Peter Kosminsky has made some of the most important and revelatory television of the past three decades, working in documentary, drama and drama documentary. Throughout December to mark his 30th year working in British television, BFI Southbank celebrates this controversial filmmaker’s career with a season of screenings that will include opportunities to see a number of his early television documentaries such as The Falklands War – The Untold Story (1987) and powerful dramas, The Life & Death of Philip Knight (1993) and No Child of Mine (1997). There will be an example of his film work with a screening of White Oleander (2002) as well as a special on stage interview with Peter Kosminsky in conversation with Francine Stock that will follow a screening of New York – The Quiet Catastrophe (1987) on Tue 13 Dec .Peter Kosminsky began his directing career by working for the BBC’s Nationwide news magazine programme. Moving to Yorkshire Television’s highly respected documentary department, he began to work on a series of meticulously researched documentaries in the First Tuesday strand that would make his name – including the definitive Falklands documentary The Falklands War – The Untold Story (1987).
Proud of his documentary roots – and the research methods employed in factual television – he increasingly turned to the hybrid form of drama-documentary, drawn to the additional emotional power that drama can provide. Ken Loach has remarked of the director, ‘He understands the medium of film and draws people in to those contentious issues’ . Owing much to “radical” predecessors such as Loach and Alan Clarke, Kosminsky is interested in ‘making mischief and causing trouble’ . His motivation for making television is to shake people out of their political apathy.
Working with a small favoured group of writers and finding his writing soul mate in the late Leigh Jackson , he has been able to tackle the most epic of subjects such as the genocide of the Bosnian war in Warriors ( BAFTA best Drama Serial 1999) ; Kosminsky’s genius is to use intensely detailed private personal testimonies and invest them with the resonance of the wider political issues at stake. This unique ability was again in evidence in the much praised and recently transmittedThe Promise (2011) in which he explored the British responsibility for the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.
A recurrent theme emerges in Kosminsky’s work (viscerally evident in his drama Britz , 2007): that we are all complicit in injustice if we do nothing to hold our elected representatives and institutions to account. In an age when so much television has so little to say Peter Kosminsky’s principled voice rings out all the louder.
The BFI Southbank is open to all. BFI members are entitled to a discount on all tickets. BFI Southbank Box Office tel: 020 7928 3232. Unless otherwise stated tickets are £9.50, concs £6.75 Members pay £1.50 less on any ticket. Website www.bfi.org.uk/southbank
xx - posted on 23/05/2012 13:13:28
