A subject of scandal and concern

16th June 2013

On Monday afternoon at BFI Southbank I am introducing two early films by Robert Vas (1931-1978) together with a television obituary of Vas made by Barrie Gavin and colleagues. (The obit is on YouTube but – frustratingly – the embedding function is disabled.) Barrie will be present this afternoon, I believe, along with others who worked with and admired the filmmaker. For I am far from alone is believing that Vas is one of the greatest documentarists to have worked in Britain. He stands alongside Humphrey Jennings, Philip Donellan, Mike Grigsby, Marc Karlin and others, each of whom in their own way forged a distinctive film poetry from reality. Do please watch the film and read Byrony Dixon’s BFI ScreenOnline piece to get a sense of Robert Vas’ work. Yet as I noted in my 2008 post Robert who?, the director is all-but-unknown today and not one of the major films that he produced for the BBC is legally available. (The early films Refuge England, 1959, and The Vanishing Street, 1962, can be found on the invaluable BFI DVD set Free Cinema.) The inaccessibility and consequent invisibility of Vas’ work is – simply – a subject of scandal and concern.

Why cannot we see and study and learn from and be inspired by the following films, each of which was made for the BBC (and so paid for by us):

• The Golden Years of Alexander Korda, 1968, which is a glorious portrait of the feature film producer who was compatriot of Vas’ and, like many of Vas’ films, a self-portrait also

and

• Ernst Neizvestny, an Artist from Moscow, 1969, which is a portrait presented by John Berger of the Russian sculptor (who lives and works in New York to this day)

and

• Heart of Britain, 1970, which is Vas’ loving tribute to the filmmaker with whom he shared a sensibility, Humphrey Jennings

and

• The Issue Should Be Avoided, 1971, which is a brilliantly original drama documentary about the Katyn Forest Massacre in World War Two. It begins with a group of actors in a forest clearing. ‘This is not the Katyn Forest in the Soviet Union,’ the commentary tells us. ‘It would not be possible to film this investigation there’

and

• Omnibus: Solzhenitsyn, 1971, which is a film profile of the dissident writer

and

• Stalin, 1973, which is a three-hour historical investigation of the tyrant

and

• Cuckoo: A Celebration of Mr Laurel and Mr Hardy, 1974, which is a delightful, playful study of the comedians made for the Omnibus series

and

• Nine Days in ’26, 1974, which is a powerful and controversial of the General Strike

and

• My Homeland, 1976, which is perhaps Vas’ most personal film, about the Hungarian uprising in 1956, which lead to his exile in Britain, and about what has happened to his country since then

and

• Chronicle: The Trial of Jesus, 1977, which is a studio-shot drama about the politics of Pontius Pilot which no-one recalls now but which I remember as being compelling

and

Silver Spoon, 1978, which is a film inspired by Jennings’ A Diary for Timothy but made during the Jubilee year

and

• Brecht and Co, 1979, which is a drama,shown after Vas’ death, with Bob Hoskins, Julie Covington and others about those who lived and worked with the playwright

and

• 20th Century Treasure Trove, 1981, which is a film about the BFI archives planned by Vas and completed by Elizabeth Sussex after his death?

Rights problems are part of the answer to my rhetorical query. Many of Vas’ films made brilliant use of archival film and this can be difficult and expensive to clear long after an original agreement was made.

In addition, the BBC has made unrealistic commercial demands on those (including us) who have expressed an interest in releasing Robert Vas’ films on DVD.

And then there is simple ignorance, a lack of interest and curiosity about the history of television.

Indeed, in drawing this list together I realise that there is not even a proper filmography of his work available either online or in print (the BFI ScreenOnline list of credits is the closest we have). Such neglect is dreadful. How can we, on the one hand, honour and respect an artist of integrity and commitment and talent when his work is so lettle-seen, and, on the other, how can we hope to have anything close to an appropriate understanding of the history of film and television culture in Britain?

As I say, scandalous and deeply concerning – and perhaps a prompt for this absurd situation to be changed.