Molly Dineen Collection

[antnield]

Molly Dineen Collection Volume One: Home from the Hill / My African Farm / Heart of the Angel / In the Company of Men



Molly Dineen is one of Britain's most acclaimed contemporary documentary filmmakers, known for her intimate and probing portraits of British individuals and institutions, and the recipient of numerous awards including BAFTA, Grierson and RTS awards for documentary. This is the first of three volumes that brings all of her films to DVD. Home from the Hill (1987): Dineen's much-loved debut follows charismatic Colonel Hilary Hook, an elderly retired soldier, as he returns to Kenya from Britain. My African Farm (1988): Dineen returns to Kenya and to the home of Sylvia Richardson, building a complex and uncompromising portrait of an unswerving stalwart of British colonialism. Heart of the Angel (1989): capturing life in one of London's busiest underground stations, this account of staff's struggles to cope with the great British travelling public is filled with humour and pathos. In the Company of Men (1995): in this three-part series we join Major Crispin Black and his men in the Prince of Wales Company of the Welsh Guards during a final tour of duty in pre-ceasefire Northern Ireland.

Extras
- Home from the Hill - Director's Cut, National Film and Television School version (1985, 60 minutes): the original version of Dineen's award-winning debut documentary film.
- Interview with Molly Dineen on the making of Home from the Hill and My African Farm (2010, 20 minutes).
- Unseen footage from Heart of the Angel (2010, 11 minutes): featuring an introduction and commentary by Molly Dineen.
- Interview with Molly Dineen and Major Crispin Black on the making of In the Company of Men (2010, 20 minutes)
- Fully illustrated booklet featuring new essays and notes featuring contributions from Eddie Mirzoeff and Stella Bruzzi.

Molly Dineen Collection Volume Two: The Ark



This is the second of three volumes that bring all of her films to DVD. The Ark (1993): In this series of four films, Dineen reveals the inner workings of London Zoo as the institution is rocked by uncertainty and change. Accompanying the zoo's keepers, managers, and animal inhabitants during a period of profound crisis, the series is a delightful, candid and moving portrait of the passions and pressures at work within this much-loved menagerie. The Ark was BAFTA Award Winner for Best Series (1994); recipient of Prix Europa Special Commendation; Voice of Viewers and Listeners for Best Television Programme (1993); and Indies Documentaries and Feature award (1994).

Extras
- Interview with Molly Dineen, on the making of The Ark, featuring the BBC’s Alan Yentob and Dineen’s sound recordist Phil Streather, and including behind-the-scenes footage at London Zoo (2011, 30 minutes)
- Interview with Molly Dineen and editor Edward Roberts on the craft and techniques of making and editing observational documentary films (2011, 20 minutes)
- Fully illustrated booklet featuring new essays and notes from journalist Mark Lawson, Stella Bruzzi, and BFI curators.

Molly Dineen Collection Volume Three: Geri / The Lord's Tale / The Lie of the Land



This is the final of three volumes that bring all her films to DVD.

Geri (1999, 89 minutes): Geri Halliwell, the most colourful and outrageous of the Spice Girls, has dramatically left the band. Two days later Dineen joins her as she seeks solace with family and friends, dodges the paparazzi, and embarks on her new career. This rollercoaster ride is a fascinating glimpse of fame and celebrity, and the personality behind that infamous Union Jack dress.

The Lord's Tale (2002, 105 minutes): Dineen follows one of the greatest upheavals in the history of parliament: the abolition of hereditary peers. With customary sensitivity, Dineen puts a human face on the constitutional crisis, weaving together the strands of the personal and the public to make one of the most astute political documentaries of the New Labour era.

The Life of the Land (2007, 90 minutes): As the country clamours for a ban on fox hunting, Dineen uncovers the unpleasant truths of life in the British countryside, where farmers struggle to survive under the weight of government legislation and the national indifference towards them.

Extras
- Party Election Broadcast by the Labour Party (1997, 10 minutes): Dineen's candid portrait of Tony Blair, a masterful piece of observational documentary as propaganda.
- Exclusive new documentary featuring previously-unseen footage of Tony Blair on and off duty during his 1997 election campaign (2011, 10 minutes)
- Interviews with Geri Halliwell and Molly Dineen on the making of Geri (2011)
- Interview with Molly Dineen on the making of The Lord's Tale and The Lie of the Land (2011)
- Fully illustrated booklet featuring new essays and notes from Stella Bruzzi, Peter Dale and BFI curators

[antnield]

Volume One: Home from the Hill to be released 28th April according to Central Books.

As with The Miners' Hymns, I've been informed that this cover is purely temporary and will be most almost certainly be revised in time for its release.

[MichaelB]

Full specs announced, including details of volumes 2 and 3:

The Molly Dineen Collection
Volume One

Molly Dineen is one of Britain’s most acclaimed contemporary documentary filmmakers, known for her intimate and probing portrait films, and the recipient of a great many accolades including BAFTA, Grierson and Royal Television Society awards. Over the coming months, the BFI will bring Dineen’s extraordinary films to DVD, making them available for the first time since their broadcast, with the release of three double-disc sets, each containing extensive extra features and booklets.

Continuing the BFI’s work to celebrate the great documentary tradition in this country, this collection brings together Molly Dineen’s portraits of British people and institutions struggling to cope with the effects of change. These films, which address many of the defining issues of the post-war era, from the end of colonialism in the much-loved Home from the Hill (1987), to our relationship with the countryside in The Lie of the Land (2007), provide us with a profound insight into the evolution of Britain over the past 25 years.

Volume One, released on 25 April, opens with Dineen’s award-winning debut Home from the Hill, in which we follow charismatic Colonel Hilary Hook, an elderly retired soldier, as he leaves his Kenyan home and returns to a forbidding Eighties England which is completely foreign to him. The film – picked up by Eddie Mirzoeff, editor of the renowned BBC2 series 40 Minutes – was shown several times; Colonel Hook became a star overnight, and Dineen was heralded as one of Britain's brightest documentary filmmaking talents, her observational style and natural but direct approach becoming her trademark.

This volume also features:

- My African Farm (1988), in which Dineen returns to Kenya and to the home of Sylvia Richardson, building a complex and uncompromising portrait of an unswerving stalwart of British colonialism;
- Heart of the Angel (1989), a wry, humorous and sometimes touching look at the trials faced by the staff and passengers of London's dishearteningly dilapidated Angel tube station, before its modernisation;
- In the Company of Men (1995), a three-part series with the Prince of Wales’s Company of Welsh Guards led by the engaging Major Crispin Black, now a well-known TV commentator on terrorism and military intelligence. More recently known for their work in Afghanistan, this series follows the men on a final tour of duty in pre-ceasefire Northern Ireland and is a revealing look at army life and the terrors, tension and often boredom of modern soldiering.

Volume Two, released on 22 August, brings us the The Ark (1993), the memorable four-part series in which the management, staff and animals of London Zoo fought for survival in the face of drastic cuts and threatened closure. This BAFTA award-winning series was seen by many as a metaphor for what happened in Thatcher’s Britain, as public service institutions had to battle for the first time with the harsh reality of market forces.

Volume Three, released on 21 November, will contain Geri (1999), the provocative portrait of Geri Halliwell on her departure from the Spice Girls, The Lords’ Tale (2002), a privileged insight into the historic event in the House of Lords during the unprecedented move to make hereditary Lords redundant, and The Lie of the Land (2007), another BAFTA Award-winning investigation, this time into the devastating effects of economic change on Britain’s countryside, set against the enforcement of the hunting ban. An additional feature will be the Party Political Broadcast, Tony Blair (1997), the 10 minute portrait of Tony Blair so crucial to his landmark election campaign.

Volume One – Special features

- Home from the Hill: Director's Cut – National Film and Television School version (1985, 55 mins): the original version of Dineen’s award-winning debut
- New interview with Molly Dineen on the making of Home from the Hill and My African Farm, featuring editor Edward Roberts (2011, 20 mins)
- Unseen footage from Heart of the Angel, featuring an introduction and commentary by Molly Dineen (2010, 11 mins)
- New interview with Molly Dineen and Major Crispin Black on the making of In the Company of Men (2011, 20 mins)
- Illustrated booklet with essays and notes, featuring contributions from Eddie Mirzoeff, former editor of 40 Minutes and Stella Bruzzi, Professor of Film & Television Studies, University of Warwick

RRP: £19.99 / cat. no. BFIV912 / Cert 15 / 2-disc set
UK / 1987-1995 / colour / English language / 300 mins / 2 x DVD9 / Dolby Digital mono audio (320kbps) / original aspect ratio 1.33:1

[antnield]

For some reason Amazon have got this image under the first Humphrey Jennings volume:

[perkizitore]

Unless the Jennings set is released on August the 22nd, it is probably the title that is wrong in the listing and not the image.

[antnield]

Unless the Jennings set is released on August the 22nd, it is probably the title that is wrong in the listing and not the image.

Well the director, the certificate and the running time (The Ark was a seven-part series much longer than three hours) all seem to indicate that it's the image and not the description which is incorrect.

[MichaelB]

Oxford Times.

[MichaelB]

Full specs announced for volume 2:

The Molly Dineen Collection
Volume Two – The Ark

Molly Dineen is one of Britain’s most acclaimed contemporary documentary filmmakers, known for her intimate and probing portrait films, and the recipient of accolades including BAFTA, Grierson and Royal Television Society awards. Released on 22 August, this is the second of three volumes from the BFI that will bring all her films to DVD for the first time, each containing extensive extra features and booklets.

Volume Two is the complete multi-award-winning series The Ark (1993), which has not been available since its original broadcast. When Molly Dineen went to London Zoo in 1991 she planned to make 'a small film about the life of the keepers and animals'. Nine months later, she had shot over 100 hours of footage and had begun an edit that would last the best part of a year. The result was the BAFTA Award-winning four-part series The Ark, charting one of the most turbulent years in the history of the much-loved menagerie from the perspective of both the keepers and management.

The series was enormously popular and, at the time of its first transmission, was widely recognised as a metaphor for an ailing, increasingly divided Britain, in which social problems that once seemed manageable now seemed intractable.

Through these gripping hour-long films, Molly Dineen reveals the inner workings of London Zoo as the institution is rocked by uncertainty and change in the face of drastic cuts. It is not only members of staff, passionately committed to their work, who face redundancy; heartbreakingly tough decisions must be made about which animals to remove from the Zoo’s lively and lovable collection. Tensions continue to build as rebel groups threaten an all-out coup.

Dineen's obvious rapport with her subjects elicits revealing and moving responses to her direct questioning from behind the camera. The quartet of films that tell this fascinating behind-the-scenes story are shot through with intimacy, wit and compassion: the hallmarks of Molly Dineen’s exceptional work.

Special features
• New interview with Molly Dineen on the making of The Ark, featuring Alan Yentob and sound recordist Phil Streather (2011, 30 mins)
• New interview with Molly Dineen and editor Edward Roberts on the craft and techniques of editing observational documentary (2011, 20 mins)
• Illustrated booklet with new essays and notes, with contributions from Guardian and BBC Radio 4 journalist Mark Lawson, writer Stella Bruzzi and BFI National Archive curators.

RRP: £19.99 / cat. no. BFIVD913 / Cert 12 / 2-disc set
UK / 1993 / colour / 240 mins / 2 x DVD-9 / original aspect ratio 1.33:1 / Dolby Digital mono audio (320kbps)

The Molly Dineen Collection brings together Dineen’s portraits of British people and institutions struggling to cope with the effects of change, providing an insightful look at the evolution of Britain over the past 25 years. Volume One, out now, contains Dineen’s award-winning debut Home from the Hill (1987), along with My African Farm (1988), Heart of the Angel (1989) and In the Company of Men (1995). Volume Three, released on 7 November 2011, will include The Lie of the Land (2007), The Lords’ Tale (2002) and Geri (1999). An additional feature will be the Party Political Broadcast, Tony Blair (1997).

[MichaelB]

Just a quick note to say that the films originally due for release next Monday (the 22nd), including Molly Dineen Volume 2: The Ark have had their official release dates moved by a week to the 29th to allow for repressing stock following the Sony DADC fire.

However, some retailers, including Amazon, HMV and MovieMail, already had stock in, so it's highly likely that they'll ship as if the release date was still the 22nd - the BFI certainly isn't going to discourage them from doing so.

Off the top of my head, the affected titles are Before the Revolution, Molly Dineen Volume 2: The Ark and the two latest Adelphi titles, Fun at St Fanny's and You Lucky People!.

[antnield]

The Digital Fix on Volume One.

[MichaelB]

Full specs announced for the third and final volume:

The Molly Dineen Collection
Volume Three

Molly Dineen is one of Britain’s most acclaimed, award-winning documentary filmmakers, known for her intimate and probing portrait films. This year the BFI has brought these extraordinary films to DVD for the first time, in three volumes. This final volume takes Dineen into different territory – probing more public figures; hereditary peers of the realm in the House of Lords, Geri Halliwell and Tony Blair. It also contains the heartbreaking, BAFTA-Award winning The Lie of the Land.

Released on 5 December 2011, the films and specially-created extras on this 2-disc set are:

Geri (1999): Geri Halliwell – the most colourful and outrageous of the Spice Girls – has dramatically left the band. A few days later, Dineen joins her as she seeks solace with family and friends, dodges the paparazzi, and embarks on her new career. This rollercoaster ride is a fascinating insight into the often solitary and unsettling side of fame and celebrity, and the personality behind that infamous Union Jack dress.

The Lords' Tale (2002): Dineen follows one of Parliament’s greatest upheavals: the abolition of the hereditary peers. With customary sensitivity, she puts a human face on the constitutional crisis, weaving together the strands of the personal and the public to make one of the most astute political documentaries of the New Labour era.

The Lie of the Land (2007): On the eve of the fox hunting ban, Dineen uncovers the shocking truths of life in the British countryside, where farmers struggle to survive under the weight of government legislation and the national indifference towards rural communities. A BAFTA Best Documentary Award-winner.

Special features

• Party Election Broadcast for the Labour Party (1997, 10 mins): Dineen’s candid portrait of Tony Blair is a masterful piece of observational documentary as propaganda;
• Exclusive new documentary featuring previously-unseen footage of Tony Blair on and off duty during his 1997 election campaign;
• New interview with Geri Halliwell and Molly Dineen on the making of Geri;
• New interview with Dineen on the making of The Lords’ Tale and The Lie of the Land;
• Illustrated booklet featuring new essays and notes.

RRP: £19.99 / cat. no. BFIVD914 / Cert 12 / 2-disc set
UK / 1999-2007 / colour / 284 mins / 2 x DVD-9 / original aspect ratio 1.33:1

[antnield]

The Guardian - In Praise of... Molly Dineen

[MichaelB]

Blimey - that would have cost a small fortune if the BFI had actually paid for the space!

[antnield]

The Digital Fix on Volume Two.

Molly Dineen in Conversation on BFI Live.

The Digital Fix on Volume Three.

[zedz]

Since nobody's actually commented on these marvellous releases, I'll step into the breach.

Until these three volumes came out, I'd only ever seen Home from the Hill, way back in the 80s. It's a minor classic, especially when you consider that it's basically a student film that got out of hand (in the best possible way), but it's also the kind of film that you could easily rationalize as being led by an extraordinarily strong subject.

Well, any exposure whatsoever to Dineen's subsequent work soon puts paid to that theory: she's a phenomenal filmmaker. Like Kim Longinotto or Heddy Honigmann, she's somebody who can thoroughly bond with her subjects without sacrificing her objectivity, and this gives her an amazing access and intimacy. She's also ferociously intelligent, and constantly aware of the hazards of this kind of intimate approach, to the extent that the films themselves sometimes address that issue overtly.

The highlights of Volume One are Home from the Hill, which presents a tough and moving portrait of a human anachronism, an aging colonial violently relocated to multi-cultural Britain, and Heart of the Angel, which looks behind the scenes at one of London's most shambolic tube stations. Dineen is at her best when she's charting people and institutions under the immense pressure of changing times. The other two films in the set feel a bit less immediate to me than the rest of her work in these sets, possibly because the pressure of change doesn't manifest itself quite so strongly.

Volume Two presents her series about London Zoo, The Ark, and it's a major achievement. It's less a film about the zoo as a collection of animals than it is a case study of a failing institution undergoing violent restructure. As such, it's a must-see for anybody who's ever worked in a large institution, particularly a cultural institution like a university, museum or art gallery, or who has had to undergo extreme institutional change in their workplace. It's horrific, funny and astonishingly even-handed (something made easier because Dineen can understand that everybody on screen is a victim in some sense). Without ever banging on about it, the series serves as a ghastly monument to the human and cultural cost of the Thatcherite free-market 'reforms' of the 1980s.

Volume Three may be the most surprising set of them all. Just about the only protagonist that I could imagine being less sympathetic than the hereditary Lords is Geri Halliwell, but Dineen manages to make absolutely compelling films about both of them. Dineen's tactic, in almost all of her films, is to sense a big story ahead of time - generally some kind of social, political or institutional sea change - then embed herself and her minimal crew with people who are going to be at the heart of it. This is indeed what happened with The Lords' Tale (and The Lie of the Land, though the story there turns out to be bigger and nastier than anticipated), though the situation with Geri was different and a little murkier, since Halliwell herself summoned Dineen to document a particularly tumultuous period in her life. This pseudo-commission creates some very interesting tensions about control of the film, which surface within the film itself and raise important issues about Dineen's entire 'immersive' approach to filmmaking, which she is quite upfront about addressing in the accompanying extras.

Those extras are completely wonderful: some of the sharpest and most informative and detailed discussions of filmmaking I've seen. Dineen is intelligent, articulate, extremely self-aware, candid and generous in sharing credit with her collaborators (many of whom also feature in the various interviews). There's good information about the specific challenges of each project as well as a comprehensive overview of her entire approach to documentary, from the selection of a project to the final edit.

[MichaelB]

Most unexpectedly (not that this is remotely a complaint), a decade later there's going to be The Molly Dineen Collection: Volume 4, featuring Being Blacker (2018) and Sound Business (1981)

Two-disc DVD set out on 8 August.

[swo17]

Cool, I enjoyed the first three

[MichaelB]

Full specs announced for Volume 4:

The Molly Dineen Collection Volume 4
BEING BLACKER
SOUND BUSINESS

2-disc DVD released on 8 August 2022; BEING BLACKER (only) released on iTunes and Amazon Prime on 22 August 2022

Molly Dineen is one of Britain’s most acclaimed contemporary documentary filmmakers, known for her intimate and probing portraits of British individuals and institutions, and recipient of numerous accolades, including Bafta, Grierson and RTS awards for documentary. The fourth volume in the BFI DVD series, The Molly Dineen Collection, released on 8 August, contains two films, Being Blacker (2018) and Sound Business (1981). Extras include a Q&A filmed at regional cinemas and interviews with Molly and Blacker Dread.

When Being Blacker was released in cinemas in January 2018, it was Molly Dineen’s first film in a decade, following on from her acclaimed accounts of subjects as varied as Spice Girls’ Geri Halliwell, London Zoo, Angel tube station and the House of Lords. It tells the story of the renowned Brixton record shop owner and music producer Blacker Dread, his extended family, his friends and the wider Brixton community. With unprecedented access granted by her old friend Blacker, Dineen shines a spotlight on the struggles faced by the film’s subjects on a daily basis. It’s about immigration and generational differences; it’s about music and culture; it’s about being Black in Britain in the 1960s and in 2018.

Sound Business was made when Molly Dineen was still a student. This cult documentary follows two British sound systems, the legendary Sir Coxsone Sound System (featuring a young Blacker Dread) and Young Lion, both based in southwest London. Sound Business offers a rare and fascinating insight into the workings of sound systems back in the 1980s, while documenting the history of Black British music.

Being Blacker screening + Q&A with Molly Dineen, Blacker Dread and Naptali
Tues 9 August, NFT3, BFI Southhank, 8.30pm
The DVD release coincides with BFI Southbank’s month-long reggae season, From Jamaica to the World: Reggae on Film. Running from 1-30 August, it celebrates reggae music and culture and explores its relationship to cinema. Being Blacker will be screened as part of the season on Tue 9 August followed by a Q&A with Molly Dineen, Blacker Dread and Naptali.

Special features
• Being Blacker Q&A (2018, 31 mins): Blacker Dread, Naptali and Molly take a UK road trip and answer audience questions along the way
• Interview with Blacker Dread (2017, 40 mins): Blacker talks about life before and during his 27 years on Sir Coxsone Sound System
• Interview with Blacker Dread and Molly Dineen (2017, 38 mins): Blacker and Molly discuss their friendship and the business of Sound Business
• Interview with Molly Dineen (2017, 27 mins): Molly talks about her early career and how a white woman came to document Black British culture
• Sugar Minott (2010, 11 mins): a short film dedicated to the memory of Jamaican reggae singer, producer and sound-system operator Sugar Minott for family, friends, fans and all the youths he inspired, by Molly Dineen
• TV trailer (2018)
• First pressing only*** Illustrated booklet featuring a Director’s Statement, an essay by the BFI’s Arike Oke, reflections on Sound System by Paul Bradshaw, credits and notes on the special features

Product details
RRP: £19.99 / Cat. no. BFIV2134 / 15
UK / 1981 – 2018 / colour / 146 minutes / English language / original aspect ratios 16:9 (Being Blacker) & 4:3 (Sound Business) // 2 x DVD9 PAL, 25fps, 2.0 stereo audio (192kbps)