Winstanley by Kevin Brownlow
Winstanley: Warts and All is the story of the making of the film Winstanley, written by director Kevin Brownlow and now published for the first time, telling what went wrong (everything), and how the film was kept from audiences all over the world, but was declared a work of genius in France. . . In the words of director, Kevin Brownlow: My first book was How It Happened Here, about the making of my first film. As a film historian, I thought I should keep a careful record of the making of Winstanley as well. It was written immediately after the events had occurred, when my memory was vivid. The manuscript sat on the shelf for 34 years, but reading it back recently I found some of the verbatim dialogue, especially the excuses from the laboratories for ruining our precious film, very amusing - which I certainly didn't at the time. UKA Press suggested putting it into print at last, since they had already reprinted How It Happened Here. They have been very generous with photographs, and combined with the DVD, just released, the book makes a fascinating example of how-not-to-do-it for any budding film-maker. . . The Kevin Brownlow / Andrew Mollo duo are among the most challenging and idiosyncratic of independent filmmakers. They have made only two films, It Happened Here (1966), and Winstanley. Although both made friends and enemies in equal measure, they are at last enjoying wider recognition as outstanding and important films. . Brownlow, a first rank film historian, and Mollo, historical consultant on such iconic masterpieces as Dr Zhivago, used amateur actors to create both films on shoestring budgets, working at weekends and driven by a fanaticism for historical accuracy and a fascination with the subject matter, which is the playing-out of big social visions (fascism, socialism) in the lives of ordinary people. . Filmed in black-and-white, Winstanley is intensely beautiful visually, comparable to the work of Eisenstein, Dreyer, or Abel Gance. Indeed the meticulous accuracy of the sets and costumes alone would justify its inclusion in any film lover's collection. But over and above this it tells the heart-rending story of the visionary Winstanley's beautiful dream overturned by the might of the entrenched aristocracy and the common people's fear of change.
Brownlow, Kevin: - Kevin Brownlow, who lives in London, is a historian of silent films, which he began collecting at the age of eleven. He has written about them in The Parade's Gone By...; The War, the West, and the Wilderness; Behind the Mask of Innocence; Hollywood: The Pioneers; and Napolean: Abel Gance's Classic Film, which recounted his acclaimed reconstruction of that famous masterpiece. As a filmmaker, he has made two features with Andrew Mollo--It Happened Here and Winstanley--and several television documentaries with David Gill, including the thirteen-part series Hollywood, first shown in 1980, and more recently Unknown Chaplin, Buster KEaton: A Hard Art to Follow, and Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781905796229 |
| ISBN 10 | 1905796226 |
| Title | Winstanley |
| Author | Kevin Brownlow |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | UKA Press |
| Year published | 2009-05-08 |
| Number of pages | 320 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |