Today we begin the first of what will become an ongoing series of conversations with men and women of achievement from multiple fields and from around the world. I am honored that my first guest is the distinguished English film director Tony Palmer, whose work includes such masterpieces as Testimony (1987), about the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich and his mortal-peril struggle against the dictator Josef Stalin, starring Ben Kingsley; The Children (1990), a heartbreaking adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel with Kingsley and Kim Novak; and many films about music for the BBC, among them At the Haunted End of Day: William Walton, which will be shown at the Barnes Festival this Sunday, March 30, in London. Tony is also a well-known director of opera and the auteur behind Wagner (1983), starring Richard Burton and Vanessa Redgrave, a feature film that in its original incarnation lasted nearly eight hours, underwent several revisions, was shown as a ten-part miniseries, and is now once again available on DVD in its original version.
Our conversation was recorded in September of last year, on the occasion of the publication of Against the Corporate Media. The book was launched at an event held at the Reform Club in London at which several of our contributors joined me, including John O'Sullivan, Ian Gregory, Ashley Rindsberg, and Ben Scallan. They were later joined by respondents including Irish tech entrepreneur Declan Ganley, British columnist Kathy Gyngell, editor John McGuirk of Ireland's principal independent media outlet, Gript, and Tony Palmer.
Our discussion ranges widely over such topics as the book itself, freedom of expression, his own reception by critics over a long career, and the state of English journalism. Rather than trying to summarize his work, here he is in his own words:
TONY PALMER’s vast filmography of over one hundred films ranges from early works with The Beatles, Cream, Rory Gallagher, Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa (200 Motels), to the famous portraits with and about Walton, Britten, Stravinsky, Maria Callas, André Previn, John Osborne, Leonard Cohen (Bird on a Wire), Margot Fonteyn and Menuhin, as well as feature films such as Testimony, starring Ben Kingsley as Shostakovich. His 7 hour 45 minutes film on Wagner, starring Richard Burton, Laurence Olivier and Vanessa Redgrave, was described by the Los Angeles Times as “one of the most beautiful films ever made”. Among over 45 international prizes for his work are 14 Gold Medals at the New York Film & Television Festival (the most recent in 2016), awards from the Jerusalem, San Francisco, São Paolo, Chicago, Sofia, Cuenca and London Film Festivals, as well as numerous BAFTA (British Academy of Film & Television) EMMY, GRIERSON nominations and awards. In 1989 the National Film Theatre in London staged a major retrospective of his work, the first maker of ‘arts’ films to be so fêted.
He is also a prize-winning opera director, including the Golden Mask in Moscow, recipient of three Platinum and two Gold records, and was awarded a SONY Prize as a radio presenter. A D.Mus (Hon), D.Litt (Hon) and FRGS (Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society), he is the only person to have won the PRIX ITALIA three times, and in 2014 was nominated for the Glenn Gould International Prize, unprecedented for a documentary film maker. In 2016, he was awarded the Gold Medal of St. Simeon from the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture for services to Bulgarian culture. He is also honorary Professor of East European Cultural Studies at Lesya Ukrainka University at Lutsk in the Ukraine. In 2017 he received the 'Outstanding Achievement Award' at Hot Docs in Toronto, and in 2019 the Stravinsky Prize from Ustilug and the Tschaikovsky Medal from the National Academy of Music in Kiev. He lives in the most westerly house in England, next to Land's End.
I hope you enjoy our chat as much as we did having it.
Article tags: Michael Walsh, Tony Palmer
