BLUE REMEMBERED HILLS Followed by a Q&A with Kenith Trodd, John Bird and Janine Duvitski, Hosted by Samira Ahmed
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BAFTA HERITAGE SCREENING Sunday 21 September 2O14, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London W1J 9LN BLUE REMEMBERED HILLS Followed by a Q&A with Kenith Trodd, John Bird and Janine Duvitski, hosted by Samira Ahmed It’s been twenty years since the untimely death of Release yeaR: 1979 Dennis Potter, one of the greatest television playwrights Runtime: 72 mins of all time. We here pay tribute to Potter’s truly original DiRectoR: Brian Gibson scReenwRiteR: Dennis Potter voice with a screening of Blue Remembered Hills. ‘ ennis Potter was one of the that television can be just as powerful a sees ‘shining plain’. The blue hills are the most important creative vehicle for artistic expression as cinema Malverns backdrop to the Forest of Dean. figures in the history or theatre.’ John Cook, BFI Screenonline Although Housman’s untitled poem, of British television. In an extract from Fight And Kick which furnishes Potter’s epilogue as well DFrom 1965 until his death in 1994, he And Bite: Life And Work Of Dennis Potter, as his title, posits an image of childhood constructed a personal body of work author W Stephen Gilbert recounts as ‘The happy highways where I went/ of such remarkable depth and range Potter’s vision behind Blue Remembered And cannot come again’, Potter often that has yet to be matched in the TV Hills and director Brian Gibson’s revisited his own highways, both happy medium. The most prolific yet also most preparation for his BAFTA-winning and anguished. controversial of television playwrights, he television drama: ‘When we dream of childhood,’ he remains the undisputed figurehead of that “Potter had looked hard at his own said ahead of transmission, ‘we take our peculiarly British phenomenon of writers and other children and remembered present selves with us. It is not the adult who expend much of their working in the most clear-eyed way he ever world writ small, childhood is the adult lives and passions attempting to show achieved. This is his own boyhood he world writ large. We may mature with age, but we do not change.’ And of adults Barton plays. To try to translate his vision Party. Other television works include playing children: ‘The adult body acts as was a great honour. So it was a moment Vanity Fair (1988), the comedy series One a kind of magnifying instrument which, I treasure.’ Foot In The Grave and Waiting For God because it has to loosen up and let go, and Little Dorrit (2008). Janine’s most reminds us more of just how mobile and recent appearances include the 2014 series swift movement is in the childhood world KENITH TRODD of Benidorm and children’s favourite Old and yet how long time is. Time is always Kenith Trodd has a distinguished record Jack’s Boat on CBeebies. an eternity when you’re a child and the as a producer in British films and physical movement only emphasises that television. As well as several theatrical sort of sheer present tenseness.’ movies and many series he was also SAMIRA AHMED If, in filming, you start to doubt the responsible for in excess of 50 single Samira Ahmed is an award-winning writing’s cohesion, want to play with it dramas for the small screen, most of journalist and broadcaster. Samira has or point it, the structure will collapse. them made as films. He is particularly worked as a television news anchor for You must also trust to the informal forest associated with Dennis Potter having the BBC and Channel 4 News and is a idiom. Director Brian Gibson says he produced among many others, Pennies regular television and radio broadcaster could take the leap with the play ‘because From Heaven (for which he won a for the BBC on culture and politics. the thing about Dennis’s writing, unlike BAFTA Television Award for Most Samira is a writer on culture, politics so many writers, it that it always plays Original Programme/Series), The Singing and social affairs and also makes radio better than it reads. Here in Hollywood, it Detective, Blue Remembered Hills and documentaries. always reads better than it plays because it’s Potter’s final dramas Karaoke and Cold actually written for reading. While it felt Lazarus. Currently he is in the early a pretty bold risk at the time, I knew from stages of a big screen movie to be made BAFTA HERITAGE SCREENINGS experience that it was a risk worth taking. in Sydney and another in India. He is BAFTA Heritage Screenings are a series ‘So we met with Dennis in a Greek also trying to persuade BBC Drama to of quarterly film screenings and on-stage restaurant in Bayswater. He was drinking remake Potter’s first (lost) drama The interviews which celebrate British film Retsina and gargling it like a seven Confidence Course and to commission an and TV classics and the great film and year old. Ken arrived late and Dennis original film based on themes suggested TV professionals who made them. spat Retsina at him and Ken got very by Dennis Potter’s life or works. irritated. There was this silly playfulness; he was still in the space he’d taken for writing the play. JOHN BIRD ‘The documentaries made by Michael John Bird is an award winning writer/ Apted for Granada, beginning with comedian/actor and satirist. He began his Seven Up in 1963 and revisiting the same television career in 1962 writing for That children septennially, had reached Twenty Was The Week That Was and alongside One Up not long before Gibson began writer John Fortune, was at the centre of shooting. Gibson showed the latest and the boom in satire during the 1960s. John then the first film to his cast. ‘I said “Don’t has continued acting and writing for film worry about playing a kid, you’ll get and television for over fifty years. John the childishness, just play the character.” won his first BAFTA Television Award That gave them specificity. Otherwise we in 1967 for Best Light Entertainment wouldn’t have known how to get started. and twenty years later collected another Concentrating on childishness, we would win for his television comedy with just have had a load of big kids running Rory Bremner and John Fortune. around and no character.’ The trio went on to receive four more Before going off to the forest location nominations. in Dorset (not Dean), the cast had ten days in a rehearsal room and, unusually, Potter appeared often. ‘He was very JANINE DUVITSKI supportive,’ Gibson recalls. ‘I was nervous Janine Duvitski is a film, theatre and and he took me for a drink and said television actress. Janine has appeared on “You’ve got to accept your own talent.” It screen for over forty years, most notably was very confidence giving, coming from as Angela in both Mike Leigh’s theatre him. I’d been a Potter fan since the Nigel and television production of Abigail’s .