Murray Grigor

William Alexander Murray Grigor OBE (born 1939) is a Scottish film maker, writer and exhibition curator. He has made over 50 films with a focus on arts and architecture documentaries.

Murray Grigor, Scottish film maker & Philanthropist Carol Hogel

Early life

Grigor was born in 1939 in Inverness, and graduated from St. Andrews University. He started his career as a film editor at the BBC which he left in 1967 to become director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival.^[1] He married, in 1968, Barbara Grigor, née Sternschein, a teacher of French and German, film maker, exhibition curator,and chairman of the Scottish Sculpture Trust with whom he had two daughters, Sarah, b 1970 and Phoebe, b 1972. Barbara Grigor died in1994.^[2] Grigor married Carol Colburn Grigor née Colburn in 2011.

Career

Grigor was appointed the Director of the International Edinburgh Film Festival (EIFF) in 1967, although his then principal job was designated as the Depute Director of the Films of Scotland Committee, under its Director Forsyth Hardy. Before he left the BBC Grigor had researched a film and assisted in the preparation of a major exhibition curated by Andrew McLaren Young, the Richmond Professor of Fine Art at the University of Glasgow, to celebrate the centenary of the then neglected Glasgow architect, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, for the Edinburgh International Festival,1968. Grigor's film was commissioned by the Scottish Arts Council in association with BBC's Head of Arts, Stephen Hearst and transmitted twice by the BBC 2 as one of its first colour programmes, and by BBC Scotland as its Edinburgh Festival programmes. With photography by Eddie McConnell and Oscar Marzaroli, a haunting score by Frank Spedding and Bill Forsyth as editor, the film accompanied the exhibition across Europe, winning five international awards, which did much to re-establish the reputation of the now renowned architect. {ref. citation: The Lighthouse Achievement Award, Glasgow, 2005, presented by Zaha Hadid}. For the under-funded EIFF Grigor recruited the key players of the enterprising Edinburgh University Film Society, including Lynda Myles, David Will, Jim Hickey, Isabel Hilton and Anne Fleming, whom together reconfigured the event as an international forum of film theory and independent cinema, from student films to major retrospectives of with accompanying publications on such undervalued masters as Samuel Fuller, Douglas Sirk, Raoul Walsh, Roger Corman and Jacques Tourneur. {Notes Toward a History of the Edinburgh International Film Festival 1969 -77) by Peter Stanfield, University of Kent.}

During the 1970s, Grigor wrote and directed several sponsored documentaries for Films of Scotland, and the Highland and Islands Development Board, most notably "Travelpass" with John Bett and Alex Norton, "Suilven Spring" with Bill Paterson and "Clydescope" on the tourist attractions around the River Clyde with Billy Connolly and innovative animations devised by his friend the artist John Byrne, brought to the screen by Donald Holwill. Connolly's original songs were augmented by the 'complete musician' Ron Geesin. The great Irish actor Micheal Mac Liammoir read the picaresque send-up narration. This production, with his partner Patrick Higson, and the cameraman David Peat was such a fun experience that Grigor persuaded Billy Connolly to put up the money for a weekend foray to Ireland which resulted in "Big Banana Feet' (BBF), a film inspired by Don't Look Back – D.A. Pennebaker's film of Bob Dylan's UK tour. This feature length documentary was a hit at the London Film Festival and acquired by Brent Walker who launched a most successful national cinema release. BBF even beat the house record in Newcastle. When Brent Walker disbanded every copy, bar one, was destroyed. Fortunately Grigor's baggage being over-weight in California, he gifted his copy to his friend Lynda Myles who was then running the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. When David Peat, its director of photography, was given a retrospective, BBC Scotland made a digital copy. Curiously the British Film Institute did not list BBF in its Billy Connolly filmography when he received his BAFTA Life Time Achievement Award.

Already during the 1970s, Grigor made arts and architecture as a focus of his filmmaking. He has made documentaries about many renowned American, British and Italian architects, including Robert Adam, John Lautner, Carlo Scarpa, Sir John Soane, Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, Alexander "Greek" Thomson, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Grigor's documentaries on artists include "BLAST" on the Vorticists, "Henry Moore and Landscape," "E.P. Sculptor" on Eduardo Paolozzi in association with the Edinburgh Festival 1984 exhibition initiated by Barbara Grigor, and "The Work of Angels" on the Book of Kells, for RTÉ, ABC Australia. "The Why?sman" brought together George Wyllie's play, "Day Down a Goldmine" with Bill Paterson and freely explored Glasgow's most popular artist, the creator of the much loved 'Straw Locomotive', and the "Paper Boat" – acclaimed as great public art inspired by his friend Joseph Beuys.

Grigor also worked on, and curated, art exhibitions. In 1976, for the opening exhibition of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, titled Man TransForms Grigor was invited by the Austrian architect and designer Hans Hollein to direct film loops on aspects of design. He was awarded a US/UK Bicentennial Fellowship to research and write a feature-length documentary film on Frank Lloyd Wright, which he finally made with David Peat as Director of Photography in 1981, with Anne Baxter, the architect's granddaughter providing the narration. "The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright" received many awards including a 'Citation by the American Institute of Architects,' the first ever to have been awarded to a filmmaker. In 1981, Grigor, together with his wife Barbara, curated the provocative touring exhibition Scotch Myths questioning a Scotland portrayed by kitsch and stereotypes of fatigued romanticism. A filmed burlesque based on their exhibition followed in 1982 – as a parody of the annual Hogmanay show for Channel 4, a British television channel. For Glasgow European City of Culture1990 the Grigors were commissioned to mount "Scotland Creates - 5000 Years of Design" for the Glasgow's McLellan Galleries. With objects derived from the National Galleries of Scotland, the Kelvingrove Gallery and Museum, the Burrell Collection and other Glasgow Museums, the National Library of Scotland and many other works from abroad, the exhibition was judged a tour de force and the hit of the Glasgow's year of culture. This was followed by an invitation by the Royal Museum of Scotland to mark the Meeting of the European Heads of Government in 1992. For this the Grigors brought back large scale exhibits into the main hall of the museum to celebrate the threads of inventiveness which connected Scotland to the world. Its centrepiece was tall central column inscribed by James Hutton's saying on the age of the earth, "We find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end" winding around a spiral of rocks gathered from the four corners of Scotland.

In 2008, Grigor produced seven film loops for Los Angeles' Hammer Gallery exhibition Between Earth and Heaven about the architecture of John Lautner, which coincided with the premiere of his documentary Infinite Space on the same subject.

Since the 1980s, Grigor widened his film focus to cover more international, and particularly American subjects, such as the 1986 landmark 8 part series Pride of Place with Robert A. M. Stern for the American television channel PBS. In 1997, he directed the PBS series "The Face of Russia" with James Billington, the Librarian of Congress. "Contemporary Days" on the British designers Robin and Lucienne Day for Design Onscreen of Denver Colorado, was premiered at the Glasgow Film Festival in February 2011. "Ever to Excel" -a feature documentary with Sir Sean Connery was funded in America to mark the 600th anniversary of the University of St Andrews for its scholarship endowment campaign, and had its British premiere at the 2012 Glasgow Film Festival. It was followed by sequel "Ever to Exceed' celebrating the achievements of St Andrews' students, scholars and alumni.

Grigor also worked as film producer and writer. Together with Barbara Grigor, he founded, in 1972, the film company Viz Ltd based in Inverkeithing, Scotland.^[2][3] Grigor has also written screenplays for all his films, and a number of exhibition catalogues to accompany his exhibitions. He was co-author of "The Architects' Architect" on C.R. Mackintosh with Richard Murphy and "Being a Scot" with Sir Sean Connery, published in 2008 and which is now published in 5 languages.^[4] "Beatus - The Spanish Apocalypse" on the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages on the Book of Revelation, was invited in competition to the 2015 Montréal Festival du Film sur L'Art - the 4th film Grigor has made in partnership with Hamid Shams, the American Director of Photography.

Appointments and awards

Grigor was director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival from 1967 to 1972, and its chairman from 1985 to 1990. He was director of Channel 4, a British TV channel, from 1995 to 1999. He was appointed, in 2007, as a member of the Scottish Broadcasting Commission.^[5]

Grigor is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and was the first film maker to be made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland and the Royal Institute of British Architects. Grigor is Visiting Professor of Film Studies at the Anglia Ruskin University, from which he received, in 2010, an Honorary Doctor of Arts.^[6]

Grigor was the first recipient of the Royal Television Society Reith Award. He has received a Citation of Excellence from the American Institute of Architects for his film Portrait of an Artist: the Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. His film E. P. Sculptor on the artist Eduardo Paolozzi won the Rodin Prize at the 1992 Paris Biennale. The film Nineveh on the Clyde on the architecture of Glasgow architect Alexander "Greek" Thomson won awards at Montréal and from Europa Nostra at Toblach, Italy.

Grigor was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to architecture and the film industry.^[7]

Filmography

Grigor has directed the following films.^[8][9][10]

Exhibitions

Grigor has curated, or contributed to, the following exhibitions.^[12]

References

External links

• Murray Grigor at the Internet Movie Database