Robert Vas in Context – update
John Wyver writes: With James Jordan and Eleni Liarou, I am one of the organisers of this symposium next March, and I am pleased to share the details here. Please note that we have had to re-schedule the date, and we have extended the deadline for this CFP.
Call for Proposals: Robert Vas in Context
A one-day symposium and screening of Nine Days in ’26, Robert Vas’ film about the May 1926 General Strike
Note change of date: Friday 27 March 2026, Birkbeck, University of London
Proposals are invited for 20-minute presentations for a symposium about the films of Robert Vas and about distinctive documentary engagements with the themes that drove his work: refugee experience, Jewish culture, the film archive, memory and history.
“Robert Vas [was] a unique and important figure in the history of documentary… The key to all Vas’s s work was his moral fervour. Concern, commitment, passion – these were the words he used over and over again, and which guided him. Plus compassionate understanding, which was the force that bound everything together.’
Alan Rosenthal, The Documentary Conscience, 1980
Born in Hungary, Robert Vas (1931-1978) fled his country in 1956 and came to England, where he made two notable shorts for the BFI’s Experimental Film Fund, Refuge England (1959) and The Vanishing Street (1962). His first film for BBC Television was The Frontier (1964).
In the next decade and a half he directed films about, among other subjects, the story of the magic lantern, Alexander Korda, the films of Humphrey Jennings, the music of Bela Bartok, the Katyn Forest Massacre, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the television archive, Stalin, Laurel and Hardy, and the survivors of Hiroshima. All this despite the “Christmas Tree” mark on his personnel file (above) identifying him as a potential political subversive.
The symposium marks two anniversaries. One is the 100th anniversary of the May 1926 General Strike in the United Kingdom, about which Vas made his most controversial film, Nine Days in ’26 (1974). The other is the 70th anniversary of the October 1956 uprising in Budapest against the Soviet-controlled government, the crushing of which led Vas and his family to flee their homeland and settle in Britain. His 1976 film My Homeland about the Hungarian Revolution remains perhaps his most personal and powerful film.
Robert Vas’ distinctive, poetic and committed films deserve to be far better-known, and this symposium is conceived to spotlight his achievements, to celebrate his productions, and to extend the processes of critical and creative engagements with his legacy.
At the same time, the symposium is concerned to situate and contextualise Vas and the central themes of his work within creative documentary practice that similarly explores those themes with personal and poetic approaches.
Although this is far from a comprehensive list, papers might address:
- Individual films by Robert Vas
- Documentary culture of BBC television in the 1960s and 1970s
- Essay filmmaking for television
- Creative documentary engagements with refugee and migrant experience
- Distinctive documentary engagements with Jewish experience and culture
- Films about the Hungarian Revolution
- Imaginative explorations of archival film
- The influence on filmmakers of Humphrey Jennings’ work
- Revising historiographical and methodological approaches to researching film and television histories of migrant experiences
- Teaching documentary: university curricula and the question of film and TV canons
It is intended that a publication will be developed from the papers that are presented.
Robert Vas in Context is organised by Professor James Jordan, University of Southampton; Dr Eleni Liarou, Birkbeck, University of London; and Professor John Wyver, University of Westminster.
Proposals of no more than 300 words and a brief CV, along with any queries about the topic and event, should be sent to John Wyver, [email protected] by Monday 8 December 2025.
Notifications of acceptance will be sent by Monday 22 December 2025.
Can I be added to the attendance list for the symposium ‘Robert Vas in Context’, April 2026. I am retired from teaching, but have significant research experience in Jewish London Documentary Representation, which was the subject of my PhD thesis.
Cheers.
Many thanks for your interest. We have not yet formally opened an attendance list, but we will keep your name until we do, and will return to you with further details in the new year.