Film-TV
Section:
This being a campaign site to promote the region as a media centre, we have
a set of web pages addressing the issues raised in our earlier coverage of the local film-tv
production 
scene.
There's a chronological listing, a production history, a locations map, and full-page separate
features covering a film, film-maker, or location of particular local interest.
Meryl
Streep
on the
Lyme
Regis
Cobb
in west
Dorset,
with
the
Undercliff
wood
section
of the
Jurassic
Coast
visible
in the
background.
Peter
O'Toole, Petula Clark,
and the boys of Sherborne
School in the 1969 Goodbye
Mr Chips, scripted by
Terence Rattigan and filmed
at Sherborne in north
Dorset
Local-Literature Section
This section of
the website covers writers and works with a strong connection to the south-central region.
(Latest Feature page [1-5-11]: Setting
The Scene In Wessex: The 17th Century In Literature And Drama.)
Thomas Hardy: Behind The Mask, by Poole-based biographer Dr Andrew Norman, is the latest
[March 2011] Hardy biography, with new information about his carefully-guarded private life.
Thomas Hardy with
his bicycle: when the
bicycle first became popular,
allowing country folk
to travel more easily,
Hardy began to assist
in the early promotion
of Wessex as "Hardy
Country," which would
become the basis of regional
tourism when the automobile
arrived.
About Us
South Central MediaScene serves to promote the south-central region's media profile. It's an independent site [no funding etc], and not a business.
For earlier blog entries, see links opposite.
Ken Russell 1927-2011
New
Forest resident Ken Russell, the region’s most long-established filmmaker, who began his career
with arts documentaries in the 1960s, died at Lymington shortly before the Xmas holidays. BBC2
has just shown a memorial documentary, A
Bit Of A Devil, repeated on BBC4 Wed 25 Jan at 23:00 - after which it will presumably be
available on iPlayer for another week. BBC4 has already broadcast his films Women In Love
and its sequel The Rainbow, while BBC3 broadcast his rarely-seen The Boy
Friend. BBC Four also showed his (also rarely-seen) 1962 docu-drama Elgar, which
changed how arts documentaries were made, on Friday the 20th at 19:30. The same evening, the
Rex Cinema in Wareham showed for one night his 1977 Valentino, which was part-filmed
in Bournemouth (Russell-Cotes Museum as the star's 1920s Hollywood home etc). Ken often shot
scenes for his films locally, regardless of where they were set, and rather than attempt another
blog item here (we’ve done several previous items on him) as an obit, we’re currently putting
together a dedicated web-page on the various local links in his life and work.
Local TV: LGTV or PSTV?:
Last week's 'LGTV' scandal suggests it is time to start our own coverage of the issue of our upcoming local tv/video channel. If you missed it, this is where Poole-based RNLI lifeguards at Sandbanks beach made a 9-minute video, uploaded it to YouTube, which promptly [Oct 28-30] got international media coverage of the sort the RNLI definitely did not want. Typical headlines were "RNLI Issues Apology For Lifeguard Video Featuring Homophobic Slurs, Hitler Impersonation" [Huffington Post], "Lifeguards simulate sex, impersonate Hitler on YouTube" [Telegraph], "Lifeguards in Hitler YouTube clip" [BBC News], "Fury over lifesavers' 'sex' and Hitler vid" [The Sun]. The stories noted the video also included jokey skits about people with ginger hair and practicing violence against women (punching them in the stomach and throwing them down the stairs). Our local Echo has "Poole lifeguards in hot water over video", with Commenting disabled in its online version of the story for reasons we can guess at. Our own interest here is how the video reflects a trend which is bound to impact on an upcoming local tv/video channel. [read more]
Back To The Local Front:
With the spreading phone hacking scandal leading to calls for more media ownership plurarity (i.e less of a monopoly), it may be worthwhile to take stock of our local media situation. [read more]
Interesting Times?
We seem to be living in what a rather sinister old political catchphrase refers to euphemistically as "interesting times," with political and economic crises looming, fighting in the streets against a growing police state, clamors for reform etc. The phrase could also be applied to the 17th century, an era historians sometimes refer to as the moment the modern British state was born. It was a time of shifting political alliances, popular leaders who rose to fame only to fall from grace, repressive laws, civic upheavals, the breakdown of law and order, the creation of a police state, clamors for reform etc. - only settled in the end through constitutional reform. It was certainly a time of lengthy debates about the nature of society and power, of conflicts which split apart family and friends. These debates and conflicts are naturally reflected in novels and dramas about the era, with key events as usual often playing out in Wessex, and this is the subject of our latest "setting the scene in Wessex" series.
Read Setting The Scene In Wessex: The 17th Century In Literature And Drama
Would
You Believe Creative South-Central England?
The
south-central region will again have no official recognition in the recent "Creative England"
government consultation, but a new Writers Guild Of Great Britain initiative might be the start
of something [read more].
[Updated 14-4-11]
World Book Day, Local Style
March
3rd/5th is World Book Day and Night, and the event with the most related press coverage concerns
one of our many local-interest authors [read
more].
That Was Never Ten Years, Was It?
- Dreamtown Days & Nights, Revisited:
Ten years ago, I wrote a blog-style series of online monthly columns headed 'Bournemouth In The Media' to help a local arts organisation establish more of an artistic 'scene'. With the original organisation website itself now history, I thought it might be of interest to re-post the collected columns to see what, if anything, has changed. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose? [read more]
2010 In Review:
A look back at some of the year's local-interest media developments.
For
earlier
blog
entries,
see:
South
Central MediaScene 2011
South
Central
MediaScene
2010
South
Central
MediaScene
2009
South
Central
MediaScene
2008
South
Central
MediaScene
2007
South
Central
MediaScene
2006
South
Central
MediaScene
2005
