Before John Boorman went to Hollywood to make the neo noir classic Point Blank, he worked in BBC Bristol making documentaries and docudramas. This little known period of his life and work is ripe for rediscovery.
In 1964, Boorman helped launch BBC 2 with a six-part series about Bristol. The Newcomers is a unique view of the city in the mid-1960s at a time of national and international social, cultural, political and economic change. It is centred around the lives of Alison Kennedy, who came to Bristol as a student, and Anthony Smith (ACH Smith), who came to work for the Bristol Post and then Western Daily Press.
They met by chance, married, and Bristol became their home and where they started their family. Many familiar faces from Bristol at the time feature, including playwright Tom Stoppard. But the real star is the city of Bristol itself, including a run-down Clifton.
The series covers, among others, capital punishment, work and housing, docks labour, a dodgy pub, night life (where Stoppard dances the Hippy Hippy Shake at The Glen), NHS and the welfare state, homelessness, an evangelical church in St Paul's, trying to make a living as an artist, crime and policing, what it means to live the good life in Bristol and cities generally. There's fewer cars and a lot more smoking. There's even a brief glimpse of Raghbir Singh, the first Sikh (and non-white) bus conductor to be employed by the Bristol Omnibus Company following the bus boycott in 1963.
Following the screening of the complete The Newcomers, we will show Money Into Light, where Boorman returns to Bristol 25 years on and revisits the places he worked in and filmed.
This is a rare chance to see both films on the cinema screen.
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