, Fires Were Started and A Diary for Timothy. This first volume of an invaluable three-volume edition of his work covers his career from joining the Gpo film unit up to his first four wartime movies, culminating in the influential classic on the 1940 blitz, London Can Take It!, co-directed by Harry Watt and narrated by the American journalist Quentin Reynolds. Most of the prewar films are fairly impersonal but all are of interest, most especially perhaps a colour film on his Cambridge contemporary,...
- 10/8/2011
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Deep End
Cinema Retro has received the following press release from the British Film Institute:
Make film your New Year resolution
BFI Southbank – BFI Distribution – BFI Festivals – BFI IMAX – BFI DVD – BFI Membership BFI Online – BFI Filmstore – BFI Mediatheques – BFI Gallery – Sight & Sound 2011 is set to become a landmark year for the BFI and this will be reflected in the broad and diverse range of film offerings for audiences across the UK. From film and television premieres and seasons at BFI Southbank, the most eclectic range of DVDs and nationwide theatrical releases by the most influential artists of British and world cinema, to a free insight into the BFI Archive via the Mediatheques around the country and online, there is something to entertain, educate and inspire anyone who loves film. BFI Southbank Great Auteurs – seasons include Howard Hawks (Jan/Feb), Francois Truffaut (Feb/March) Nicolas Roeg (March), Terence Rattigan (April...
Cinema Retro has received the following press release from the British Film Institute:
Make film your New Year resolution
BFI Southbank – BFI Distribution – BFI Festivals – BFI IMAX – BFI DVD – BFI Membership BFI Online – BFI Filmstore – BFI Mediatheques – BFI Gallery – Sight & Sound 2011 is set to become a landmark year for the BFI and this will be reflected in the broad and diverse range of film offerings for audiences across the UK. From film and television premieres and seasons at BFI Southbank, the most eclectic range of DVDs and nationwide theatrical releases by the most influential artists of British and world cinema, to a free insight into the BFI Archive via the Mediatheques around the country and online, there is something to entertain, educate and inspire anyone who loves film. BFI Southbank Great Auteurs – seasons include Howard Hawks (Jan/Feb), Francois Truffaut (Feb/March) Nicolas Roeg (March), Terence Rattigan (April...
- 12/29/2010
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
The BFI is currently staging a major season at the BFI Southbank of postwar British documentaries, and to accompany it there's an extended run of this compilation of four films by one of our finest documentarists, John Krish, who started out as an editor (he had credits on Harry Watt's Target for Tonight and Humphrey Jennings's Listen to Britain). The first is the classic The Elephant Will Never Forget (1953) a lively, nostalgia-rich record of the last week of the last London tram. The others, each set on a single day in the early 1960s, deal with a seaside outing by Birmingham schoolkids to Weston-super-Mare, an afternoon in a secondary modern school, and an elderly widower spending a day alone in a London high-rise flat. Seeing them is like opening a series of time capsules. The best three are on the four-disc set of 32 films, Shadows of Progress: Documentary...
- 11/14/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
He was behind the Ealing films and made a handful of the most polished, imaginative and enjoyable movies of the 1940s. It's time the name of Alberto Cavalcanti was better known, argues Kevin Jackson
'Directed by Cavalcanti" runs the last of the black-and-white title credits. Back in the 1940s, the ordinary chap in the Odeon's ninepenny stalls is baffled, even annoyed. Who on earth is this jumped-up foreigner, thinking he's so bloody famous that he doesn't need a first name? (In fact, Cavalcanti was widely seen as one of the most self-effacing, charming men ever to have worked in film.) And why is a bloody Eyetie in charge of a British film – let alone an Ealing film, the most British productions of all? (In fact, Cavalcanti was Brazilian.) But those in the audience who had noticed the unusual credit once or twice before settled deeper into their red plush seats,...
'Directed by Cavalcanti" runs the last of the black-and-white title credits. Back in the 1940s, the ordinary chap in the Odeon's ninepenny stalls is baffled, even annoyed. Who on earth is this jumped-up foreigner, thinking he's so bloody famous that he doesn't need a first name? (In fact, Cavalcanti was widely seen as one of the most self-effacing, charming men ever to have worked in film.) And why is a bloody Eyetie in charge of a British film – let alone an Ealing film, the most British productions of all? (In fact, Cavalcanti was Brazilian.) But those in the audience who had noticed the unusual credit once or twice before settled deeper into their red plush seats,...
- 7/2/2010
- by Kevin Jackson
- The Guardian - Film News
First the history, then the list:
In 1969, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas decided to open the world’s first museum devoted to film. Of course, a typical museum hangs its collections of artwork on the wall for visitors to walk up to and study. However, a film museum needs special considerations on how — and what, of course — to present its collection to the public.
Thus, for this film museum, first a film selection committee was formed that included James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney, plus, for a time, Stan Brakhage. This committee met over the course of several months to decide exactly what films would be collected and how they would be shown. The final selection of films would come to be called the The Essential Cinema Repertory.
The Essential Cinema Collection that the committee came up with consisted of about 330 films.
In 1969, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas decided to open the world’s first museum devoted to film. Of course, a typical museum hangs its collections of artwork on the wall for visitors to walk up to and study. However, a film museum needs special considerations on how — and what, of course — to present its collection to the public.
Thus, for this film museum, first a film selection committee was formed that included James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney, plus, for a time, Stan Brakhage. This committee met over the course of several months to decide exactly what films would be collected and how they would be shown. The final selection of films would come to be called the The Essential Cinema Repertory.
The Essential Cinema Collection that the committee came up with consisted of about 330 films.
- 5/3/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
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