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  Matrix East Research Lab (MERL) Annual Lecture A Boatload of Wild Irishmen: The Cinema of Robert Flaherty You are invited to an annual public lecture, organised by MERL, Matrix East Research Lab at the University of East London. Lecture and film by Professor Brian Winston. When:   Thursday 19 May 2011 Where: EB1.37, East Building, Docklands Campus, University of East London Time: 5.30pm Welcome 5.40pm Lecture by Prof. Brian Winston 6.45pm Film screening of "A Boatload of Wild Irishmen: The Cinema of Robert ­­Flaherty" Robert Flaherty was the first to transform film observing ‘real’ people from mere shapeless surveillance into dramatic narrative – but at a considerable ethical cost. Although accused of being an undisciplined neo-colonial romantic given to fakery and careless of his subjects’ dignity and safety, some think him a genius, correctly credited with the discovering of a wholly different way of making films. Extravagantly praised in his lifetime, his reputation has been increasingly tarnished over the years since his death. A Boatload of Wild Irishmen is a new look at Flaherty’s cinema and legacy from Nanook to Louisiana Story seeking a more balanced appreciation of his work. Brian Winston has been involved with documentary since he joined Granada UK’s World In Action in 1963.  In 1985, he won a US prime-time Emmy for documentary scriptwriting (for WNET, New York. He has written extensively on the documentary including several books  (e.g. Lies, Damn Lies & Documentaries, 2000 and Claiming the Real II – Documentary: Grierson and Beyond,2009). He has been a governor of the British Film Institute (and is editing The BFI Documentary Companion for them), and a Grierson Trustee. He was a jury member at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in 2009. Winston is currently the Lincoln Professor at the University of Lincoln where he was previously a Pro-Vice Chancellor. He has held senior academic posts at UK National Film and Television School, New York University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Wales (Cardiff), Westminster University. At the University of Glasgow, he was the Glasgow Media Group’s first director, producing Bad News (1976) and More Bad News (1980), His other books include Media Technology and Society: A History from the Telegraph to the Internet (for which he won Best Book of 1998, American Association for History and Computing) and Messages: Free Expression, Media & the West from Gutenberg to Google (2005). A follow-up, A Right to Offend: Free Expression, Media and the West in the 21st Century, is in preparation. All welcome, admission free. Please RSVP for this event by clicking here <[log in to unmask]">mailto:[log in to unmask];[log in to unmask]> . For more information please contact Haim Bresheeth. <mailto:[log in to unmask]> For travel information to our Docklands campus see: www.uel.ac.uk/docklands <http://www.uel.ac.uk/about_uel/why_uel/docklands.htm>      
      
      
  For more information please contact Haim Bresheeth. <mailto:[log in to unmask]>       
         
  University of East London Docklands Campus, University Way, London E16 2RD        

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