Documenting the Social and Historical Margins in the Films of Philip Donnellan

Franklin, Ieuan

doi:10.4000/lisa.5606

Cited by 1 publication

(4 citation statements)

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“…The effect of the images and the sounds is hypnotic and transforms the sequence into, in the words of Franklin, 'a ritual of aesthetic wonder.' 36 Much of the documentary is shot away from the workplace: when Mallen shares advice given to him by his father ('a rough diamond… a typical Black Country man'), he is filmed looking directly into camera, and we can see and hear the yard -complete with chickens and terrier -in which he sits.…”

Section: The Television Documentaries Of Philip Donnellanmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…37 Franklin remarked upon the film's focus on leisure pursuits, since in contrast to other contemporary representations, it 'represents the working class at play, rather than as proletariat'. 38 This is achieved through allowing these activities to be narrated by Mallen, and their association through video and audio montage of the Black Country village, working practices, and voices. Donnellan argued that Mallen's narration was a radical choice, since at the time, 'only the elect in broadcasting -commentators, interviewers, mediators -[were] allowed to speak facing the audience directly'.…”

Section: The Television Documentaries Of Philip Donnellanmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…41 In ways comparable to Mitchell's early films, techniques and concerns associated with pure radio are brought into play: voices from below, and in this case the surprising employment of Mallen himself as the host and dominant voice of the programme; the use of evocative music; impressionistic images employed allusively and associatively; and a concern to capture atmosphere and the textures of everyday life and leisure. For Franklin, Denis Mitchell's work and the early films of Donnellan are drawn together by their shared origin in the regions, a 'poetic and disjunctive aesthetic and humanist structure of feeling', 42 a contrapuntal relationship between sound and image grounded in the use of the tape recorder, and a central interest in people -as opposed to the social processes and institutional operations that so fascinated many of the films made within the documentary tradition associated with John Grierson. Donnellan's Coventry Kids (1960) offers a compellingly ambivalent glimpse at Coventry's post-war resurrection.…”

Section: The Television Documentaries Of Philip Donnellanmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…48 Rather than illustrating the existing audio, Donnellan updated and expanded the scope of the original programmes: for example, with The Shoals of Herring, instead of cutting archive footage into an 'antiquarian and elegiac' film, Donnellan travelled to Scotland in 1972 to document fishermen's contemporary concerns 49 . These often-political additions provoked the ire of BBC brass, 50 as did his decision to screen (without adequate permission) The Shoals of Herring for those Scottish fishing communities, who could not receive BBC2. 51 Donnellan's later films are held by some critics to have become too partisan, too 'political', although they long remained one of the few powerful expressions of progressive and radical ideas within BBC Television.…”

Section: The Television Documentaries Of Philip Donnellanmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Intermedial Relationships of Radio Features with Denis Mitchell’s and Philip Donnellan’s Early Television Documentaries

Stevens¹,

Wyver²

2020

Radio Modernisms

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Writing of the closure in early 1965 of the Radio Features Department, Asa Briggs identifies one of the reasons for the controversial decision as 'the incursion of television, which was developing its own features.' '[Laurence] Gilliam and his closest colleagues believed in the unique merits of "pure radio". The screen seemed a barrier' (The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Vol. 5, p. 348). Rather than the screen being 'a barrier' for them, a number of the creators of the emerging television documentary were from the late 1950s onwards able to transfer and transform distinctive techniques of 'pure radio' into highly effective visual forms. Two key figures were the producers of 'poetic' documentaries Denis Mitchell and Philip Donnellan, who employed layered voices, imaginative deployments of music and effects, and allusive juxtapositions of sound and image, to develop an alternative (although always marginal) tradition to the supposedly objective approaches of current affairs and, later, verité filmmakers. And a dozen years after the dismemberment of the Features Department, Donnellan paid tribute to it in his glorious but little-seen film Pure Radio (BBC1, 3 November 1977). Taking important early films by Mitchell and Donnellan as case studies, this paper explores the impact of radio features on television documentaries in the 1950s and early 1960s, and assesses the extent to which the screen in its intermedial relationships with 'pure radio' was a barrier or, in the work of certain creators, an augmentation.

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Section: The Television Documentaries Of Philip Donnellanmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Television Documentaries Of Philip Donnellanmentioning

confidence: 99%