Basil Wright

Basil Wright ( born June 12, 1907 in Sutton, Surrey, † 14 October 1987 in London) was a British documentary filmmaker and producer.

He studied at Cambridge University and began at that time to turn experimental amateur films with his own camera. In November 1929, he was ( from 1933 trading as GPO Film Unit ) hired by John Grierson for the documentary filmmaker group of the Empire Marketing Board Film Unit, where Robert Flaherty worked at that time. 1933 Grierson sent him to a movie on the West Indies and Ceylon. His 1933 incurred in the Caribbean movie Windmill in Barbados criticized the colonial exploitation. The The published the following year, Song of Ceylon is considered next to his 1936 collaboration with Harry Watt created Nightmail as his best work. The Song of Ceylon was in 1935 awarded at the International Film Festival in Brussels for best film.

1937 founded Wright addition to his work for the GPO independent documentary production company realist film; until after the Second World War he was then principally engaged in the film production. Among his film works projects The Face of Scotland (1938 ) found a study on the characteristics of the Scots and Scotland. Since the 1950s, he turned again regularly even movies. From 1960, he held teaching assignments, as at the University of California and the National Film School in London. He wrote two books on his personal view of film history, The Use of Film (1948) and The Long View ( 1974).

The film price of the Royal Anthropological Institute is named after him.