Michael Grigsby
Encyclopedia
Michael Grigsby is an English documentary filmmaker.
With a filmography spanning six decades and nearly 30 films, Grigsby occupies a unique position in British documentary filmmaking, having witnessed and commented on many of the dramatic changes in British society (and beyond) from the late 1950s through to the 21st century. As a critic recently noted, “from Michael Grigsby back to John Grierson
runs an unbroken tradition in British documentary-making: a passionate commitment to the poetry of everyday life.”
, an independent boarding school for boys. There, he ran the school’s film society and discovered the films of John Grierson
’s documentary movement. These had an amazing impact on the 14-year-old that he was. While at school, he also talked the headmaster into funding his first attempts at documentary filmmaking. One of the films, No Tumbled House (1955), deals with the realities faced by a boy in a boarding school. On leaving Abindgon, he got his first job as a trainee assistant editor at Granada Television
, in Manchester, working with the legendary Harry Watt
(co-director of Nightmail). Unfortunately Watt left shortly afterwards, and Grigsby was subsequently offered a job as a studio cameraman, which by his own admission was very dull, but gave him a chance to purchase his own 16mm Bolex
camera. Along with a bunch of disaffected Granada colleagues, he set up a filmmaking collective, Unit Five Seven
, and spent several years shooting and editing Enginemen, a short film about work in a locomotive shed, in his spare time. By chance, the critic and filmmaker Lindsay Anderson
heard of his project. Having been particularly impressed by the rushes, he and fellow filmmaker Karel Reisz
helped him secure funding from the British Film Institute
to complete the film, which was included in the last Free Cinema
programme at the National Film Theatre (March 1959), alongside Reisz’s We Are the Lambeth Boys and Robert Vas
’ Refuge England. Growing in confidence, he made another short documentary with the Unit Five Seven
, Tomorrow’s Saturday (1962), about Blackburn mill workers preparing for the weekend. On the back of these two critically acclaimed shorts, he kept battering on the door at Granada and was finally allowed to direct his first documentary, Deckie Learner (1965).
His work since has shown remarkable fidelity to the concerns and principles embodied in these early films. Grigsby set out to make films about ordinary people, and those at society’s margin. He quickly gained a solid reputation as a filmmaker who – to use his own words – ‘gives a voice to the voiceless’. Thus, whether he’s filming trawlermen (Deckie Learner, 1965; A Life Apart, 1973), the survivors on both sides of the Vietnam War (I Was a Soldier, 1970; The Search, 1991; Thoi Noi, 1993), ordinary inhabitants of Northern Ireland (Too Long a Sacrifice, 1984; The Silent War, 1990; Rehearsals, 2005), families facing up to social disintegration in Thatcher’s Britain (Living on the Edge, 1987) or the traumatised Lockerbie community 10 years after the Boeing 747 disaster (Lockerbie, A Night Remembered, 1998), Grigsby does his utmost to let people speak for themselves. Hence his belief in the importance of long research periods (up to six months) prior to shooting, to gain the participants’ trust; hence also the still frames, the long meditative shots and the moments of silence, allowing people the space in which to get their points across. This unhurried pacing appears truly daring when compared to the frenetic filmic vocabulary more favoured today. Grigsby’s documentaries have also been compared to free-form jazz; he likes working instinctively, and the structure of his films generally comes to him only after he has built a real understanding of the place, the landscape and the people. His films’ inner quality also comes from the highly creative way in which he arranges sounds (often a combination of natural sounds, snatches of dialogues, archive material and live or added music) and images, thus creating symbolic contrasts between them, rather than resorting to a didactic voice-over commentary. In short, Grigsby uses eminently cinematic techniques more frequently associated with art cinema than documentary television. Although he addresses political issues (Northern Ireland, labour relations, effects of wars), there is no crude attempt in his films to ‘propagandise’. Instead, he utilises the documentary genre in a unique fashion, bringing his humanist vision to bear on problems in society, so that viewers become participants too - involved, engaged and thinking.
Influenced by Grierson
’s documentary movement, emerging as part of Free Cinema
, reaching maturity during documentary television’s golden age, Grigsby has today come full circle. Still as active and enthusiastic as ever despite the current lack of support for independent, imaginative documentaries in British television, amongst a number of new documentary features, he is currently working to develop his first fiction feature film. In recent years he has also returned to the place where he made his first film as a pupil, Abingdon School
, to set up the AFU Abingdon Film Unit
, where over thirty boys, aged 12 to 17, work together under his supervision along with several other industry professionals to make a handful of short films every year. He is as proud of this new enterprise as he is of his finest films; he sees it as his own way of passing on the torch of the great British documentary tradition to the next generation of filmmakers. The Abingdon Film Unit
itself is now getting significant press, due to films such as 'Gravel & Stones', a documentary which focuses on the impact of disability on people in Cambodia, a country that, after thirty years of war, has one of the highest rates of disability in the developing world; and also One Foot on the Ground made in 2010: a 24-minute film which follows a young Moldovan basketball-player, Andreii Zelenetchii, as he struggles to keep alive his dream of playing professional in Europe’s poorest country.
To date, the Unit has produced over 100 films, many of which have been screened at festivals throughout the UK and abroad, with a number winning awards along the way. Festivals include Raindance, the London International Documentary Festival and the British Film Festival in Dinard, France. Awards include Best Documentary and Best Animation at the Future Film Festival in London and the National Young Filmmaker’s Award at the Leeds Student Film Festival.
2012 will see the release of Grigsby's latest non fiction feature, 'We Went to War'. Co authored with creative producer Rebekah Tolley, the film is a follow up to Grigsby's 1970 film, 'I Was a Soldier', and returns to the stories of the same three Vietnam veterans: David, Dennis and Lamar, forty years after their return from combat to their homes in the heartlands of Texas.
1955: No Tumbled House
1959: Enginemen
1962: Tomorrow’s Saturday
1965: Deckie Learner
1967: Death by Misadventure: SS Lusitania
1969: If the Village Dies
1969: Deep South
1970: I Was A Soldier
1971: Freshman
1972: Working the Land
1973: A Life Apart: Anxieties in a Trawling Community
1974: A life Underground
1976: The People’s Land
1979: Before the Monsoon
1981: For My Working Life
1984: Too Long a Sacrifice
1987: Living on the Edge
1990: The Silent War
1990: Dear Mr Gorbachev
1991: The Search
1993: Thoi Noi
1994: The Time of Our Lives
1994: Pictures on a Piano
1995: Hidden Voices
1996: Living with the Enemy
1998: Lockerbie, A night Remembered
1998: The Score
1999: Billion Dollar Secret
2001: Solway Harvester – Lost at Sea
2005: Rehearsals
2012: We Went to War
With a filmography spanning six decades and nearly 30 films, Grigsby occupies a unique position in British documentary filmmaking, having witnessed and commented on many of the dramatic changes in British society (and beyond) from the late 1950s through to the 21st century. As a critic recently noted, “from Michael Grigsby back to John Grierson
John Grierson
John Grierson was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film. According to popular myth, in 1926, Grierson coined the term "documentary" to describe a non-fiction film.-Early life:Grierson was born in Deanston, near Doune, Scotland...
runs an unbroken tradition in British documentary-making: a passionate commitment to the poetry of everyday life.”
Biography and Career
Grigsby’s passion for documentary dates back to his time at Abingdon SchoolAbingdon School
Abingdon School is a British day and boarding independent school for boys situated in Abingdon, Oxfordshire , previously known as Roysse's School. In 1998 a formal merger took place between Abingdon School and Josca's, a preparatory school four miles to the west at Frilford...
, an independent boarding school for boys. There, he ran the school’s film society and discovered the films of John Grierson
John Grierson
John Grierson was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film. According to popular myth, in 1926, Grierson coined the term "documentary" to describe a non-fiction film.-Early life:Grierson was born in Deanston, near Doune, Scotland...
’s documentary movement. These had an amazing impact on the 14-year-old that he was. While at school, he also talked the headmaster into funding his first attempts at documentary filmmaking. One of the films, No Tumbled House (1955), deals with the realities faced by a boy in a boarding school. On leaving Abindgon, he got his first job as a trainee assistant editor at Granada Television
Granada Television
Granada Television is the ITV contractor for North West England. Based in Manchester since its inception, it is the only surviving original ITA franchisee from 1954 and is ITV's most successful....
, in Manchester, working with the legendary Harry Watt
Harry Watt (director)
Harry Watt was a Scottish documentary and feature film director, who began his career working for John Grierson and Robert Flaherty. His 1959 film The Siege of Pinchgut was entered into the 9th Berlin International Film Festival...
(co-director of Nightmail). Unfortunately Watt left shortly afterwards, and Grigsby was subsequently offered a job as a studio cameraman, which by his own admission was very dull, but gave him a chance to purchase his own 16mm Bolex
Bolex
Bolex is a Swiss company that manufactures motion picture cameras and lenses, the most notable products of which are in the 16 mm and Super 16 mm formats. The Bolex company was initially founded by Jacques Bogopolsky in 1927. Bolex is derived from his name. He had previously designed cameras for...
camera. Along with a bunch of disaffected Granada colleagues, he set up a filmmaking collective, Unit Five Seven
Unit Five Seven
Unit Five Seven was an independent filmmaking collective formed in 1957 by English filmmaker Michael Grigsby and a few friends . Together they produced a handful of short films between 1958 and the mid-1960s...
, and spent several years shooting and editing Enginemen, a short film about work in a locomotive shed, in his spare time. By chance, the critic and filmmaker Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Gordon Anderson was an Indian-born, British feature film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading light of the Free Cinema movement and the British New Wave...
heard of his project. Having been particularly impressed by the rushes, he and fellow filmmaker Karel Reisz
Karel Reisz
Karel Reisz was a Czech-born British filmmaker who was active in post–war Britain, and one of the pioneers of the new realist strain in 1950s and 1960s British cinema.-Early life:...
helped him secure funding from the British Film Institute
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
to complete the film, which was included in the last Free Cinema
Free Cinema
Free Cinema was a documentary film movement that emerged in England in the mid-1950s. The term referred to an absence of propagandised intent or deliberate box office appeal. Co-founded by Lindsay Anderson, though he later disdained the 'movement' tag, with Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson and Lorenza...
programme at the National Film Theatre (March 1959), alongside Reisz’s We Are the Lambeth Boys and Robert Vas
Robert Vas
Robert Vas — film director He came to England after the Hungarian uprising in 1956. He was committed to documentary and, after a short period working for the National Coal Board, he went on to make a seminal series of films for the BBC...
’ Refuge England. Growing in confidence, he made another short documentary with the Unit Five Seven
Unit Five Seven
Unit Five Seven was an independent filmmaking collective formed in 1957 by English filmmaker Michael Grigsby and a few friends . Together they produced a handful of short films between 1958 and the mid-1960s...
, Tomorrow’s Saturday (1962), about Blackburn mill workers preparing for the weekend. On the back of these two critically acclaimed shorts, he kept battering on the door at Granada and was finally allowed to direct his first documentary, Deckie Learner (1965).
His work since has shown remarkable fidelity to the concerns and principles embodied in these early films. Grigsby set out to make films about ordinary people, and those at society’s margin. He quickly gained a solid reputation as a filmmaker who – to use his own words – ‘gives a voice to the voiceless’. Thus, whether he’s filming trawlermen (Deckie Learner, 1965; A Life Apart, 1973), the survivors on both sides of the Vietnam War (I Was a Soldier, 1970; The Search, 1991; Thoi Noi, 1993), ordinary inhabitants of Northern Ireland (Too Long a Sacrifice, 1984; The Silent War, 1990; Rehearsals, 2005), families facing up to social disintegration in Thatcher’s Britain (Living on the Edge, 1987) or the traumatised Lockerbie community 10 years after the Boeing 747 disaster (Lockerbie, A Night Remembered, 1998), Grigsby does his utmost to let people speak for themselves. Hence his belief in the importance of long research periods (up to six months) prior to shooting, to gain the participants’ trust; hence also the still frames, the long meditative shots and the moments of silence, allowing people the space in which to get their points across. This unhurried pacing appears truly daring when compared to the frenetic filmic vocabulary more favoured today. Grigsby’s documentaries have also been compared to free-form jazz; he likes working instinctively, and the structure of his films generally comes to him only after he has built a real understanding of the place, the landscape and the people. His films’ inner quality also comes from the highly creative way in which he arranges sounds (often a combination of natural sounds, snatches of dialogues, archive material and live or added music) and images, thus creating symbolic contrasts between them, rather than resorting to a didactic voice-over commentary. In short, Grigsby uses eminently cinematic techniques more frequently associated with art cinema than documentary television. Although he addresses political issues (Northern Ireland, labour relations, effects of wars), there is no crude attempt in his films to ‘propagandise’. Instead, he utilises the documentary genre in a unique fashion, bringing his humanist vision to bear on problems in society, so that viewers become participants too - involved, engaged and thinking.
Influenced by Grierson
Grierson
Grierson may refer to:* Clan Grierson* Grierson * Grierson's Raid* Grierson Spring, TX* Grierson was one of the GWR 3031 Class locomotives that were built for and run on the Great Western Railway between 1891 and 1915; formerly named Ulysses before 1895....
’s documentary movement, emerging as part of Free Cinema
Free Cinema
Free Cinema was a documentary film movement that emerged in England in the mid-1950s. The term referred to an absence of propagandised intent or deliberate box office appeal. Co-founded by Lindsay Anderson, though he later disdained the 'movement' tag, with Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson and Lorenza...
, reaching maturity during documentary television’s golden age, Grigsby has today come full circle. Still as active and enthusiastic as ever despite the current lack of support for independent, imaginative documentaries in British television, amongst a number of new documentary features, he is currently working to develop his first fiction feature film. In recent years he has also returned to the place where he made his first film as a pupil, Abingdon School
Abingdon School
Abingdon School is a British day and boarding independent school for boys situated in Abingdon, Oxfordshire , previously known as Roysse's School. In 1998 a formal merger took place between Abingdon School and Josca's, a preparatory school four miles to the west at Frilford...
, to set up the AFU Abingdon Film Unit
Abingdon Film Unit
The Abingdon Film Unit is a small organisation in England that enables secondary school pupils between the ages of 13 and 18 to make their own short documentary or animated films under the guidance of a team of industry professionals led by the renowned documentary maker Michael Grigsby...
, where over thirty boys, aged 12 to 17, work together under his supervision along with several other industry professionals to make a handful of short films every year. He is as proud of this new enterprise as he is of his finest films; he sees it as his own way of passing on the torch of the great British documentary tradition to the next generation of filmmakers. The Abingdon Film Unit
Abingdon Film Unit
The Abingdon Film Unit is a small organisation in England that enables secondary school pupils between the ages of 13 and 18 to make their own short documentary or animated films under the guidance of a team of industry professionals led by the renowned documentary maker Michael Grigsby...
itself is now getting significant press, due to films such as 'Gravel & Stones', a documentary which focuses on the impact of disability on people in Cambodia, a country that, after thirty years of war, has one of the highest rates of disability in the developing world; and also One Foot on the Ground made in 2010: a 24-minute film which follows a young Moldovan basketball-player, Andreii Zelenetchii, as he struggles to keep alive his dream of playing professional in Europe’s poorest country.
To date, the Unit has produced over 100 films, many of which have been screened at festivals throughout the UK and abroad, with a number winning awards along the way. Festivals include Raindance, the London International Documentary Festival and the British Film Festival in Dinard, France. Awards include Best Documentary and Best Animation at the Future Film Festival in London and the National Young Filmmaker’s Award at the Leeds Student Film Festival.
2012 will see the release of Grigsby's latest non fiction feature, 'We Went to War'. Co authored with creative producer Rebekah Tolley, the film is a follow up to Grigsby's 1970 film, 'I Was a Soldier', and returns to the stories of the same three Vietnam veterans: David, Dennis and Lamar, forty years after their return from combat to their homes in the heartlands of Texas.
External links
- Michael Grigsby's page on Screenonline
- Interview with Michael Grigsby on the BFI's website
- Michael Grigsby's entry on the dfgdocs website
- Michael Grigsby's entry on IMDB
- Michael Grigsby's website
- Article on Michael Grigsby's current work at the Abingdon School
Selective filmography
1953: Ut Proficias1955: No Tumbled House
1959: Enginemen
1962: Tomorrow’s Saturday
1965: Deckie Learner
1967: Death by Misadventure: SS Lusitania
1969: If the Village Dies
1969: Deep South
1970: I Was A Soldier
1971: Freshman
1972: Working the Land
1973: A Life Apart: Anxieties in a Trawling Community
1974: A life Underground
1976: The People’s Land
1979: Before the Monsoon
1981: For My Working Life
1984: Too Long a Sacrifice
1987: Living on the Edge
1990: The Silent War
1990: Dear Mr Gorbachev
1991: The Search
1993: Thoi Noi
1994: The Time of Our Lives
1994: Pictures on a Piano
1995: Hidden Voices
1996: Living with the Enemy
1998: Lockerbie, A night Remembered
1998: The Score
1999: Billion Dollar Secret
2001: Solway Harvester – Lost at Sea
2005: Rehearsals
2012: We Went to War