Bill Douglas

Bill Douglas

Рождение : 1934-04-17, Scotland, UK

Смерть : 1991-06-18

История

William Gerald Forbes (Bill) Douglas was a Scottish film director best known for the trilogy of films about his early life. Having been interested in film-making all his life, in 1968 Douglas enrolled at the London International Film School, where he wrote the screenplay for a short autobiographical film called Jamie. After initial difficulties in finding support for the project, he eventually found a champion at the British Film Institute in the newly appointed head of Production, Mamoun Hassan, who secured funding on the basis that Jamie should form part one of a trilogy – echoing the great childhood trilogies of Ray and Gorki. The film was renamed "My Childhood", and its success on the international festival circuit paved the way for the second and third instalments of the trilogy of Douglas's formative years: My Ain Folk (1973) and My Way Home (1978). The Bill Douglas Trilogy recounts the harrowing experiences of a young boy, Jamie, growing up in crippling poverty: material and emotional impoverishment; terrible privations at the hands of his paternal grandmother; incarceration in a children’s home; living in a hostel for down-and-outs. Eventually the call-up for national service allows Jamie to find freedom through his friendship with Robert, a young middle class Englishman who introduces him to books and the possibility of a more optimistic and fulfilling future. The austere black and white images of the films embody a stillness and intensity reminiscent of silent cinema and this visual style is augmented by the equally spare and precise use of sound. Just as the stillness of the image forces the audience to look, so the relative silence encourages greater attention to specific sounds – boots scraping on asphalt, the chirping of birds and the timbre of voices – granting an emotional power lost in the aural bombardment characterising much contemporary cinema. The Trilogy gained a wealth of critical plaudits but Douglas struggled to raise financing for his next project, and was forced to find other ways of earning a living. Mamoun Hassan, the former head of BFI Production, invited him to teach at the National Film and Television School from 1978 and he proved to be an inspiring presence. Hassan was also able, in his role as director of the National Film Finance Corporation to help realise the project of Comrades, Douglas's film about the 'Tolpuddle Martyrs', six Dorset farm labourers who in 1834 were arrested and tried for forming a trade union and subsequently transported to Australia. Even so, the film did not appear until 1986, six years after the screenplay had been completed. Dubbed a 'poor man's epic', Comrades continues Douglas's interest in the perseverance of the human spirit in the face of material adversity. It also brings to the fore his fascination with the world of optics and image-making, through a number of references to various forms of Victorian optical entertainments such as the magic lantern, thezoetrope, the peep show and the camera obscura. The story itself is mediated by the character of an itinerant magic lanternist who reappears in a number of roles. Comrades was to be Bill Douglas's last film. He died of cancer and is buried in the churchyard of Bishop's Tawton in Devon.

Профиль

Bill Douglas

Фильмы

Bill Douglas: Intent on Getting the Image
Himself (archive footage)
A documentary exploring Bill Douglas' struggle from childhood poverty to acclaimed filmmaker of Comrades and the Trilogy.
Comrades
Writer
The story of "The Tolpuddle Martyrs". A group of 19th century English farm labourers who formed one of the first trade unions and started a campaign to receive fair wages.
Comrades
Director
The story of "The Tolpuddle Martyrs". A group of 19th century English farm labourers who formed one of the first trade unions and started a campaign to receive fair wages.
Sleepwalker
Alex Britain
Saxon Logan's extraordinary 49 minute featurette pitches four people into a class war situation with a vicious sting in the tale.
Working Surface: A Short Study (with Actors) in the 'Ways' of a Bourgeois Writer
Bill Douglas plays a writer struggling with a script about the interior lives of two women (played by Joanna David and Heather Page).
My Way Home
Writer
Jamie leaves the children's home to live with his paternal grandmother. After working in a mine and in a tailor's shop, he is conscripted into the RAF, and goes to Egypt, where he is befriended by Robert, whose undemanding companionship releases Jamie from self-pity.
My Way Home
Director
Jamie leaves the children's home to live with his paternal grandmother. After working in a mine and in a tailor's shop, he is conscripted into the RAF, and goes to Egypt, where he is befriended by Robert, whose undemanding companionship releases Jamie from self-pity.
Home and Away
Writer
A young boy away at boarding school struggles when his mother and father split up.
My Ain Folk
Writer
When Jamie's maternal grandmother dies, he and his brother Tommy are separated - Tommy is taken off to a welfare home and Jamie goes to live with his other grandmother and uncle. His life is far from happy, filled with silence, rejection and bouts of violence.
My Ain Folk
Director
When Jamie's maternal grandmother dies, he and his brother Tommy are separated - Tommy is taken off to a welfare home and Jamie goes to live with his other grandmother and uncle. His life is far from happy, filled with silence, rejection and bouts of violence.
My Childhood
Writer
The first part of Bill Douglas' influential trilogy harks back to his impoverished upbringing in early-'40s Scotland. Cinema was his only escape - he paid for it with the money he made from returning empty jam jars - and this escape is reflected most closely at this time of his life as an eight-year-old living on the breadline with his half-brother and sick grandmother in a poor mining village.
My Childhood
Director
The first part of Bill Douglas' influential trilogy harks back to his impoverished upbringing in early-'40s Scotland. Cinema was his only escape - he paid for it with the money he made from returning empty jam jars - and this escape is reflected most closely at this time of his life as an eight-year-old living on the breadline with his half-brother and sick grandmother in a poor mining village.
Come Dancing
Writer
Celebrated filmmaker Bill Douglas’s early student short follows two men who meet in a cafe on a Southend pier. Glances, body language and very brief snatches of lewd dialogue suggest a pick-up, but the atmosphere soon darkens and events take an unexpected twist.
Come Dancing
Director
Celebrated filmmaker Bill Douglas’s early student short follows two men who meet in a cafe on a Southend pier. Glances, body language and very brief snatches of lewd dialogue suggest a pick-up, but the atmosphere soon darkens and events take an unexpected twist.