Making films and taking sides

We are grateful to Michael Grigsby’s brother Chris for allowing us to reproduce the text of his remarks at the AFU’s recent screening on 27th September.

“When Mike suddenly passed away in March 2013 my greatest wish was his legacy of fifty years in film making was not consigned to the archives. Fortunately I was fully supported in that vision by Jeremy
Taylor and his friend and co-producer Rebekah Tolley. It was how best to preserve that legacy. I am sure if Mike had expressed a wish it would have been to go back to where it all started in the 1950s at
Abingdon School when he set up the Abingdon Film and Photographic club. This was to be the start of a long journey to becoming one of the most influential documentary makers this country has seen in the past sixty years – one who I am sure in time will be compared to the likes of John Grierson and Humphrey Jennings.

When Mike was asked in 2003 to participate in the newly formed Abingdon Film Unit he was delighted. I can recall his enthusiasm at becoming involved; after so many years it was like coming home and I know how much he enjoyed passing on his knowledge and experience to budding young film makers. It therefore seems so appropriate to have set up the Michael Grigsby Awards which will not only ensure his name will live on here at Abingdon but for others to follow a path of quality and excellence in a medium in which it is becoming increasingly difficult to encourage those qualities. I would like to thank Jeremy, Rebekah and the school for their support and involvement with these awards.

Finally I would like to read part of a text which was produced when the BFI held an appreciation of Mike’s work over a weekend some years ago at the Southbank. Mike was to say this about taking sides:

As a filmmaker one has to have a point of view; one has to identify with one situation, one issue, one group of people. I don’t believe in the balanced view, because in the final analysis it tells you nothing. 

You have to take a stand and say: this is the film I want to make and, yes of course, it is a political issue.