REVELations Film Archive consulting with veteran international producer-distributor
Stephen Ellis to reach world markets in digital form
Transatlantic Films, the company that pioneered the creation of an international market for independent documentary filmmaking, has fully-digitised its collection of more than 150 hours of award-winning films after five decades in the business.
Revel Guest, who received an OBE last year in recognition of her 20 years as Chair of the Hay Festival, founded the company with her American husband Robert Albert in 1968. Guest was the first woman to produce and direct for the BBC’s high-profile weekly programme Panorama in the 1960s; a time when almost all BBC output was made in house.
Motivated by a desire to work with freelance directors and popularise subjects and issues formerly aimed at specialist audiences, Guest also convinced broadcasters that independent filmmakers could make important documentaries for their channels. In doing so, she spearheaded the development of the independent television industry that continues to flourish in the UK today.
The company’s entire library is now digitised into HD format with the aim of securing the legacy of hundreds of hours’ worth of ground-breaking work produced with the BBC, Channel 4 and other major UK broadcasters, as well as leading TV networks in the US, Canada, Australia and Europe – Discovery, TLC, Animal Planet, A&E, Group W, Metromedia, PBS, ABC, TVNZ, TF1, La Cinquieme and NDR.
Transatlantic, which grew to include the couple’s son Justin and daughter Corisande, went on to make films with celebrated directors including Peter Greenaway, Tony Palmer and Simon Hartog. Their total catalogue spans culture, sport, science, nature, history, religion and the arts; with subjects including Norman Mailer, Philip Glass, Patrick Litchfield, Muddy Waters, Britt Ekland, Francois Truffaut, Glenda Jackson, Placido Domingo, Rod Stewart, Marc Boland and Fleetwood Mac. The cinéma vérité style of production and wide-ranging topics contribute to the archive’s contemporary relevance. The films take on hot-button issues ranging from gender politics and race to sexuality and climate change.
Now, to mark five decades of innovative and revealing film making, Transatlantic Films is inaugurating the REVELations Film Archive which will seek a permanent home for the life’s work of its founder and her accomplished family team. Stephen Ellis, former owner-operator of Canada’s Ellis Entertainment, is undertaking the task of finding the permanent home for the library and advising on the myriad options for commercial re-release and permanent archives through his Media Catellist Solutions consultancy. In addition to the digitally re-formatted body of work, the original master materials and metadata behind the productions have been preserved and updated over the last two years by an archive team lead by Corisande Albert.
Transatlantic’s archive serves as a history of late 20th- and early 21st-century televisual documentary making, reflecting wider trends and technological developments in the industry. A signature intimacy of filmmaking style runs throughout – intriguing and pulling viewers into the world of the subject and almost always working without presenters.
Revel Guest said "The search to find the films we made in the 60’s and 70’s has been rewarding when so much early film material is no longer in existence. I was lucky to be given a huge amount of creative freedom early in my career, and many of the films we made simply would not be produced now. As indies we changed the way documentaries were made, and with the rise of online platforms we are seeing the independent vision rise again. We very much hope that our library, which tells the story of the last fifty years, will serve as a vital resource for the film makers who will shape the next fifty."
Stephen Ellis said "It is a huge honour to be working with Revel and her family on this project. It is very unusual for a complete catalogue like this to be available as so many television documentary makers did not secure the rights to their material in the way that Transatlantic did. This, combined with the remastered quality of the footage makes Transatlantic's library a very significant acquisition for anyone interested in this transformative period of documentary making."
For more information please visit www.revel-ations.media
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For further information please contact
Benjamin Ward +44 (0) 7837 134 193 / benjamin@benjward.com or
Jenny Stewart +44 (0) 7885 467 181 / jenny@jstewartpr.com
Stephen Ellis +1 (419) 844 8650 / stephen.ellis@mediacatellistsolutions.com