Murray Grigor

Murray Grigor
Born	1939 Inverness, Scotland
Occupation	Film maker
Years active	1967–present
Spouse(s)	Barbara Grigor (1968–1994) Carol Grigor (2011-) awards

William Alexander Murray Grigor OBE (born 1939) is a Scottish film maker, writer and exhibition curator who has served as director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival. He has made over 50 films with a focus on arts and architecture documentaries.

Murray Grigor, Scottish film maker & Philanthropist Carol Colburn Grigor

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, 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]

Year	Title	Summary
1968	Mackintosh	Documentary about 20th century Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh
1970	Fettes	Documentary about activities and events at Fettes College, Edinburgh, including a visit by HM The Queen Mother
1972	GR Stein Refractories	Documentary about the production, and uses, of refractory bricks
1972	Space and light	Documentary about the newly built St. Peter's Seminary, Cardross, by Scottish architects firm Gillespie, Kidd and Coia
1973	Travelpass: it's just the ticket	Promotional film for the Highland Board's "Rover" ticket
1974	Clydescope	Documentary about the river Clyde, from Biggar to Brodick, with Scottish comedian Billy Connolly as guide
1974	Suilven Spring	Documentary about the Northwest of Scotland seen through the eyes of a young couple taking a Spring break
1975	Raised from stone	Documentary about Scottish architectural styles
1975	The Hand of Adam	Documentary about 18th century Scottish architect Robert Adam
1975	Prospect of Scotland	Documentary about Scottish industries in context with the country's history and tradition
1975	Steel upon the Sward	Documentary about works of the three sculptors Gerald Laing, Gavin Scobie and Andrew Mylius
1977	Cumbernauld Hit	A James-Bond type fiction film playing in the new town of Cumbernauld, and sponsored by the Cumbernauld Development Corporation; the film is an original take on the "promotional" films produced for Scotland's new towns during the 1970s.
1982	Scotch Myths	A Drama-documentary questening a Scotland portrayed by kitsch and stereotypes of fatigued romanticism; Murray Grigor produced this film together with his wife, Barbara Grigor, for Channel Four's first Hogmanay show in 1982.
1982	Sean Connery's Edinburgh	Documentary about Edinburgh presented by Scottish actor Sean Connery
1983	(Portrait of an Artist:) The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright	Documentary about 19th/20th century American architect Frank Lloyd Wright featuring the architect's granddaughter, the actress Anne Baxter
1984	Pride of Place	8-part one-hour TV series documentary about American architecture
1988	Henry Moore and Landscape	TV documentary about 20th century English sculptor Henry Moore
1990	The Why?sman – In Pursuit of the Question Mark	Documentary on the self-styled Scul?tor George Wyllie, artist, playwright, poet and Pataphysician. It features his Straw Locomotive (1987) and the Paper Boat, as a requiem for Glasgow's once-great industrial prowess. It also features Wyllie's performance piece, Day Down a Goldmine, with Bill Paterson, an eerie forecast on the collapse of the banking system.
1992	E. P. Sculptor	Documentary about, and with, 20th century Scottish sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi
1995	The Architecture of Carlo Scarpa	Documentary about 20th century Italian architect Carlo Scarpa, presented by Scottish architect Richard Murphy
1995	In Search of Clarity: The Architecture of Gwathmey Siegel	Documentary about 20th century American architects firm Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects
1998	The Face of Russia	TV mini-series for WETA / PBS with James Billington, Librarian of Congress
1999	Nineveh on the Clyde: the Architecture of Alexander "Greek" Thomson	Documentary about 19th century Scottish architect Alexander "Greek" Thomson
2001	The Work of Angels	Documentary on The Book of Kells, Director of photography, Seamus McGarvey, Producer Louis Lentin for RTE, Ireland and ABC TV, Australia.
2003	Is mise an teanga (I am the tongue)	Documentary on Scots and Irish Gaelic poems, complemented by the work contemporary Irish and Scots artists, based on An Leabhar Mor – the Great Book of Gaelic. Director of Photography Seamus McGarvey.
2005	Maggie's Centres	Documentary about Maggie's Centres, cancer care centres in Britain, inspired by Maggie Keswick Jencks and built by celebrated architects
2005	Sir John Soane: an English architect, an American legacy	Documentary about 18th century English architect Sir John Soane and his influence on 20th century American architects
2008	Infinite space: the Architecture of John Lautner	Documentary about 20th century American architect John Lautner
2010	Space and Light Revisited	A two screen documentary about the now ruined St. Peter's Seminary, Cardross, which was already subject of a prizewinning documentary by Grigor in 1972. Mark Littlewood's photography of the original film is now screened side by side by Seamus McGarvey's near frame by frame black and white sequel of the vandalised ruin. Only the top shot are missing, owing to the total destruction of Kilmahew House. UIA, Madrid – Silver Medalla
2011	Contemporary Days: the Designs of Lucienne and Robin Day	Documentary about the British designers Lucienne and Robin Day[11]
2012	Ever to Excel + "Ever to Exceed" with Hamid Shams	Feature-length documentary to mark the 600th anniversary of the University of St Andrews with Sean Connery. Director of photography Hamid Shams, Music composed by Rory Boyle.

Exhibitions

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

Year	Title	Place	Notes
1981	Scotch myths: an exploration of scotchness	Crawford Centre, University of St. Andrews, and Edinburgh International Festival	about a Scotland portrayed by kitsch and stereotypes of fatigued romanticism; Murray Grigor curated this exhibition together with his wife Barbara; the Grigors also produced an exhibition catalogue, and film documentary on this subject under the same title.
1990	Scotland creates: 5000 years of art & design	McLellan Galleries, Glasgow
1991	Seeds of change: a view of Scottish inventiveness	Royal Museum of Scotland / National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh
1993	The Sixties	Barbican Art Gallery, London

References

1. "Murray Grigor". Anglia Ruskin University
2. "Obituary: Barbara Grigor". The Independent, 19 October 1994
3. Later Patrick Higson, his colleague from the BBC joined the company and added considerably to its success. from Viz Ltd. Companies House, UK
4. "Sean Connery talks to Murray Grigor". Edinburgh International Book Festival 2011
5. Biography of Murray Grigor on the website of the Scottish Broadcasting Commission
6. Citation for Murray Grigor on the website of the Anglia Ruskin University
7. The London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 60009. p. 10. 31 December 2011.
8. Murray Grigor. Internet Movie Database (IMDb)
9. Search. National Library for Scotland
10. Entries for Murray Grigor at the online catalogue in the Scottish Screen Archive, National Library for Scotland
11. "Contemporary Days: The Designs of Lucienne and Robin Day". Designs on Screen
12. "Speakers". Heritage and Identity

External links

• Murray Grigor at the Internet Movie Database