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Michael Foot

Michael Foot

Acting

Biography

Michael Foot was a British politician and served as the leader of the Labour Party from 1980-1983. He was a pacifist and a supporter of CND who studied philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford. As a documentary screenwriter for the war effort in the 1940s, he worked alongside Frank Owen under the joint pseudonym of Michael Frank and was known for Young Veteran (1940), Yellow Caesar (1941). He was married to documentary filmmaker Jill Craigie.

Known For

Omnibus
7.2

Omnibus was an arts-based BBC television documentary series, broadcast mainly on BBC1 in the United Kingdom. The programme was the successor to the long-running arts-based series 'Monitor'. It ran from 1967 until 2003, usually being transmitted on Sunday evenings. During its 35-year history, the programme won 12 Bafta awards. Among the series' best remembered documentaries are Cracked Actor, a profile of David Bowie, and Rene Magritte, a graduate film by David Wheatley, 'Madonna: Behind the American dream', a film produced by Nadia Hagger, and a profile of the British film director Ridley Scott. For a season in 1982, the series was in a magazine format presented by Barry Norman. The series was replaced by 'Imagine' hosted by Alan Yentob.

Omnibus

1967
Question Time
5.9

This topical debate series based on Any Questions? typically features politicians from at least the three major political parties as well as other public figures who answer pre-selected questions put to them by a carefully selected audience.

Question Time

1979
World in Action
7.0

World in Action was Granada Television’s flagship ITV current affairs series, running from 7 Jan 1963 to 7 Dec 1998, and built a reputation for film-led investigative reporting and a forceful editorial stance. Its journalism produced major public and political repercussions—including investigations associated with miscarriages of justice such as the Birmingham Six—and it also served as a platform for landmark documentary projects, including the first broadcast of “Seven Up!” as part of the strand in 1964.

World in Action

1963
One Pair of Eyes
7.0

A monthly series of highly personal documentary films in which individuals are given a platform to discuss issues close to their heart.

One Pair of Eyes

1967
The Wilderness Years
N/A

Documentary showing the many travails of the UK Labour Party during its long period in opposition from 1979 and through the 1980s and 1990s.

The Wilderness Years

1995
Two Hours from London
9.0

Documentary about the outbreak of the war in former Yugoslavia that calls on the leaders of Europe to come to the aid of the stricken country.

Two Hours from London

1995
Cabinet Confidential
N/A

A revealing one-off documentary that provides an inside view of how Tony Blair and former prime ministers - including Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher and John Major - have run their cabinet, the highest decision-making body in the land. Through candid interviews, rare archive footage and filming inside No 10, presenter Michael Cockerell opens the door to the Government's own chamber of secrets as he seeks the answer to the question: is the notion of cabinet government an obsolete concept?

Cabinet Confidential

2001
Young Veteran
N/A

The first months of WWII as experienced by the new young recruits - the 'young Berts' - of the British Army.

Young Veteran

1940
Rough Justice
N/A

Portrait of a fractious Welsh village near Merthyr Tydfil. Life in the valley isn't what it was, there's no pit in Deri now, but the humour survives, and it's amazingly peaceful considering.

Rough Justice

1981
In Search of Tony Blair
N/A

Ten years after he stepped to power as Labour leader, Tony Blair remains a national enigma. His persona as a fresh-faced idealist and man of the people has been shattered, most significantly by the war on Iraq. Now many are struggling to understand what remains behind the faltering smile.

In Search of Tony Blair

2004
Yellow Caesar
6.2

Using edited archive footage, mockery is made of Italy's dictator Benito Mussolini.

Yellow Caesar

1941
From Beaconsfield to Baghdad
N/A

Parliamentary correspondent Robert Orchard reviews the highs and lows of Tony Blair's tumultuous relationship with Parliament.

From Beaconsfield to Baghdad

2007
Labour's Old Romantic: A Film Portrait of Michael Foot
N/A

A profile of Michael Foot, the former leader of the Labour Party, which included footage of him on the night of Tony Blair’s historic 1997 victory, and interviews with his wife, the filmmaker Jill Cragie, and some of his old colleagues and friends, including Barbara Castle, Spike Milligan and Salman Rushdie.

Labour's Old Romantic: A Film Portrait of Michael Foot

1997
Independent Miss Craigie
8.0

Some time after her death, film director Jill Craigie (1911- 99), re-opens an old suitcase, prompting memories of the extraordinary life and loves of this forceful, charismatic woman, whose work has been long neglected. Craigie was one of the first women to direct documentaries. Working outside the British Documentary Movement in the 1940s and early 1950s, her films such as To Be Woman (1951), on equal pay, and Out of Chaos (1944), the first film about artists at work, featuring Henry Moore and Paul Nash, tackled new subjects for the cinema through a unique blend of drama, polemic and humour. Independent Miss Craigie uses the director’s unseen papers, and her films, to reveal her energetic struggles to get her radical projects made and distributed, including her last one, on the Yugoslav conflict, made when she was 83, with her husband, former Labour leader, Michael Foot.

Independent Miss Craigie

2020