Monday, 01 November 2010 21:33

This Illustrated Lecture*, which will be open to members of the public as well as students, staff and alumni of the Bournemouth Academy, will take place from 5.00 pm on the afternoon of 25th November 2010 in Room UH001 of the Arts University College at Bournemouth. You must register here to attend.
Kevin Brownlow is one of the UK's most highly respected film historians and producers.  12 days prior to visiting Bournemouth he received an Honorary Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at a dinner on 13th November in Los Angeles.
Kevin made the feature film WINSTANLEY in 1975.  As a producer and writer, working with his late partner David Gill, Kevin made a number of seminal documentary series about Hollywood and the silent film period, but he is perhaps best-known for his work, over many years, to restore Abel Gance's film NAPOLEON (1923) – a 'lost' epic that, following restoration and performance with a live orchestra, was a smash hit with audiences in London and New York in 1980.


L to R  Eli Wallach, Francis Ford Coppola and Kevin Brownlow receive their Awards from the Academy on 13th November         Photo courtesy of AMPAS
Kevin Brownlow (born on 2 June 1938, Crowborough, Sussex) is a filmmaker, film historian, television documentary-maker, author, and Academy Award recipient.  He became interested in silent film at the age of eleven. This interest grew into a career spent documenting and restoring film. He has rescued many silent films and their history. His initiative in interviewing many largely forgotten, elderly film pioneers in the 1960s and 1970s preserved a legacy of cinema.

His interest in World War II prompted the creation of an alternative-history film, IT HAPPENED HERE in which the Nazis conquered Britain. Brownlow began work on the film at the age of 18 and began to collaborate with a friend Andrew Mollo, who was 16.  After 8 years of struggle, during which the film's content changed dramatically, it was completed in 1964 with the last-minute aid of Tony Richardson, but not released until 1966.  After this cinematic feat Mollo and Brownlow began another project, WINSTANLEY, about Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers commune following the English Civil War. The duo spent several years trying to gain support and following a long and difficult shoot, the film was released in 1975.

In 1968 Kevin's first book on silent film, The Parade's Gone By..., was published. The book had many interviews with the leading actors and directors of the silent era and began his career as a film historian. Brownlow spent many years getting support for the restoration of Abel Gance's 1927 French classic, NAPOLEON, a 'lost' epic film that used an early example of split screen or widescreen triptych form that Gance called Polyvision which was similar to the later Cinerama. Brownlow's championing of the film succeeded and the restored, re-scored version was shown in London and New York in 1980 and 1981. Gance lived to see the acclaim for his restored film.

Brownlow also began a collaboration with David Gill with whom he produced several documentaries on the silent era. The first was HOLLYWOOD, a 13-part history of the silent era in Hollywood, produced for Thames Television and screened in Britain in 1979.  This was followed by UNKNOWN CHAPLIN (1983), BUSTER KEATON: A HARD ACT TO FOLLOW (1987), HAROLD LLOYD: THE THIRD GENIUS (1989) and CINEMA EUROPE: THE OTHER HOLLYWOOD (1995), among others. They also restored and released a large number of classic silent films through the Thames Silents series (later via Photoplay Productions) in the 1980s and 1990s, generally with new musical scores by Carl Davis.  These films (more than 20 in a period of 15 years) were often screened with live music peformance, conducted by Carl Davis, during the London Film Festival.  Productions included THE CROWD, OF FLESH AND THE DEVIL, SHOW PEOPLE, THE WIND, THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD, THE PARADE, THE GENERAL, BEN HUR, INTOLERANCE and THE CHESS PLAYER.

Since David Gill's death in 1997, Kevin Brownlow has continued to produce documentaries and conduct film restoration with Patrick Stanbury. These include LON CHANEY: A THOUSAND FACES (2000), GARBO, a documentary produced for Turner Classic Movies to mark the centenary of the actress' birth and I AM KING KONG (2005) about filmmaker Merian C. Cooper.

In August 2010, Brownlow was announced as the recipient of an Honorary Academy Award for his role in film and cinema history preservation.
Source:  Wikipedia

*You must reserve a space for this Masterclass via Eventbrite. This BSMA Masterclass is open to AUCB and BU current students and alumni as well as the general public and is free of charge.