She hasn't made a documentary for four years but the BFI's release of a collection of her documentaries is still an event
She hasn't made a documentary for four years but today's BFI release of a collection of Molly Dineen's documentaries is still an event. Since the BBC bought Home from the Hill, her film school documentary about an elderly British cavalry officer returning to the UK in the mid-1980s after a lifetime spent on the ebbing tide of empire, she has quietly watched the impact of change on individuals. At least that's what she would say she has done, but it only partly describes her work. Her most recent films, on the final days of the old House of Lords, and on the death of (and on) the small farm, belong in that category. But The Ark, about London Zoo as it all but fell apart, and her study of London Underground from the perspective of the characters who ran the Angel tube station ? the family of fluffers working all night to remove the incendiary hazard of discarded tissues and chewing-gum wrappers, the extrovert lift attendant and the foreman with a secret life as an artist ? are something else. Critics ? possibly Dineen herself ? might argue that the films of Geri Halliwell as she left the Spice Girls and in particular of Tony Blair during the 1997 election campaign were more a celebrity mugging of her filmic integrity. But the Blair film outtakes in the collection include an illuminating moment where Blair is behind the camera and Dineen, explaining what she wants, in front of it. An unsettling masterclass that goes some way to explaining why her technique has been so damagingly subverted by comedy.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/04/in-praise-of-molly-dineen
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