Magic Rays at BFI Southbank – update
John Wyver writes: With the new year upon us, and with less than a week to go before the first screening, I thought it might be a moment to look at the sales for the BFI Magic Rays of Light Season. As you’ll know, this is linked to next week’s publication of Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain as a Bloomsbury/BFI hardback, paperback and e-book (all available at a discount via the link from the publisher).
We are screening a number of pre-war documentaries made for the high definition television service from Alexandra Palace, a delightful Jack Rosenthal drama about the service from there, and a selection of rarely-seen feature films from the early 1930s that in different ways imagine how television will be realised (including High Treason, 1929, above).
Thursday 08 January 18:15, NFT2
• Television Arrives! + intro by season curator John Wyver: more than two-thirds sold.
We have only a very few minutes of recordings of live broadcasts from the BBC Television Station at Alexandra Palace, which was on the air between 2 November 1936 and 1 September 1939. Scattered mostly as glimpses in newsreels and in one case of amateur footage shot of the screen, these also include a unique but very low-quality film made by RCA engineers in New York in 1938.
What has survived, however, are a small number of film documentaries made by the television service for screening as part of the service, and tonight’s programme features the four key examples of these. The prints are in exceptional condition, and this is a unique opportunity to see them on a big screen.
Thursday 15 January 18:10, NFT2
• Fools and a Flower + intro by season curator John Wyver: just under half the seats sold.
The main attraction is The Fools on the Hill, Jack Rosenthal’s gentle comic recreation, made in 1986, of preparations for the opening of Alexandra Palace fifty years earlier. It is paired with a true rarity: an item from the arts magazine Review which in 1970 reunited the cast and production team (including producer Lance Sieveking) of The Man with the Flower in His Mouth, the pioneering 30-line television transmission of Pirandello’s drama, which was originally co-produced by Baird Television and the BBC.
Sunday 18 January 15:00, NFT2
• High Treason: again, just under half the seats sold.
From the listings: A British sci-fi thriller set in 1950s London, involving a plot by evil arms dealers to blow up the Channel Tunnel and fly planes into buildings. Based on a stage-play by Noel Pemberton-Billing MP, the film features imagined variants of television used for broadcasting and televisual telephony.
Sunday 25 January 15.30, NFT2
• Radio Parade of 1935: plenty of seats currently available for this.
As the BFI listing has it: Will Hay plays a lightly disguised Lord Reith, at the head of the broadcasting organisation NBG, which occupies elaborate Art Deco premises clearly modelled on BBC Broadcasting House. NBG is suffering from its overly intellectual programming, but Jimmy Clare, the sparky young Head of Complaints comes up with a plan to save it by televising entertainment shows
Saturday 31 January 15:00, NFT2
• Elstree Follies: seats available for this too.
This is perhaps the weirdest of the screenings: a showing of the 1930 revue-type film, Elstree Calling, made by Adrian Brunel with contributions by Alfred Hitchcock, linked by scenes as if in a television broadcast, together with the exceptionally rare and strange Television Follies, a film I didn’t even know existed until two months back. Made by Manchester filmmaker Geoffrey Benstead in 1933, it is the only film I know with scenes of a family supoosedly watched a Baird ‘Televisor’.
I am also giving a BFI Reuben Library Talk, in conversation with BFI Television Curator Lisa Kerrigan, on Monday 12 January, but I do not at present know how many seats remain available for this.
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