Digitisation project to secure legacy of ground-breaking independent documentary filmmaker Revel Guest’s award-winning catalogue
Transatlantic Films, the company that pioneered the creation of an international market for independent documentary filmmaking, is starting celebrations to mark its 50th anniversary with the completion of the digitisation of its archive of more than 150 hours of award-winning films.
Guest, who received an OBE in recognition of her 20 years as Chair of the Hay Festival earlier this year, founded the company with her American husband Robert Albert in 1968. She had been the first woman producer-director for BBC’s high-profile Panorama series in the 1960’s; a time when almost all films were made in house. Motivated by a desire to work with visionary directors and bring new stories to a wide audience, Guest convinced broadcasters that independent film companies could make important documentaries for their channels and by doing so, spearheaded the development of the UK’s independent film industry that flourishes today.
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 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 company’s entire library is now in the final stages of being digitised into HD format with the aim of securing the legacy of hundreds of hours’ worth of ground-breaking work produced for the BBC, Channel 4 and other major UK broadcasters, as well as leading TV networks in the U,S., Canada, Australia and Europe – Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, A&E, Group W, Metromedia, PBS, ABC, TVNZ, TF1, La Cinquieme and NDR.
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.
Now, to mark five decades of innovative and original film making, Transatlantic Films is inaugurating the REVELations Film Archive project, which will seek a permanent home for the life’s work of its founder and her accomplished family team. Stephen Ellis, through his consultancy, Canadian-based Media Catellist Solutions, has been appointed to lead the search and advise on the myriad options for commercial re-release and permanent archives for both the digitally re-formatted and original master materials as well as the metadata that Corisande Albert has preserved and updated over the last two years.
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 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