Two birthdays today from the film industry, I don’t know much about either , but they were only born a year apart on January 8th.
Happy Birthday Gillies MacKinnon, born in Glasgow in 1948.
After studying mural painting at Glasgow School of Art, he became an art teacher and professional cartoonist, and spent six months travelling with a nomadic tribe in the Sahara, what an adventure that must have been!
He studied at Middlesex Polytechnic in the 1970s and the National Film and Television School in the early 1980s. His graduation short Passing Glory, an austere recreation of the Glasgow of his youth, was premiered at the 1986 Edinburgh International Film Festival, where it won the first Scottish Film Prize.
He then went on two direct two projects for BBC 2’S Screen Two, Small Faces, about three teenage brothers, in a downtrodden section of 1960’s Glasgow and The Grass Arena the true story of John Healy, a boxer turned alcoholic turned chess master portrayed by Mark Rylance. The film won several prizes, including the Edinburgh Film Festival’s Michael Powell Award for Best British Film.
MacKinnon also directed notable TV shows including, Trial and Retribution and George Gently. More recently he directed the TV film Torvill and Dean, and the latest version of Whisky Galore.
I recommend his latest work, a film called The Last Bus…….Life is a journey and The Last Bus takes pensioner Tom Harper (Timothy Spall) on an epic trip from the remote village he calls home, back to the place where he was born. The film also stars our very own Phyllis Logan, in it Spall uses his free bus pass to travel from John O'Groats to Land’s End in Cornwall, It's a joyful film that is also sad in places.
The second birthday boy is Iain Smith was born in Glasgow in 1949, and graduated from the London Film School in 1971.
He worked in London for several years before returning to his native Scotland to make “My Childhood”, for the British Film Institute, the first of the award winning trilogy.
He formed his own production company in partnership with Jon Schorstein and produced television commercials, documentaries, children’s feature films and low budget dramas, and in 1978 production managed Bertrand Tavernier’s “Deathwatch” starring Romy Schneider and Harvey Keitel. A year later he joined David Puttnam and Hugh Hudson to make “Chariots of Fire” starring Ian Charleson and Ben Cross.
Smith has worked with some of the best actors in Hollywood, including Julia Roberts in Mary Reilly, Robert De Niro in the Mission and Spygame with Robert Redford and Brad Pitt. His most famous Scottish work is arguably as an associate producer of Local Hero. He alson worked on some Hollywood titles including The Fifth Element, The A Team(movie) and The Killing Fields.
Iain Smith has served on the boards of the UK Film Council, Scottish Screen, the Joint board of Creative Scotland, the Scottish Film Council, the Scottish Film Production Fund, the Scottish Film Training Trust as a Governor of the National Film and Television School, a director of the Children’s Film and Television Foundation, and as Chair of the Edinburgh International Film Festival.