England,
1986, 54 min
Shown in 1987
CREDITS
- dir
-
David Hinton
- scr
-
David Hinton
- cam
-
Chris O’Dell
- premiere
-
U.S. Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Shown when Michael Powell received the Kurosawa Award.
OTHER
In the South Bank Show’s Michael Powell, the director is characterized as one who “...challenges the usual ideas of what British cinema should be.” And Powell’s own role in the film-portrait is both that of the puckish sage and the darkly self-aware director. Parts of this hour-long film might have been conceived by Powell himself—particularly those parts which place him in dark-humored proximity to projected images from his own work. There is an alluring array of vivid, pristine-looking excerpts from Powell’s films here and they evoke the range of an unusual career—spy thrillers, patriotic films, musical fantasies, celebrations of countryside life and films that turn inward on art, on its images. But Powell’s own remarks also make an extraordinary impression, for here is a man who says, “The sky is the limit. Art is worth dying for.”
—Peter Hogue
FACTOID #65
The combined running time for all the films in the Festival is approximately 310,000 minutes. Or to put it another way, 5,167 hours. That’s about 215 days of viewing, 24 hours a day, with no breaks.
