Basil Wright

Basil Wright (born June 12, 1907 in Sutton , Surrey , † October 14, 1987 in London ) was a British documentary filmmaker and producer.

He was studying at Cambridge University and during this time began making experimental amateur films with his own camera. In November 1929 he was hired by John Grierson for the documentary filmmaker group of the Empire Marketing Board Film Unit ( trading as GPO Film Unit from 1933 ), where Robert Flaherty was also active at the time. In 1933 Grierson sent him to the West Indies and Ceylon to film . His film Windmill in Barbados , made in the Caribbean in 1933, criticizes colonial exploitation. The Song of Ceylon , published in the following year, is considered to be his best work , alongside his Night Mail, which he created together with Harry Watt in 1936 . The Song of Ceylon was awarded as the best film at the International Film Festival in Brussels in 1935.

In 1937 Wright founded the independent documentary production company Realist Films in addition to his work for GPO ; until after the Second World War he was mainly occupied with film production. The Face of Scotland (1938), a study of the characteristics of the Scots and Scotland, stands out among his own films . Since the 1950s he has been making films himself again on a regular basis. From 1960 he also held teaching positions at the University of California and the National Film School in London. He wrote two books on his personal view of film history, The Use of Film (1948) and The Long View (1974).

The film prize of the Royal Anthropological Institute is named after him.

Web links

• Basil Wright in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Basil Wright at the British Film Institute