Jonathan Bignell

Harold
[Pinter](http://www.haroldpinter.org/home/index.shtml){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} died ten years ago, and the anniversary is being
recognised this summer by a season of screenings of his TV and film work
at the British Film Institute's [BFI South
Bank](https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} cinemas in London.  As most people know, Pinter's output
spanned theatre, film, television and radio drama, poetry, prose and
political essays.  He came to prominence in the 1960s, and he is often
cited as one of the most significant British writers of the post-war
period. His plays include classics such as *The Caretaker* (1959), *No
Man's Land* (1975) and *One for the Road* (1984) and he scripted films
such as *The Go-Between* (1970) and *The French Lieutenant's Woman*
(1981).  He won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, and his career
involved significant collaborations with renowned actors and directors
including Dirk Bogarde, Judi Dench, Michael Gambon, John Gielgud, Peter
Hall, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Losey, Ralph Richardson, Ian Rickson and
Meryl Streep.

::: {#attachment_5703 .wp-caption .aligncenter style="width: 460px"}
[![On the set of A Night Out, made by ABC for ITV in 1960. Pinter is
third from the
right.](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/NightOut1960-450x270.jpg){.wp-image-5703
.size-large loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5703" width="450" height="270"
srcset="https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/NightOut1960-450x270.jpg 450w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/NightOut1960-300x180.jpg 300w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/NightOut1960-140x84.jpg 140w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/NightOut1960-627x376.jpg 627w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/NightOut1960-440x264.jpg 440w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/NightOut1960.jpg 700w"
sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px"}](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/NightOut1960.jpg)

On the set of *A Night Out*, made by ABC for ITV in 1960. Pinter is
third from the right.
:::

In the late 1950s Pinter was pursuing a moderately successful career as
an actor, and it was while he was performing in a touring production of
the comedy *Doctor in the House* that he wrote his first full-length
play, [*The Birthday
Party*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birthday_Party_(play)){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"}.  However, the play's London reviews were very poor and
it took several years and more plays for Pinter to achieve a reputation
in mainstream theatre.  On the other hand, BBC had already commissioned
Pinter's first broadcast play *A Slight Ache* (1959) for its highbrow
[Third
Programme](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p046hx0c){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} radio service and ITV television was in the vanguard of
establishing the canonical status that Pinter would go on to have. 
Although we might think of Pinter primarily as a theatre writer,
broadcasting was crucial to his career.

[Val
Gielgud](http://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/bbc-memories/val-gielgud){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"}, brother of the actor John Gielgud, was Head of Drama at
the BBC from 1934 to 1963.  He believed that broadcasting should present
the classics every few years, and he had no interest in contemporary
"Absurd" drama like Pinter's or Samuel Beckett's.  On the other hand,
[Associated-Rediffusion](http://www.associated.rediffusion.info/){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"}, the commercial ITV company that broadcast to the London
TV region and contributed to the ITV network was keen to demonstrate its
cultural credentials by making prestige drama.  As Michael Billington's
excellent
[biography](https://www.faber.co.uk/9780571234769-harold-pinter.html){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} of Pinter tells, A-R's producer Peter Willes read *The
Birthday Party* and invited Pinter to meet him, greeting him with the
words: "How dare you?"  When Pinter looked puzzled by this remark,
Willes explained: "I''ve read your bloody play and I haven't had a wink
of sleep for four nights."  The highly skilled director [Joan
Kemp-Welch](http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/1140330/index.html){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} made a great success of the play, which was broadcast on
national ITV on 22 March 1960 in the regular series *Play of the Week*. 
Far more people got to hear about Pinter on ITV television and BBC radio
than saw his work at the theatre.

The rest is history.  Until 1965 it was on the commercial ITV channel,
rather than BBC TV, that Pinter's theatre plays were shown, with
broadcasts of [*A Night
Out*](http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/946293/index.html){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} (ABC, 1960), *The Room* (Granada, 1961), *The
Collection* (A-R, 1961), *The Dumb Waiter* (Granada, 1961) and *The
Lover* (A-R, 1963).  Later, BBC also broadcast TV Pinter, including some
productions in which he acted in his own work such as a celebrated
version of [*The Birthday
Party*](http://bufvc.ac.uk/screenplays/index.php/prog/1082){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} in 1987 when Pinter played the sinister Mr Goldberg.  He
wrote original drama for television as well as adapting his own theatre
plays, and also featured on BBC arts programmes like *Late Night
Line-Up* and *Arena*, talking about his own work and commenting on
current culture and politics.  He became a well-known media figure, and
often a controversial one.

::: {#attachment_5706 .wp-caption .aligncenter style="width: 460px"}
[![Pinter looking intense in
1978.](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Pinter1978-450x281.jpg){.wp-image-5706
.size-large loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5706" width="450" height="281"
srcset="https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Pinter1978-450x281.jpg 450w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Pinter1978-300x188.jpg 300w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Pinter1978-140x88.jpg 140w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Pinter1978-768x480.jpg 768w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Pinter1978-1536x960.jpg 1536w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Pinter1978-400x250.jpg 400w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Pinter1978-1080x675.jpg 1080w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Pinter1978.jpg 1920w"
sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px"}](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Pinter1978.jpg)

Pinter looking intense in 1978.
:::

I am collaborating on '[Pinter Histories &
Legacies'](http://www.reading.ac.uk/ftt/research/ftt-Harold-Pinter-Histories-and-Legacies.aspx){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"}, an Arts and Humanities Research Council project that
runs from 2017-19, and which documents every professional production of
Pinter's plays in the UK, as well as his output on television, radio and
film.  This will create a public database as well as the expected kinds
of academic output like conferences and publications, and the BFI
screening season this summer that our research team collaborates on. 
The season will also coincide with the launch of a new BFI boxed set of
Pinter's work on DVD.  Further details of the two-month screening season
and DVD will be announced this month, after a brief Pinteresque pause
while BFI finalises the release dates.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Jonathan
Bignell](http://www.reading.ac.uk/ftt/about/staff/j-bignell.aspx){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} is Professor of Television and Film at the University of
Reading. He works on histories of television drama, cinema and
children's media, and on the AHRC research project '[Pinter Histories &
Legacies](http://www.reading.ac.uk/ftt/research/ftt-Harold-Pinter-Histories-and-Legacies.aspx){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"}' which is a collaboration with colleagues at Reading,
Leeds and Birmingham universities. Some of his work is available free
online from his [university web
page](http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/view/creators/90002167.html){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} or from his
[academia.edu](https://reading.academia.edu/JonathanBignell){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} page.

 

 


Harold Pinter died ten years ago, and the anniversary is being recognised this summer by a season of screenings of his TV and film work at the British Film Institute’s BFI South Bank cinemas in London.  As most people know, Pinter’s output spanned theatre, film, television and radio drama, poetry, prose and political essays.

HAROLD PINTER: TV HISTORIES AND LEGACIES

CALL FOR PAPERS Lights, camera, learning: teaching with the moving image A conference organised by Learning on Screen and School of Arts, Birkbeck, University of London Thursday 19 – Friday 20 April 2018 Birkbeck, University of London, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD Download programme as PDF To mark our seventieth anniversary in 2018, Learning on […]

CSTonline

**CALL FOR PAPERS**

**Lights, camera, learning: teaching with the moving image**

A conference organised by Learning on Screen and School of Arts,
Birkbeck, University of London

**Thursday 19 -- Friday 20 April 2018**

**Birkbeck, University of London, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD**

**[Download programme as
PDF](http://bufvc.ac.uk/wp-content/media/2017/10/Lights-Camera-Learning.pdf){target="_blank"}**

To mark our seventieth anniversary in 2018, Learning on Screen together
with Birkbeck, University of London is pleased to announce a two-day
conference exploring the history of teaching and learning with the
moving image.

Formal education in many contexts increasingly relies on screen-based
media, and there are active debates about the appropriate uses and
efficacy of many forms of digital applications for learning. But it can
be argued that current practice lacks a historical understanding of
practices for learning with screens that stretch back at least to the
interwar period. And while in the United States researchers have begun
to investigate productively the uses of film and television in schools
and similar institutions, its production contexts and reception (as is
evidenced by the collections *Useful Cinema* (2011) and *Learning with
the Lights Off* (2012)), such research in Britain remains comparatively
underdeveloped.

Lights, camera, learning aims to bring together film and television
historians with those engaged with the history of educational practice
and policy and with practitioners past and present, to explore how film
and television with explicit educational aims has been argued for,
produced, funded, distributed, shown, received, discussed and understood
over the past century in Britain.

**The conference will address in particular three strands of this
history:**

- Production, content and technologies of screen-based educational media
- Classroom practice and pedagogies for the reception and use of film
  and television
- Policy debates and determinations about the place and value of moving
  image media in formal education

Proposals for 20-minute panel papers are invited covering all aspects of
the histories of teaching and learning in schools, universities and
other institutions with and from moving image media, including:

- The history of pedagogical practice with moving image media within
  formal education
- Development and dissemination of techniques for using moving images in
  education
- Understandings of the educational value of moving images
- Religious and social concerns about the use of films in education
- Government initiatives supporting the promotion and production of
  moving images for education
- Founding of the BUFC in 1948, and the subsequent development of BUFVC
  and Learning on Screen, together with its activities, services and
  publications
- The role of the British Film Institute in developing educational
  moving image media
- The production of 16mm films for educational use, including the work
  of individual producers and production companies
- Television production for schools, and the development of schools
  broadcasts by the BBC and ITV companies
- Case studies of the creation and use of specific films and television
  productions
- Media production after 1969 by the Open University, its dissemination
  and use
- Distribution services for moving image media to education
- The acquisition, use and maintenance of projectors, television sets
  and video recorders in institutions
- Reception studies of educational moving image media
- Integration of moving images with the curriculum
- Production and dissemination of moving images by teachers and students
- Legislation governing moving image media in schools, colleges and
  universities
- Changing attitudes to permissions and copyright including the
  establishment of the ERA licence
- Guides for the use of film and television in classrooms
- Critical writing and theory about the use of moving image media in
  education

Submissions in the form of 300-word abstracts accompanied by a
one-paragraph CV are invited by 30 November 2017

Please send submissions and queries
to [arts-LOS70th@bbk.ac.uk](mailto:arts-LOS70th@bbk.ac.uk){target="_blank"}

Invitations to speakers will be issued by 31 December 2017

*Lights, camera, learning is convened by Mike Allen (Birkbeck,
University of London), Professor John Ellis (Royal Holloway, University
of London), Dr Emma Sandon (Birkbeck, University of London) and John
Wyver (University of Westminster)*

Further information at:
[http://bufvc.ac.uk/events/lights-camera-learning-teaching-with-the-moving-image](http://bufvc.ac.uk/events/lights-camera-learning-teaching-with-the-moving-image){target="_blank"}


CALL FOR PAPERS


 Lights, camera, learning: teaching with the moving image

A conference organised by Learning on Screen and School of Arts, Birkbeck, University of London

 Thursday 19 – Friday 20 April 2018


 Birkbeck, University of London, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD


 Download programme as PDF

To mark our seventieth anniversary in 2018, Learning on

CfP: &#8220;Lights, camera, learning: teaching with the moving image&#8221; April 19-20, 2018 @ Birkbeck, University of London (UK). Deadline: Nov 30, 2017.

**Crossings: Stories of Migration** (June-September 2017) is an ICA-led
UK-wide film and events programme supported by the BFI using National
Lottery funding, in partnership with the Goethe-Institut and the School
of Film & Television, Falmouth University.

We live in an age of migration. Driven by political and military
conflicts, the pressures and possibilities of increasingly globalised
economies, climate change and the desire for a better life, more people
than ever move and live across borders. These are diverse trajectories;
each journey has its own story and each story its own
journey, traversing different landscapes and carrying with it its own
past.

Through a programme of screenings and events, *Crossings* explores the
stories of modern-day migration and reflects on cinema's potential to
interrogate the damaging ways in which migration is often framed.
Including a variety of documentary and fiction features, the programme
engages with transnational crossings from the last five decades through
different forms of aesthetically innovative storytelling.

As part of the *Crossings* project, the ICA intends to curate scholarly
and creative responses to the issues raised by the season, which will be
hosted on their dedicated website <https://www.crossings2017.co.uk/>

The website is intended to function as an ongoing repository for a range
of essays, short films, film essays, reviews, and scholarly endeavour
which will live on past the screening season itself.

[Please note: *Crossings* will run throughout the summer, and as such,
we are as interested in responses to the screenings as we are in
pre-existing or 'anticipatory' work; therefore, a further call for
submissions will be made in early Autumn.]{.underline}

We welcome any proposals, and wish to take a flexible and imaginative
approach to format and length, but academic and creative work from
undergraduate and postgraduate students and ECRs are particularly
welcome.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

- Transnational communication
- Migration and diasporic community
- Borders and transgressions
- The physical and metaphorical journey of migration
- Migration, power and agency
- The political contexts of migration
- Repression and 'Othering'
- The reproduction or breaching of stereotypes around migration

Please send a brief (500-1000 word) abstract with short bio to
[laura.canning@falmouth.ac.uk](mailto:laura.canning@falmouth.ac.uk){target="_blank"}
including the term "Crossings" in your subject heading.   Deadline for
initial submissions: Friday August 4^th^ 2017.

*Crossings* brings together leading commentators, critics and
contributors from across various cultural and political contexts to
create a rigorous yet diverse platform for discussion to explore
migration from both global and local perspectives. Engaging with ethical
and political questions raised by representing these narratives on
screen, the season aims to open space for dialogue at a time when this
is more urgent than ever. For further details on the schedule of films
and venues, please see
[https://www.crossings2017.co.uk/](https://www.crossings2017.co.uk/){target="_blank"}

Crossings: Stories of Migration

(June-September 2017) is an ICA-led UK-wide film and events programme supported by the BFI using National Lottery funding, in partnership with the Goethe-Institut and the School of Film &amp; Television, Falmouth University. We live in an age of migration.

Call for Papers, Film Essays, Short Films: &#8220;Crossings: Stories of Migration&#8221;. Deadline: Aug 4, 2017.

Booking is now open for the season of 'Forgotten TV Dramas' at BFI
Southbank, London in February 2017.  Following the successful Forgotten
Drama season at BFI Southbank in 2015, this second season offers a rare
opportunity to see a range of original and intriguing plays that make up
the 'forgotten' history of British television drama and deserve to be
better-known

This season is curated by Lez Cooke, John Hill and Billy Smart as part
of the AHRC-funded research project, 'The History of Forgotten
Television Drama in the UK,' Department of Media Arts, Royal Holloway,
University of London.

Bookings may be made through the BFI:
[https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp](https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp){target="_blank"}

**Thu 2 Feb 18.00 NFT3**

***Sunday Night Theatre: The Hotel in Amsterdam*** + discussion with
director Anthony Page, actor Susan Engel and playwright Nicholas Wright
(all work permitting) (ATV 1971. Dir Anthony Page. With Paul Scofield,
Jill Bennett, Michael Craig, Susan Engel, David Burke. 75min).

Six successful but jaded friends in the film business do a runner from
work, stay in a luxurious Amsterdam hotel, and loosen their tongues.
This forgotten version of a modern classic play from the Royal Court
theatre, featuring most of the original cast, has been unseen since
1971. The play was adapted for television by John Osborne at the request
of Paul Scofield, who wanted one of his most mesmerising performances to
be recorded for posterity.

**Wed 8 Feb 20.40 NFT2**

***The Passionate Pilgrim*** + intro by Dr Lez Cooke (BBC 1953. Dir
Michael Barry. With Rachel Gurney, Patrick Troughton. 100min).

The stage play of *The Passionate Pilgrim* had already proved its worth
in 1949, and this adaptation is one of the earliest surviving television
plays -- broadcast just two days after the coronation of Queen Elizabeth
II, and unseen since. *The Passionate Pilgrim* tells the story of a
group of nurses working with Florence Nightingale during the Crimean
War.

**Fri 10 Feb 20.40 NFT2**

***City '68: It's Dearer After Midnight*** + intro by Dr Lez Cooke
(Granada 1968. Dir Michael Apted. With Keith Barron, Sian Phillips.
50min).

* City '68* was an anthology series about a fictional Northern city.
Devised by John Finch, who also wrote this episode, and directed by
Michael Apted, this two-hander features Keith Barron as a taxi driver
and Sian Phillips as the customer he takes to a strip club in the city.

\+ ***The System: The House That Jigger Built*** (Granada 1968. Dir Les
Chatfield. With Harry H Corbett, Wilfred Pickles, Doris Hare. 50min).

Another slice of Northern life by John Finch, this time about property
developer Jigger Barrett (Corbett) whose 'system' of stashing money in
the house leads to a farcical situation when some of it goes missing.
Wilfred Pickles plays Jigger's father who disapproves of his son's
entrepreneurialism.

**Mon 13 Feb. 18.20 NFT2**

***The Nearly Man*** + intro by Professor John Hill (Granada 1974. Dir
John Irvin. With Tony Britton, Michael Elphick. 50min).

A contrasting double bill of mid-1970s political dramas from the
pioneering ITV company Granada. Arthur Hopcraft's gritty script, about a
Labour politician caught between his Westminster ambitions and the
demands of his northern constituency, inspired a subsequent TV series.

\+ ***Late Night Theatre: The Eagle Has Landed*** (Granada 1973. Dir
Colin Cant. With Roland Curram, Weston Gavin, Zoë Wanamaker. 30min).

An exuberant and wildly inventive satire on the Apollo Space Programme,
written by David Edgar, in which two astronauts 'drop in' on an ordinary
English family.

**Wed 22 Feb. 11.00 NFT3**

**Television Drama Conference: the Archives, Access and Research**

Television drama has been at the centre of cultural life in the UK since
the 1950s, yet much of it remains forgotten or inadequately documented.
Co-hosted by the Centre for the History of Television Culture and
Production at Royal Holloway, University of London (as part of the
'Forgotten Television Drama' project), Learning on Screen and the BFI,
this event will bring together archivists, broadcasters, academics and
enthusiasts to discuss the challenges involved in providing access to
our TV history and enhancing its educational, cultural and public value.

**Wed 22 Feb. 18.20 NFT2**

***Six: The Day of Ragnarok*** + intro by Dr Lez Cooke and actor Tamara
Hinchco (BBC 1965. Dir John McGrath. With Elizabeth MacLennan, Tamara
Hinchco, Pauline Boty, Nicol Williamson. 38min).

John McGrath's remarkable short film, made for the experimental BBC2
series *Six*, is about impending nuclear war. Almost dialogue-free, with
a Dudley Moore soundtrack, the film has been especially reconstructed
from material surviving in the BBC Archive. Please note: there is 7min
of sound missing.

\+ ***Five More: Exit 19*** (BBC 1966. Dir Philip Saville. With Jack
Bond, Maureen Safhill. 45min).

Made for the follow-up series to *Six*, this modernist take on the theme
of love and marriage features a film editor (Bond) and a model
(real-life model Maureen Safhill) talking about their attitudes to sex
and marriage in an uninhibited manner. The film also features
appearances from Dudley Moore, Jane Arden and Bertrand Russell.

**Sun 26 Feb. 15.15 NFT2.**

***Play of the Month: Loyalties*** + intro by Dr Billy Smart and (work
permitting) actors Edward Fox and Charles Kay. (BBC 1976. Dir Rudolph
Cartier. With Edward Fox, Charles Kay, John Carson. 100min).

During a weekend at a country house in the 1920s, a Jewish outsider
accuses a former officer of theft, setting off a tragic chain of events.
John Galsworthy's classic play was the final project directed by
pioneering TV director Rudolph Cartier, who made Charles Kay and Edward
Fox's battle of wills a model of elegance and control.


Booking is now open for the season of ‘Forgotten TV Dramas’ at BFI Southbank, London in February 2017.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

HAROLD PINTER: TV HISTORIES AND LEGACIES

CfP: “Lights, camera, learning: teaching with the moving image” April 19-20, 2018 @ Birkbeck, University of London (UK). Deadline: Nov 30, 2017.

Call for Papers, Film Essays, Short Films: “Crossings: Stories of Migration”. Deadline: Aug 4, 2017.

FORGOTTEN TV DRAMA SEASON, BFI SOUTHBANK, FEBRUARY 2017