It all started in 1994. TV scriptwriter Stefan Struik had an interview with a meditating hermit in Baarn (NL) who was complaining about gnomes who disturbed the power network in his house. A month later he ran into trolls in a Norwegian clothing store in the Dutch-Frisian village Dokkum. A year before he got surprised by the amount of one meter high garden gnomes just across the border between Germany and Poland. It all seemed to point into a new direction he would hit a few months later. In December 1994 he opened with his sister a small game and bookstore in Delft (NL), named Elf Fantasy Shop. The games were a golden opportunity. Three years later the duo could open an second store in The Hague.

 

In 1995 Stefan also started a new adventure with a free magazine called Elf Fantasy Magazine. In 2001 the magazine became professionalized and despite it never realised any profits it existed until 2009.

 

Stefan and his sister already organised lectures in the Elf Fantasy Shops about druidism, Tolkien and other fantasy related subjects. In 2001 Stefan decided to combine a few things into a totally new and unique festival concept that later would be copied many times: the Elf Fantasy fair. Starting in the historical theme parc Archeon (NL) it moved the year after to the largest castle in the Netherlands: castle de Haar. With the exception of 2004 (castle Keukenhof, Lisse) it remained in castle de Haar, Haarzuilens since then. In 2009 a second version of the Elf Fantasy Fair started 400 meters from the border with Germany in the small village Arcen in Northern Limburg. In January 2013 the name Elf Fantasy Fair™ was replaced by the name Elfia™. The spring edition of Elfia is also called the 'Light Edition', while the autumn edition is characterized as the 'dark edition'.

 

It all started in 1994. TV scriptwriter Stefan Struik had an interview with a meditating hermit in Baarn (NL) who was complaining about gnomes who disturbed the power network in his house. A month later he ran into trolls in a Norwegian clothing store in the Dutch-Frisian village Dokkum. A year before he got surprised by the amount of one meter high garden gnomes just across the border between Germany and Poland. It all seemed to point into a new direction he would hit a few months later. In December 1994 he opened with his sister a small game and bookstore in Delft (NL), named Elf Fantasy Shop. The games were a golden opportunity. Three years later the duo could open an second store in The Hague.

 

In 1995 Stefan also started a new adventure with a free magazine called Elf Fantasy Magazine. In 2001 the magazine became professionalized and despite it never realised any profits it existed until 2009.

 

Stefan and his sister already organised lectures in the Elf Fantasy Shops about druidism, Tolkien and other fantasy related subjects. In 2001 Stefan decided to combine a few things into a totally new and unique festival concept that later would be copied many times: the Elf Fantasy fair. Starting in the historical theme parc Archeon (NL) it moved the year after to the largest castle in the Netherlands: castle de Haar. With the exception of 2004 (castle Keukenhof, Lisse) it remained in castle de Haar, Haarzuilens since then. In 2009 a second version of the Elf Fantasy Fair started 400 meters from the border with Germany in the small village Arcen in Northern Limburg. In January 2013 the name Elf Fantasy Fair™ was replaced by the name Elfia™. The spring edition of Elfia is also called the 'Light Edition', while the autumn edition is characterized as the 'dark edition'.

 

German postcard by Verlag Herm. Leiser, Berlin, no. 5344.

 

Viggo Larsen (1880-1957) was a Danish actor, director, scriptwriter and producer. He was one of the pioneers in film history. With Wanda Treumann he directed and produced many German films of the 1910s.

 

For more postcards, bios and clips check out our blog European Film Star Postcards Now more than 4 Million views!

East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 3263, 1963.

 

Handsome and talented Jacques Perrin (1941) started his career as the romantic hero in the films of Italian director Valerio Zurlini. Later he made powerful films with Costa-Gravas, and played the adult Salvatore in the international hit Cinema Paradiso (1988). With his own studio, he produced successful political films as Z (1969) and nature documentaries as Microcosmos (1996).

 

Jacques Perrin was born Jacques André Simonet in Paris in 1941. Occasionally, he is credited as Jacques Simonet. Perrin was his mother's name. His father, Alexandre Simonet, was a theatre director. In 1946, the five years old made his uncredited film debut in Les Portes de la nuit/Gates of the Night (1946, Marcel Carné), starring Serge Reggiani and Yves Montand. Perrin was trained as an actor at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique. On stage, he gave over 400 performances of L'Année du bac in a Paris theatre. In the cinema he played his first major juvenile parts in Italy for director Valerio Zurlini. He played Claudia Cardinale’s boyfriend in the romantic comedy La Ragazza con la valigia/Girl with a Suitcase (1961, Valerio Zurlini) and Marcello Mastroianni’s younger brother in Cronaca familiar/Family Diary (1962, Valerio Zurlini). In France he acted with Brigitte Bardot in La Vérité/The Truth (1960, Henri-Georges Clouzot), with Anna Karina in Le Soleil dans l'oeil/Sun in Your Eyes (1962, Jacques Bourdon), and with Bruno Cremer in the war film La 317ème section/317th Platoon (1965, Pierre Schoendoerffer). He also worked on the thriller film Compartiment tueurs/The Sleeping Car Murders (1965, Costa-Gravas). Hames Travers at Films de France: “Costa-Gavras made his directoral debut with this fast-moving, convoluted but magnificently assembled crime thriller. The film reflects the director’s interest for American film noir and, thanks largely to an impressive cast, is one of his most entertaining films.” It was the start of a long-time cooperation between actor and director. In 1966, Perrin won two Best Actor awards at the Venice Film Festival or the Italian film Un uomo a metà/Almost a Man (1966, Vittorio De Seta), and the Spanish film La busca/The Search (1966, Angelino Fons). The next year he co-starred in the musical Les demoiselles de Rochefort/The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967, Jacques Demy) with Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorleac. He would cooperate again with Demy and Deneuve on the fairytale Peau d'âne/Donkey Skin (1970, Jacques Demy) in which he played an appealing Prince Charming. Craig Butler at AllMovie: “Donkey Skin is a strange but utterly captivating little fantasy, and one that, despite its fairy tale origins, is really aimed more at adults than at children. Jacques Demy has directed with an eye toward whimsy, but whimsy mixed both with magic and subtle disorientation.”

 

At 27, Jacques Perrin created his own studio. He produced and acted in Z (1969), directed by Costa Gavras and starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Yves Montand, and Irene Papas. The film presents a thinly fictionalized account of the events surrounding the assassination of democratic Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis in 1963. Dan Pavlides at AllMovie: “Z is one of the most politically insightful films ever made, exposing government hypocrisy and cover-up in the wake of a political assassination.” The production had nearly 4 million admissions in France and was the 4th highest grossing film of the year. It was also the 10th highest grossing film of 1969 in the United States. Z is also one of the few films to be nominated for both the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Picture. Perrin worked with Costa-Gavras again on État de Siège/State of Siege (1972, Costa-Gavras) and Section special/Special Section (1975, Costa-Gavras). Both films had political themes, and Perrin continued this trend with La guerre d'Algérie (1975, Yves Courrière, Philippe Monnier), a documentary on the Algerian uprising, and La Spirale (1976, Armand Mattelart, Valérie Mayoux, Jacqueline Meppiel), a film on the Chilean presidency of Salvador Allende . In 1976, Perrin produced another Oscar-winning film in La Victoire en chantant/Black and White in Color (1976, Jean-Jacques Annaud). That year, he also embarked on Il deserto dei Tartari/Le Désert des Tartares/ The Desert of the Tartars (1976, Valerio Zurlini), with a cast filled with such big-name actors as Jean-Louis Trintignant, Vittorio Gassman, Max von Sydow, Francisco Rabal, Helmut Griem, Giuliano Gemma, Philippe Noiret, Fernando Rey, Laurent Terzieff and Jean-Louis Trintignant. The film, based on the Dino Buzzati's novel The Tartar Steppe, tells the story of a young officer, Giovanni Drogo (Jacques Perrin), and the time that he spent guarding the Bastiani Fortress, an old, unmaintained border fortress. Although the film won the Grand Prix du Cinéma Français and three David di Donatello Awards 1977, it was not very successful and left Perrin with debts.

 

Jacques Perrin had a huge success with the Italian drama Nuovo Cinema Paradiso/Cinema Paradiso (1988, Giuseppe Tornatore). He played a famous film director remembers his childhood at the Cinema Paradiso where Alfredo, the projectionist (Philippe Noiret), first brought about his love of films. Cinema Paradiso was a critical and box-office success and won many awards including the Golden Globe, the BAFTA and the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Two years later, he also appeared in Tornatore’s Stanno tutti bene/Everybody’s Fine (1990, Giuseppe Tornatore) starring Marcello Mastroianni. As a producer Perrin changed direction when he decided that the natural life around us could tell stories as fascinating and varied as anything dreamt up by a scriptwriter. He produced nature documentaries that transformed the scope of wildlife films, from Microcosmos (1996, Claude Nuridsany, Marie Pérennou), in which ants performed the starring role, to the austere travelogue Himalaya (1999, Eric Valli), nominated for an Oscar, and Le Peuple Migrateur/Winged Migration (2001, Jacques Cluzaud, Michel Debats, Jacques Perrin), which followed some 50 species of birds across 30 countries. All were filmed by Perrin’s studio Galatée Films. Another successful production was Les choristes/The Chorus (2004, Christophe Barratier). In this drama Perrin played the narrator, the old orchestra conductor Pierre Morhange, who reminisces about his childhood inspirations through the pages of a diary kept by his old music teacher. The young Pépinot was played by Perrin’s son Maxence. Other films in which he played were the historical horror film Le pacte des loups/Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001, Christophe Gans), and the crime drama Le petit lieutenant/The Young Lieutenant (2005, Xavier Beauvois) with Nathalie Baye. In 1985, Perrin was made Knight of the Ordre national du Mérite, in 1997 he was promoted to Officer and in 2003 to Commander. He was also made Knight of the Légion d'honneur in 1990 and promoted to Officer in 2007. Jacques Perrin has three sons, actor MathieuPerrin (1975), actor Maxence Perrin (1995), and Lancelot Perrin (2000). His most recent film production is Océans/Oceans (2009, Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud). Tracie Cooper at AllMovie: “Narrated by Pierce Brosnan, Oceans is made up of a compilation of underwater photography from over 75 diving expeditions that took place over a period of four years, and captures an astoundingly intimate glimpse into the lives of a wide array of sea life”.

 

Sources: James Travers (Films de France), Craig Butler (AllMovie), Dan Pavlides (AllMovie), Tracie Cooper (AllMovie), John Whitley (The Telegraph), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

LONDON, ENGLAND - APRIL 20: (L) Rhianna Pratchett, video-game scriptwriter and Keith Stuart, Games Editor at Guardian News & Media attend Rhianna Pratchett: The Art of Storytelling The Art of Storytelling during Advertising Week Europe 2016 at Picturehouse Central on April 20, 2016 in London, England. (Photo by Anthony Harvey/Getty Images for Advertising Week Europe)

German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 264/3, 1919-1924. Photo: Alex Binder.

 

German-Belgian actress Ria Jende (1898-?) was a star and producer of the silent German cinema. She appeared in 40 films, before she married and retired.

 

Ria Jende's life is largely hidden in the dark. We know that she was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1898. As a young girl, she went from Belgium to Germany. Before the First World War, Edison brought her before the camera in Das Stelldichein der Verehrer (Manfred Noa, 1912) and another film pioneer Oskar Messter followed with Problematische Naturen (Hans Oberländer, 1912) with Erich Kaiser-Titz. After her film debut, she worked in the theatre. For a while she was a magician’s assistant. In 1917, Jende accepted another film offer by Messter-film and co-starred with Vigo Larsen in his Der graue Herr (Viggo Larsen, 1917). Then she co-starred with Bruno Kästner and Mia May in Ein Lichtstrahl im Dunkel (Joe May, 1917). For the next five years she appeared in several melodramas and crime & detective films. These included Die Liebe des van Royk (Lupu Pick, 1917) with Bernd Aldor, Der Ring der drei Wünsche (Arthur Wellin, 1918) with Alexander Moissi, Der Teufel/The Devil (Ewald André Dupont, 1918), the German Phantomas film Die erwachende Venus (Adolf Gärtner, 1918) with Rolf Loer, Die Bodega von Los Cuerros (Erik Lund, 1919) with Bruno Kastner, Das Herz des Casanova (Erik Lund, 1919) again with Kastner, Der Tänzer (Carl Froehlich, 1919) with Walter Janssen, Seelenverkäufer/Seller of Souls (Carl Boese, 1919) with Magnus Stifter, and the mystery Die Japanerin/The Japanese Woman (Ewald André Dupont, (1919) with Bernhard Goetzke and Max Landa.

 

During the production of Nixchen (Paul Legband, 1919), starring Georg Alexander, Ria Jende met author and scriptwriter Franz W. Koebner who eventually became her husband. In 1919 Jende started her own film company, Ria Jende Film. She produced Madeleine (Siegfried Philippi 1921) with Hermann Valentin, and Versunkene Welten (Siegfried Philippi, 1922) with Victor Varconi, but her company was short-lived. As an actress she appeared in films like Die Schlange mit dem Mädchenkopf (Rudolf Walther-Fein, 1920) opposite Hans Albers, Der Held des Tages (Rudi Bach, 1921) and Das Geheimnis der Santa Margherita (Rolf Randolf, 1921). In 1922, Ria Jende married and thus ended her film career. Her final film was Das blinde Glück (Iva Raffay, 1922). After that she once returned to the cinema, for a part in Die Abenteuer des Kapitän Hasswell (Rolf Randolf, 1925) with Ernst Pittschau. In 1926 Ria Jende published a travelogue of Malta in the Berlin magazine Das Magazin. Her husband also wrote for the same issue. Further data of her life are not known.

 

Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Filmportal.de, Wikipedia (German), and IMDb.

Here, hundreds of researchers, businesses and progressive home- owners will be living and working side-by-side, along with great food, drink and entertainment venues. A collection of stunning public spaces for everyone, of all ages, to use.

Everyone here is united by one purpose: to help families, communities and cities around the world to live healthier, longer, smarter and easier lives. In short, to live better. In the process, our businesses will continue to grow, employ more local people and help ensure Newcastle excels.

 

Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is a red brick university and a member of the Russell Group, an association of research-intensive UK universities.

 

The university finds its roots in the School of Medicine and Surgery (later the College of Medicine), established in 1834, and the College of Physical Science (later renamed Armstrong College), founded in 1871. These two colleges came to form the larger division of the federal University of Durham, with the Durham Colleges forming the other. The Newcastle colleges merged to form King's College in 1937. In 1963, following an Act of Parliament, King's College became the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

 

The university subdivides into three faculties: the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences; the Faculty of Medical Sciences; and the Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering. The university offers around 175 full-time undergraduate degree programmes in a wide range of subject areas spanning arts, sciences, engineering and medicine, together with approximately 340 postgraduate taught and research programmes across a range of disciplines.[6] The annual income of the institution for 2022–23 was £592.4 million of which £119.3 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of £558 million.

 

History

Durham University § Colleges in Newcastle

The establishment of a university in Newcastle upon Tyne was first proposed in 1831 by Thomas Greenhow in a lecture to the Literary and Philosophical Society. In 1832 a group of local medics – physicians George Fife (teaching materia medica and therapeutics) and Samuel Knott (teaching theory and practice of medicine), and surgeons John Fife (teaching surgery), Alexander Fraser (teaching anatomy and physiology) and Henry Glassford Potter (teaching chemistry) – started offering medical lectures in Bell's Court to supplement the apprenticeship system (a fourth surgeon, Duncan McAllum, is mentioned by some sources among the founders, but was not included in the prospectus). The first session started on 1 October 1832 with eight or nine students, including John Snow, then apprenticed to a local surgeon-apothecary, the opening lecture being delivered by John Fife. In 1834 the lectures and practical demonstrations moved to the Hall of the Company of Barber Surgeons to accommodate the growing number of students, and the School of Medicine and Surgery was formally established on 1 October 1834.

 

On 25 June 1851, following a dispute among the teaching staff, the school was formally dissolved and the lecturers split into two rival institutions. The majority formed the Newcastle College of Medicine, and the others established themselves as the Newcastle upon Tyne College of Medicine and Practical Science with competing lecture courses. In July 1851 the majority college was recognised by the Society of Apothecaries and in October by the Royal College of Surgeons of England and in January 1852 was approved by the University of London to submit its students for London medical degree examinations. Later in 1852, the majority college was formally linked to the University of Durham, becoming the "Newcastle-upon-Tyne College of Medicine in connection with the University of Durham". The college awarded its first 'Licence in Medicine' (LicMed) under the auspices of the University of Durham in 1856, with external examiners from Oxford and London, becoming the first medical examining body on the United Kingdom to institute practical examinations alongside written and viva voce examinations. The two colleges amalgamated in 1857, with the first session of the unified college opening on 3 October that year. In 1861 the degree of Master of Surgery was introduced, allowing for the double qualification of Licence of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, along with the degrees of Bachelor of Medicine and Doctor of Medicine, both of which required residence in Durham. In 1870 the college was brought into closer connection with the university, becoming the "Durham University College of Medicine" with the Reader in Medicine becoming the Professor of Medicine, the college gaining a representative on the university's senate, and residence at the college henceforth counting as residence in the university towards degrees in medicine and surgery, removing the need for students to spend a period of residence in Durham before they could receive the higher degrees.

 

Attempts to realise a place for the teaching of sciences in the city were finally met with the foundation of the College of Physical Science in 1871. The college offered instruction in mathematics, physics, chemistry and geology to meet the growing needs of the mining industry, becoming the "Durham College of Physical Science" in 1883 and then renamed after William George Armstrong as Armstrong College in 1904. Both of these institutions were part of the University of Durham, which became a federal university under the Durham University Act 1908 with two divisions in Durham and Newcastle. By 1908, the Newcastle division was teaching a full range of subjects in the Faculties of Medicine, Arts, and Science, which also included agriculture and engineering.

 

Throughout the early 20th century, the medical and science colleges outpaced the growth of their Durham counterparts. Following tensions between the two Newcastle colleges in the early 1930s, a Royal Commission in 1934 recommended the merger of the two colleges to form "King's College, Durham"; that was effected by the Durham University Act 1937. Further growth of both division of the federal university led to tensions within the structure and a feeling that it was too large to manage as a single body. On 1 August 1963 the Universities of Durham and Newcastle upon Tyne Act 1963 separated the two thus creating the "University of Newcastle upon Tyne". As the successor of King's College, Durham, the university at its founding in 1963, adopted the coat of arms originally granted to the Council of King's College in 1937.

 

Above the portico of the Students' Union building are bas-relief carvings of the arms and mottoes of the University of Durham, Armstrong College and Durham University College of Medicine, the predecessor parts of Newcastle University. While a Latin motto, mens agitat molem (mind moves matter) appears in the Students' Union building, the university itself does not have an official motto.

 

Campus and location

The university occupies a campus site close to Haymarket in central Newcastle upon Tyne. It is located to the northwest of the city centre between the open spaces of Leazes Park and the Town Moor; the university medical school and Royal Victoria Infirmary are adjacent to the west.

 

The Armstrong building is the oldest building on the campus and is the site of the original Armstrong College. The building was constructed in three stages; the north east wing was completed first at a cost of £18,000 and opened by Princess Louise on 5 November 1888. The south-east wing, which includes the Jubilee Tower, and south-west wings were opened in 1894. The Jubilee Tower was built with surplus funds raised from an Exhibition to mark Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1887. The north-west front, forming the main entrance, was completed in 1906 and features two stone figures to represent science and the arts. Much of the later construction work was financed by Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, the metallurgist and former Lord Mayor of Newcastle, after whom the main tower is named. In 1906 it was opened by King Edward VII.

 

The building contains the King's Hall, which serves as the university's chief hall for ceremonial purposes where Congregation ceremonies are held. It can contain 500 seats. King Edward VII gave permission to call the Great Hall, King's Hall. During the First World War, the building was requisitioned by the War Office to create the first Northern General Hospital, a facility for the Royal Army Medical Corps to treat military casualties. Graduation photographs are often taken in the University Quadrangle, next to the Armstrong building. In 1949 the Quadrangle was turned into a formal garden in memory of members of Newcastle University who gave their lives in the two World Wars. In 2017, a statue of Martin Luther King Jr. was erected in the inner courtyard of the Armstrong Building, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his honorary degree from the university.

 

The Bruce Building is a former brewery, constructed between 1896 and 1900 on the site of the Hotspur Hotel, and designed by the architect Joseph Oswald as the new premises of Newcastle Breweries Limited. The university occupied the building from the 1950s, but, having been empty for some time, the building was refurbished in 2016 to become residential and office space.

 

The Devonshire Building, opened in 2004, incorporates in an energy efficient design. It uses photovoltaic cells to help to power motorised shades that control the temperature of the building and geothermal heating coils. Its architects won awards in the Hadrian awards and the RICS Building of the Year Award 2004. The university won a Green Gown award for its construction.

 

Plans for additions and improvements to the campus were made public in March 2008 and completed in 2010 at a cost of £200 million. They included a redevelopment of the south-east (Haymarket) façade with a five-storey King's Gate administration building as well as new student accommodation. Two additional buildings for the school of medicine were also built. September 2012 saw the completion of the new buildings and facilities for INTO Newcastle University on the university campus. The main building provides 18 new teaching rooms, a Learning Resource Centre, a lecture theatre, science lab, administrative and academic offices and restaurant.

 

The Philip Robinson Library is the main university library and is named after a bookseller in the city and benefactor to the library. The Walton Library specialises in services for the Faculty of Medical Sciences in the Medical School. It is named after Lord Walton of Detchant, former Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Professor of Neurology. The library has a relationship with the Northern region of the NHS allowing their staff to use the library for research and study. The Law Library specialises in resources relating to law, and the Marjorie Robinson Library Rooms offers additional study spaces and computers. Together, these house over one million books and 500,000 electronic resources. Some schools within the university, such as the School of Modern Languages, also have their own smaller libraries with smaller highly specialised collections.

 

In addition to the city centre campus there are buildings such as the Dove Marine Laboratory located on Cullercoats Bay, and Cockle Park Farm in Northumberland.

 

International

In September 2008, the university's first overseas branch was opened in Singapore, a Marine International campus called, NUMI Singapore. This later expanded beyond marine subjects and became Newcastle University Singapore, largely through becoming an Overseas University Partner of Singapore Institute of Technology.

 

In 2011, the university's Medical School opened an international branch campus in Iskandar Puteri, Johor, Malaysia, namely Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia.

 

Student accommodation

Newcastle University has many catered and non-catered halls of residence available to first-year students, located around the city of Newcastle. Popular Newcastle areas for private student houses and flats off campus include Jesmond, Heaton, Sandyford, Shieldfield, South Shields and Spital Tongues.

 

Henderson Hall was used as a hall of residence until a fire destroyed it in 2023.

 

St Mary's College in Fenham, one of the halls of residence, was formerly St Mary's College of Education, a teacher training college.

 

Organisation and governance

The current Chancellor is the British poet and artist Imtiaz Dharker. She assumed the position of Chancellor on 1 January 2020. The vice-chancellor is Chris Day, a hepatologist and former pro-vice-chancellor of the Faculty of Medical Sciences.

 

The university has an enrolment of some 16,000 undergraduate and 5,600 postgraduate students. Teaching and research are delivered in 19 academic schools, 13 research institutes and 38 research centres, spread across three Faculties: the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences; the Faculty of Medical Sciences; and the Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering. The university offers around 175 full-time undergraduate degree programmes in a wide range of subject areas spanning arts, sciences, engineering and medicine, together with approximately 340 postgraduate taught and research programmes across a range of disciplines.

 

It holds a series of public lectures called 'Insights' each year in the Curtis Auditorium in the Herschel Building. Many of the university's partnerships with companies, like Red Hat, are housed in the Herschel Annex.

 

Chancellors and vice-chancellors

For heads of the predecessor colleges, see Colleges of Durham University § Colleges in Newcastle.

Chancellors

Hugh Percy, 10th Duke of Northumberland (1963–1988)

Matthew White Ridley, 4th Viscount Ridley (1988–1999)

Chris Patten (1999–2009)

Liam Donaldson (2009–2019)

Imtiaz Dharker (2020–)

Vice-chancellors

Charles Bosanquet (1963–1968)

Henry Miller (1968–1976)

Ewan Stafford Page (1976–1978, acting)

Laurence Martin (1978–1990)

Duncan Murchison (1991, acting)

James Wright (1992–2000)

Christopher Edwards (2001–2007)

Chris Brink (2007–2016)

Chris Day (2017–present)

Civic responsibility

 

The university Quadrangle

The university describes itself as a civic university, with a role to play in society by bringing its research to bear on issues faced by communities (local, national or international).

 

In 2012, the university opened the Newcastle Institute for Social Renewal to address issues of social and economic change, representing the research-led academic schools across the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences[45] and the Business School.

 

Mark Shucksmith was Director of the Newcastle Institute for Social Renewal (NISR) at Newcastle University, where he is also Professor of Planning.

 

In 2006, the university was granted fair trade status and from January 2007 it became a smoke-free campus.

 

The university has also been actively involved with several of the region's museums for many years. The Great North Museum: Hancock originally opened in 1884 and is often a venue for the university's events programme.

 

Faculties and schools

Teaching schools within the university are based within three faculties. Each faculty is led by a Provost/Pro-vice-chancellor and a team of Deans with specific responsibilities.

 

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape

School of Arts and Cultures

Newcastle University Business School

Combined Honours Centre

School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences

School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics

School of Geography, Politics and Sociology

School of History, Classics and Archaeology

Newcastle Law School

School of Modern Languages

Faculty of Medical Sciences

School of Biomedical Sciences

School of Dental Sciences

School of Medical Education

School of Pharmacy

School of Psychology

Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology (CBCB)

Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering

School of Computing

School of Engineering

School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics

School of Natural and Environmental Sciences

Business School

 

Newcastle University Business School

As early as the 1900/1 academic year, there was teaching in economics (political economy, as it was then known) at Newcastle, making Economics the oldest department in the School. The Economics Department is currently headed by the Sir David Dale Chair. Among the eminent economists having served in the Department (both as holders of the Sir David Dale Chair) are Harry Mainwaring Hallsworth and Stanley Dennison.

 

Newcastle University Business School is a triple accredited business school, with accreditation by the three major accreditation bodies: AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS.

 

In 2002, Newcastle University Business School established the Business Accounting and Finance or 'Flying Start' degree in association with the ICAEW and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The course offers an accelerated route towards the ACA Chartered Accountancy qualification and is the Business School's Flagship programme.

 

In 2011 the business school opened their new building built on the former Scottish and Newcastle brewery site next to St James' Park. This building was officially opened on 19 March 2012 by Lord Burns.

 

The business school operated a central London campus from 2014 to 2021, in partnership with INTO University Partnerships until 2020.

 

Medical School

The BMC Medicine journal reported in 2008 that medical graduates from Oxford, Cambridge and Newcastle performed better in postgraduate tests than any other medical school in the UK.

 

In 2008 the Medical School announced that they were expanding their campus to Malaysia.

 

The Royal Victoria Infirmary has always had close links with the Faculty of Medical Sciences as a major teaching hospital.

 

School of Modern Languages

The School of Modern Languages consists of five sections: East Asian (which includes Japanese and Chinese); French; German; Spanish, Portuguese & Latin American Studies; and Translating & Interpreting Studies. Six languages are taught from beginner's level to full degree level ‒ Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese ‒ and beginner's courses in Catalan, Dutch, Italian and Quechua are also available. Beyond the learning of the languages themselves, Newcastle also places a great deal of emphasis on study and experience of the cultures of the countries where the languages taught are spoken. The School of Modern Languages hosts North East England's only branches of two internationally important institutes: the Camões Institute, a language institute for Portuguese, and the Confucius Institute, a language and cultural institute for Chinese.

 

The teaching of modern foreign languages at Newcastle predates the creation of Newcastle University itself, as in 1911 Armstrong College in Newcastle installed Albert George Latham, its first professor of modern languages.

 

The School of Modern Languages at Newcastle is the lead institution in the North East Routes into Languages Consortium and, together with the Durham University, Northumbria University, the University of Sunderland, the Teesside University and a network of schools, undertakes work activities of discovery of languages for the 9 to 13 years pupils. This implies having festivals, Q&A sessions, language tasters, or quizzes organised, as well as a web learning work aiming at constructing a web portal to link language learners across the region.

 

Newcastle Law School

Newcastle Law School is the longest established law school in the north-east of England when law was taught at the university's predecessor college before it became independent from Durham University. It has a number of recognised international and national experts in a variety of areas of legal scholarship ranging from Common and Chancery law, to International and European law, as well as contextual, socio-legal and theoretical legal studies.

 

The Law School occupies four specially adapted late-Victorian town houses. The Staff Offices, the Alumni Lecture Theatre and seminar rooms as well as the Law Library are all located within the School buildings.

 

School of Computing

The School of Computing was ranked in the Times Higher Education world Top 100. Research areas include Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and ubiquitous computing, secure and resilient systems, synthetic biology, scalable computing (high performance systems, data science, machine learning and data visualization), and advanced modelling. The school led the formation of the National Innovation Centre for Data. Innovative teaching in the School was recognised in 2017 with the award of a National Teaching Fellowship.

 

Cavitation tunnel

Newcastle University has the second largest cavitation tunnel in the UK. Founded in 1950, and based in the Marine Science and Technology Department, the Emerson Cavitation Tunnel is used as a test basin for propellers, water turbines, underwater coatings and interaction of propellers with ice. The Emerson Cavitation Tunnel was recently relocated to a new facility in Blyth.

 

Museums and galleries

The university is associated with a number of the region's museums and galleries, including the Great North Museum project, which is primarily based at the world-renowned Hancock Museum. The Great North Museum: Hancock also contains the collections from two of the university's former museums, the Shefton Museum and the Museum of Antiquities, both now closed. The university's Hatton Gallery is also a part of the Great North Museum project, and remains within the Fine Art Building.

 

Academic profile

Reputation and rankings

Rankings

National rankings

Complete (2024)30

Guardian (2024)67

Times / Sunday Times (2024)37

Global rankings

ARWU (2023)201–300

QS (2024)110

THE (2024)168=

 

Newcastle University's national league table performance over the past ten years

The university is a member of the Russell Group of the UK's research-intensive universities. It is ranked in the top 200 of most world rankings, and in the top 40 of most UK rankings. As of 2023, it is ranked 110th globally by QS, 292nd by Leiden, 139th by Times Higher Education and 201st–300th by the Academic Ranking of World Universities. Nationally, it is ranked joint 33rd by the Times/Sunday Times Good University Guide, 30th by the Complete University Guide[68] and joint 63rd by the Guardian.

 

Admissions

UCAS Admission Statistics 20222021202020192018

Application 33,73532,40034,55031,96533,785

Accepte 6,7556,2556,5806,4456,465

Applications/Accepted Ratio 5.05.25.35.05.2

Offer Rate (%78.178.080.279.280.0)

Average Entry Tariff—151148144152

Main scheme applications, International and UK

UK domiciled applicants

HESA Student Body Composition

In terms of average UCAS points of entrants, Newcastle ranked joint 19th in Britain in 2014. In 2015, the university gave offers of admission to 92.1% of its applicants, the highest amongst the Russell Group.

 

25.1% of Newcastle's undergraduates are privately educated, the thirteenth highest proportion amongst mainstream British universities. In the 2016–17 academic year, the university had a domicile breakdown of 74:5:21 of UK:EU:non-EU students respectively with a female to male ratio of 51:49.

 

Research

Newcastle is a member of the Russell Group of 24 research-intensive universities. In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF), which assesses the quality of research in UK higher education institutions, Newcastle is ranked joint 33rd by GPA (along with the University of Strathclyde and the University of Sussex) and 15th for research power (the grade point average score of a university, multiplied by the full-time equivalent number of researchers submitted).

 

Student life

Newcastle University Students' Union (NUSU), known as the Union Society until a 2012 rebranding, includes student-run sports clubs and societies.

 

The Union building was built in 1924 following a generous gift from an anonymous donor, who is now believed to have been Sir Cecil Cochrane, a major benefactor to the university.[87] It is built in the neo-Jacobean style and was designed by the local architect Robert Burns Dick. It was opened on 22 October 1925 by the Rt. Hon. Lord Eustace Percy, who later served as Rector of King's College from 1937 to 1952. It is a Grade II listed building. In 2010 the university donated £8 million towards a redevelopment project for the Union Building.

 

The Students' Union is run by seven paid sabbatical officers, including a Welfare and Equality Officer, and ten part-time unpaid officer positions. The former leader of the Liberal Democrats Tim Farron was President of NUSU in 1991–1992. The Students' Union also employs around 300 people in ancillary roles including bar staff and entertainment organisers.

 

The Courier is a weekly student newspaper. Established in 1948, the current weekly readership is around 12,000, most of whom are students at the university. The Courier has won The Guardian's Student Publication of the Year award twice in a row, in 2012 and 2013. It is published every Monday during term time.

 

Newcastle Student Radio is a student radio station based in the university. It produces shows on music, news, talk and sport and aims to cater for a wide range of musical tastes.

 

NUTV, known as TCTV from 2010 to 2017, is student television channel, first established in 2007. It produces live and on-demand content with coverage of events, as well as student-made programmes and shows.

 

Student exchange

Newcastle University has signed over 100 agreements with foreign universities allowing for student exchange to take place reciprocally.

 

Sport

Newcastle is one of the leading universities for sport in the UK and is consistently ranked within the top 12 out of 152 higher education institutions in the British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) rankings. More than 50 student-led sports clubs are supported through a team of professional staff and a network of indoor and outdoor sports facilities based over four sites. The university have a strong rugby history and were the winners of the Northumberland Senior Cup in 1965.

 

The university enjoys a friendly sporting rivalry with local universities. The Stan Calvert Cup was held between 1994 and 2018 by major sports teams from Newcastle and Northumbria University. The Boat Race of the North has also taken place between the rowing clubs of Newcastle and Durham University.

 

As of 2023, Newcastle University F.C. compete in men's senior football in the Northern League Division Two.

 

The university's Cochrane Park sports facility was a training venue for the teams playing football games at St James' Park for the 2012 London Olympics.

 

A

Ali Mohamed Shein, 7th President of Zanzibar

Richard Adams - fairtrade businessman

Kate Adie - journalist

Yasmin Ahmad - Malaysian film director, writer and scriptwriter

Prince Adewale Aladesanmi - Nigerian prince and businessman

Jane Alexander - Bishop

Theodosios Alexander (BSc Marine Engineering 1981) - Dean, Parks College of Engineering, Aviation and Technology of Saint Louis University

William Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong - industrialist; in 1871 founded College of Physical Science, an early part of the University

Roy Ascott - new media artist

Dennis Assanis - President, University of Delaware

Neil Astley - publisher, editor and writer

Rodney Atkinson - eurosceptic conservative academic

Rowan Atkinson - comedian and actor

Kane Avellano - Guinness World Record for youngest person to circumnavigate the world by motorcycle (solo and unsupported) at the age of 23 in 2017

B

Bruce Babbitt - U.S. politician; 16th Governor of Arizona (1978–1987); 47th United States Secretary of the Interior (1993–2001); Democrat

James Baddiley - biochemist, based at Newcastle University 1954–1983; the Baddiley-Clark building is named in part after him

Tunde Baiyewu - member of the Lighthouse Family

John C. A. Barrett - clergyman

G. W. S. Barrow - historian

Neil Bartlett - chemist, creation of the first noble gas compounds (BSc and PhD at King's College, University of Durham, later Newcastle University)

Sue Beardsmore - television presenter

Alan Beith - politician

Jean Benedetti - biographer, translator, director and dramatist

Phil Bennion - politician

Catherine Bertola - contemporary painter

Simon Best - Captain of the Ulster Rugby team; Prop for the Ireland Team

Andy Bird - CEO of Disney International

Rory Jonathan Courtenay Boyle, Viscount Dungarvan - heir apparent to the earldom of Cork

David Bradley - science writer

Mike Brearley - professional cricketer, formerly a lecturer in philosophy at the university (1968–1971)

Constance Briscoe - one of the first black women to sit as a judge in the UK; author of the best-selling autobiography Ugly; found guilty in May 2014 on three charges of attempting to pervert the course of justice; jailed for 16 months

Steve Brooks - entomologist; attained BSc in Zoology and MSc in Public Health Engineering from Newcastle University in 1976 and 1977 respectively

Thom Brooks - academic, columnist

Gavin Brown - academic

Vicki Bruce - psychologist

Basil Bunting - poet; Northern Arts Poetry Fellow at Newcastle University (1968–70); honorary DLitt in 1971

John Burgan - documentary filmmaker

Mark Burgess - computer scientist

Sir John Burn - Professor of Clinical Genetics at Newcastle University Medical School; Medical Director and Head of the Institute of Genetics; Newcastle Medical School alumnus

William Lawrence Burn - historian and lawyer, history chair at King's College, Newcastle (1944–66)

John Harrison Burnett - botanist, chair of Botany at King's College, Newcastle (1960–68)

C.

Richard Caddel - poet

Ann Cairns - President of International Markets for MasterCard

Deborah Cameron - linguist

Stuart Cameron - lecturer

John Ashton Cannon - historian; Professor of Modern History; Head of Department of History from 1976 until his appointment as Dean of the Faculty of Arts in 1979; Pro-Vice-Chancellor 1983–1986

Ian Carr - musician

Jimmy Cartmell - rugby player, Newcastle Falcons

Steve Chapman - Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University

Dion Chen - Hong Kong educator, principal of Ying Wa College and former principal of YMCA of Hong Kong Christian College

Hsing Chia-hui - author

Ashraf Choudhary - scientist

Chua Chor Teck - Managing Director of Keppel Group

Jennifer A. Clack - palaeontologist

George Clarke - architect

Carol Clewlow - novelist

Brian Clouston - landscape architect

Ed Coode - Olympic gold medallist

John Coulson - chemical engineering academic

Caroline Cox, Baroness Cox - cross-bench member of the British House of Lords

Nicola Curtin – Professor of Experimental Cancer Therapeutics

Pippa Crerar - Political Editor of the Daily Mirror

D

Fred D'Aguiar - author

Julia Darling - poet, playwright, novelist, MA in Creative Writing

Simin Davoudi - academic

Richard Dawson - civil engineering academic and member of the UK Committee on Climate Change

Tom Dening - medical academic and researcher

Katie Doherty - singer-songwriter

Nowell Donovan - vice-chancellor for academic affairs and Provost of Texas Christian University

Catherine Douglas - Ig Nobel Prize winner for Veterinary Medicine

Annabel Dover - artist, studied fine art 1994–1998

Alexander Downer - Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs (1996–2007)

Chloë Duckworth - archaeologist and presenter

Chris Duffield - Town Clerk and Chief Executive of the City of London Corporation

E

Michael Earl - academic

Tom English - drummer, Maxïmo Park

Princess Eugenie - member of the British royal family. Eugenie is a niece of King Charles III and a granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II. She began studying at Newcastle University in September 2009, graduating in 2012 with a 2:1 degree in English Literature and History of Art.

F

U. A. Fanthorpe - poet

Frank Farmer - medical physicist; professor of medical physics at Newcastle University in 1966

Terry Farrell - architect

Tim Farron - former Liberal Democrat leader and MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale

Ian Fells - professor

Andy Fenby - rugby player

Bryan Ferry - singer, songwriter and musician, member of Roxy Music and solo artist; studied fine art

E. J. Field - neuroscientist, director of the university's Demyelinating Disease Unit

John Niemeyer Findlay - philosopher

John Fitzgerald - computer scientist

Vicky Forster - cancer researcher

Maximimlian (Max) Fosh- YouTuber and independent candidate in the 2021 London mayoral election.

Rose Frain - artist

G

Hugh Grosvenor, 7th Duke of Westminster - aristocrat, billionaire, businessman and landowner

Peter Gibbs - television weather presenter

Ken Goodall - rugby player

Peter Gooderham - British ambassador

Michael Goodfellow - Professor in Microbial Systematics

Robert Goodwill - politician

Richard Gordon - author

Teresa Graham - accountant

Thomas George Greenwell - National Conservative Member of Parliament

H

Sarah Hainsworth - Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Aston University

Reginald Hall - endocrinologist, Professor of Medicine (1970–1980)

Alex Halliday - Professor of Geochemistry, University of Oxford

Richard Hamilton - artist

Vicki L. Hanson - computer scientist; honorary doctorate in 2017

Rupert Harden - professional rugby union player

Tim Head - artist

Patsy Healey - professor

Alastair Heathcote - rower

Dorothy Heathcote - academic

Adrian Henri - 'Mersey Scene' poet and painter

Stephen Hepburn - politician

Jack Heslop-Harrison - botanist

Tony Hey - computer scientist; honorary doctorate 2007

Stuart Hill - author

Jean Hillier - professor

Ken Hodcroft - Chairman of Hartlepool United; founder of Increased Oil Recovery

Robert Holden - landscape architect

Bill Hopkins - composer

David Horrobin - entrepreneur

Debbie Horsfield - writer of dramas, including Cutting It

John House - geographer

Paul Hudson - weather presenter

Philip Hunter - educationist

Ronald Hunt – Art Historian who was librarian at the Art Department

Anya Hurlbert - visual neuroscientis

I

Martin Ince - journalist and media adviser, founder of the QS World University Rankings

Charles Innes-Ker - Marquess of Bowmont and Cessford

Mark Isherwood - politician

Jonathan Israel - historian

J

Alan J. Jamieson - marine biologist

George Neil Jenkins - medical researcher

Caroline Johnson - Conservative Member of Parliament

Wilko Johnson - guitarist with 1970s British rhythm and blues band Dr. Feelgood

Rich Johnston - comic book writer and cartoonist

Anna Jones - businesswoman

Cliff Jones - computer scientist

Colin Jones - historian

David E. H. Jones - chemist

Francis R. Jones - poetry translator and Reader in Translation Studies

Phil Jones - climatologist

Michael Jopling, Baron Jopling - Member of the House of Lords and the Conservative Party

Wilfred Josephs - dentist and composer

K

Michael King Jr. - civil rights leader; honorary graduate. In November 1967, MLK made a 24-hour trip to the United Kingdom to receive an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law from Newcastle University, becoming the first African American the institution had recognised in this way.

Panayiotis Kalorkoti - artist; studied B.A. (Hons) in Fine Art (1976–80); Bartlett Fellow in the Visual Arts (1988)

Rashida Karmali - businesswoman

Jackie Kay - poet, novelist, Professor of Creative Writing

Paul Kennedy - historian of international relations and grand strategy

Mark Khangure - neuroradiologist

L

Joy Labinjo - artist

Henrike Lähnemann - German medievalist

Dave Leadbetter - politician

Lim Boon Heng - Singapore Minister

Lin Hsin Hsin - IT inventor, artist, poet and composer

Anne Longfield - children's campaigner, former Children's Commissioner for England

Keith Ludeman - businessman

M

Jack Mapanje - writer and poet

Milton Margai - first prime minister of Sierra Leone (medical degree from the Durham College of Medicine, later Newcastle University Medical School)

Laurence Martin - war studies writer

Murray Martin, documentary and docudrama filmmaker, co-founder of Amber Film & Photography Collective

Adrian Martineau – medical researcher and professor of respiratory Infection and immunity at Queen Mary University of London

Carl R. May - sociologist

Tom May - professional rugby union player, now with Northampton Saints, and capped by England

Kate McCann – journalist and television presenter

Ian G. McKeith – professor of Old Age Psychiatry

John Anthony McGuckin - Orthodox Christian scholar, priest, and poet

Wyl Menmuir - novelist

Zia Mian - physicist

Richard Middleton - musicologist

Mary Midgley - moral philosopher

G.C.J. Midgley - philosopher

Moein Moghimi - biochemist and nanoscientist

Hermann Moisl - linguist

Anthony Michaels-Moore - Operatic Baritone

Joanna Moncrieff - Critical Psychiatrist

Theodore Morison - Principal of Armstrong College, Newcastle upon Tyne (1919–24)

Andy Morrell - footballer

Frank Moulaert - professor

Mo Mowlam - former British Labour Party Member of Parliament, former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, lecturer at Newcastle University

Chris Mullin - former British Labour Party Member of Parliament, author, visiting fellow

VA Mundella - College of Physical Science, 1884—1887; lecturer in physics at the College, 1891—1896: Professor of Physics at Northern Polytechnic Institute and Principal of Sunderland Technical College.

Richard Murphy - architect

N

Lisa Nandy - British Labour Party Member of Parliament, former Shadow Foreign Secretary

Karim Nayernia - biomedical scientist

Dianne Nelmes - TV producer

O

Sally O'Reilly - writer

Mo O'Toole - former British Labour Party Member of European Parliament

P

Ewan Page - founding director of the Newcastle University School of Computing and briefly acting vice-chancellor; later appointed vice-chancellor of the University of Reading

Rachel Pain - academic

Amanda Parker - Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire since 2023

Geoff Parling - Leicester Tigers rugby player

Chris Patten, Baron Patten of Barnes - British Conservative politician and Chancellor of the University (1999–2009)

Chris M Pattinson former Great Britain International Swimmer 1976-1984

Mick Paynter - Cornish poet and Grandbard

Robert A. Pearce - academic

Hugh Percy, 10th Duke of Northumberland - Chancellor of the University (1964–1988)

Jonathan Pile - Showbiz Editor, ZOO magazine

Ben Pimlott - political historian; PhD and lectureship at Newcastle University (1970–79)

Robin Plackett - statistician

Alan Plater - playwright and screenwriter

Ruth Plummer - Professor of Experimental Cancer Medicine at the Northern Institute for Cancer Research and Fellow of the UK's Academy of Medical Sciences.

Poh Kwee Ong - Deputy President of SembCorp Marine

John Porter - musician

Rob Powell - former London Broncos coach

Stuart Prebble - former chief executive of ITV

Oliver Proudlock - Made in Chelsea star; creator of Serge De Nîmes clothing line[

Mark Purnell - palaeontologist

Q

Pirzada Qasim - Pakistani scholar, Vice Chancellor of the University of Karachi

Joyce Quin, Baroness Quin - politician

R

Andy Raleigh - Rugby League player for Wakefield Trinity Wildcats

Brian Randell - computer scientist

Rupert Mitford, 6th Baron Redesdale - Liberal Democrat spokesman in the House of Lords for International Development

Alastair Reynolds - novelist, former research astronomer with the European Space Agency

Ben Rice - author

Lewis Fry Richardson - mathematician, studied at the Durham College of Science in Newcastle

Matthew White Ridley, 4th Viscount Ridley - Chancellor of the University 1988-1999

Colin Riordan - VC of Cardiff University, Professor of German Studies (1988–2006)

Susie Rodgers - British Paralympic swimmer

Nayef Al-Rodhan - philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Neil Rollinson - poet

Johanna Ropner - Lord lieutenant of North Yorkshire

Sharon Rowlands - CEO of ReachLocal

Peter Rowlinson - Ig Nobel Prize winner for Veterinary Medicine

John Rushby - computer scientist

Camilla Rutherford - actress

S

Jonathan Sacks - former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth

Ross Samson - Scottish rugby union footballer; studied history

Helen Scales - marine biologist, broadcaster, and writer

William Scammell - poet

Fred B. Schneider - computer scientist; honorary doctorate in 2003

Sean Scully - painter

Nigel Shadbolt - computer scientist

Tom Shakespeare - geneticist

Jo Shapcott - poet

James Shapiro - Canadian surgeon and scientist

Jack Shepherd - actor and playwright

Mark Shucksmith - professor

Chris Simms - crime thriller novel author

Graham William Smith - probation officer, widely regarded as the father of the national probation service

Iain Smith - Scottish politician

Paul Smith - singer, Maxïmo Park

John Snow - discoverer of cholera transmission through water; leader in the adoption of anaesthesia; one of the 8 students enrolled on the very first term of the Medical School

William Somerville - agriculturist, professor of agriculture and forestry at Durham College of Science (later Newcastle University)

Ed Stafford - explorer, walked the length of the Amazon River

Chris Steele-Perkins - photographer

Chris Stevenson - academic

Di Stewart - Sky Sports News reader

Diana Stöcker - German CDU Member of Parliament

Miodrag Stojković - genetics researcher

Miriam Stoppard - physician, author and agony aunt

Charlie van Straubenzee - businessman and investment executive

Peter Straughan - playwright and short story writer

T

Mathew Tait - rugby union footballer

Eric Thomas - academic

David Tibet - cult musician and poet

Archis Tiku - bassist, Maxïmo Park

James Tooley - professor

Elsie Tu - politician

Maurice Tucker - sedimentologist

Paul Tucker - member of Lighthouse Family

George Grey Turner - surgeon

Ronald F. Tylecote - archaeologist

V

Chris Vance - actor in Prison Break and All Saints

Géza Vermes - scholar

Geoff Vigar - lecturer

Hugh Vyvyan - rugby union player

W

Alick Walker - palaeontologist

Matthew Walker - Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley

Tom Walker - Sunday Times foreign correspondent

Lord Walton of Detchant - physician; President of the GMC, BMA, RSM; Warden of Green College, Oxford (1983–1989)

Kevin Warwick - Professor of Cybernetics; former Lecturer in Electrical & Electronic Engineering

Duncan Watmore - footballer at Millwall F.C.

Mary Webb - artist

Charlie Webster - television sports presenter

Li Wei - Chair of Applied Linguistics at UCL Institute of Education, University College London

Joseph Joshua Weiss - Professor of Radiation Chemistry

Robert Westall - children's writer, twice winner of Carnegie Medal

Thomas Stanley Westoll - Fellow of the Royal Society

Gillian Whitehead - composer

William Whitfield - architect, later designed the Hadrian Building and the Northern Stage

Claire Williams - motorsport executive

Zoe Williams - sportswoman, worked on Gladiators

Donald I. Williamson - planktologist and carcinologist

Philip Williamson - former Chief Executive of Nationwide Building Society

John Willis - Royal Air Force officer and council member of the University

Lukas Wooller - keyboard player, Maxïmo Park

Graham Wylie - co-founder of the Sage Group; studied Computing Science & Statistics BSc and graduated in 1980; awarded an honorary doctorate in 2004

Y

Hisila Yami, Nepalese politician and former Minister of Physical Planning and Works (Government of Nepal

John Yorke - Controller of Continuing Drama; Head of Independent Drama at the BBC

Martha Young-Scholten - linguist

Paul Younger - hydrogeologist

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3567/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Ufa. Harry Piel in Mann gegen Mann (Harry Piel, 1928).

 

German actor, scriptwriter and director Harry Piel(1892-1963), disguised as artist selling statuettes; unclear to which film this refers. For a biography and filmography, see: www.flickr.com/photos/truusbobjantoo/2350889185/

  

German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 532/8. Photo: Eiko Film. Hedda Vernon in Der Übel größtes aber ist die Schuld (Hubert Moest, 1918).

 

The title of the film refers to a line by Cicero, retaken by Friedrich Schiller in the closing lines of his play Die Braut von Messina. Worse than a (self-chosen) death, both claim, is guilt.

 

Der Übel größtes aber ist die Schuld was scripted by German scriptwriter Ruth Goetz, "one of the most prolific writers for film in Germany in the period 1916–1927, with about sixty-five titles including original scripts and adaptations credited to her name", as Mila Ganeva writes on the website Women Film Pioneers project. Ganeva: " Ruth Goetz was the only woman featured in this special 1918 issue of the Berlin-based trade magazine Kinematograph edited by E. A. Dupont and devoted to the invisible work of scenarists. A year earlier, one of her scripts had been included as a model for aspiring writers in one of the first manuals compiled by Wilhelm Adler. The film based on this script, Noemi, die blonde Jüdin/Noemi, the Blond Jewess (1917), was directed by Hubert Moest and served primarily as a star vehicle for actress Hedda Vernon."

 

Director Hubert Moest was Hedda Vernon's husband from 1913 to 1920. After having acted together from 1913, he directed her in many films at Eiko in the years 1914-1919. In 1917-1918 many postcards for Vernon's films were released: Die Verworfenen, Die Narbe am Knie, Noemi, die blonde Jüdin (all 1917), and Puppchen, Fesseln, Der Übel größtes aber ist die Schuld, Mouschy, Das Todesgeheimnis and Wo ein Wille, ist ein Weg (all 1918). All these were directed by Moest.

 

German actress, writer and producer Hedda Vernon (1866-?) appeared in more than 60 films of the early silent period. During the 1910’s she was such a popular film star that she got her own Hedda-Vernon serial.

 

Source: wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-ruth-goetz/; www.steffi-line.de/archiv_text/nost_film20b40/131_vernon_...

This episode was broadcast on 081161

 

Antony "Tony" Warren MBE (born 1937) is an award winning British television scriptwriter, best known for creating the soap opera Coronation Street. He has also been an actor, has created other television dramas and written critically acclaimed novels.

Warren was born Anthony McVay Simpson, adopting Warren as a stage name in his early acting career. As a boy actor, he trained at the Elliott-Clarke theatre school in Liverpool. He became a regular on BBC Radio Children's Hour and also acted in many radio plays. During this period he performed with many of the people who were later to become household names through Coronation Street, most notably Violet Carson and Doris Speed, who played Ena Sharples and Annie Walker respectively. He later appeared on the stage and in several early ITV Plays of the Week.

Wikipedia

It all started in 1994. TV scriptwriter Stefan Struik had an interview with a meditating hermit in Baarn (NL) who was complaining about gnomes who disturbed the power network in his house. A month later he ran into trolls in a Norwegian clothing store in the Dutch-Frisian village Dokkum. A year before he got surprised by the amount of one meter high garden gnomes just across the border between Germany and Poland. It all seemed to point into a new direction he would hit a few months later. In December 1994 he opened with his sister a small game and bookstore in Delft (NL), named Elf Fantasy Shop. The games were a golden opportunity. Three years later the duo could open an second store in The Hague.

 

In 1995 Stefan also started a new adventure with a free magazine called Elf Fantasy Magazine. In 2001 the magazine became professionalized and despite it never realised any profits it existed until 2009.

 

Stefan and his sister already organised lectures in the Elf Fantasy Shops about druidism, Tolkien and other fantasy related subjects. In 2001 Stefan decided to combine a few things into a totally new and unique festival concept that later would be copied many times: the Elf Fantasy fair. Starting in the historical theme parc Archeon (NL) it moved the year after to the largest castle in the Netherlands: castle de Haar. With the exception of 2004 (castle Keukenhof, Lisse) it remained in castle de Haar, Haarzuilens since then. In 2009 a second version of the Elf Fantasy Fair started 400 meters from the border with Germany in the small village Arcen in Northern Limburg. In January 2013 the name Elf Fantasy Fair™ was replaced by the name Elfia™. The spring edition of Elfia is also called the 'Light Edition', while the autumn edition is characterized as the 'dark edition'.

 

Copyright © Sir Cam 2009. All rights reserved. Email: camdiary [at] yahoo.co.uk

 

Local film-maker Daniel Griggs is making a new comedy film about car parking problems in the city and the desperate actions of two people fighting for parking space (see previous photo from the shoot:-)

 

Daniel, 21, has won a number of film awards, notably "Most Promising Newcomer", for his 2007 short film "In the Shadows of the Light". He heads Cambridgeshire-based Mediascape Productions and wears various hats, including: scriptwriter, director and producer. He was wearing this plastic yellow hat for safety reasons, but I don't think it would have protected him if the Rover fell on top of him:-) I was, of course, wearing my steel bowler:-)

French autograph card.

 

French actor Bernard Giraudeau (1947-2010) was with his bright blue eyes one of the most attractive but also talented stars of the French cinema. For his roles, he was twice nominated for the French Oscar, Le César. Giraudeau also worked as film director, scriptwriter, producer and writer.

 

Bernard René Giraudeau was born in 1947 in La Rochelle, France. In 1963 the 15-years-old enlisted in the French navy as a trainee engineer, qualifying as the first in his class a year later. He completed two around the world cruises before his service ended. He served on the helicopter carrier Jeanne d'Arc in 1964–1965 and 1965–1966, and subsequently on the frigate Duquesne and the aircraft carrier Clemenceau before leaving the navy to try his luck as an actor. He studied acting at the CNSAD (Conservatoire National Superieur d'Art Dramatique). Giraudeau first appeared on film in the Franco-Italian crime film Deux hommes dans la ville/Two men in Town (José Giovanni, 1973) starring Jean Gabin and Alain Delon. He played a kidnapper in Revolver (Sergio Sollima, 1973) with Oliver Reed. Two years later he had a supporting part in another crime drama by José Giovanni, Le Gitan/The Gypsy (José Giovanni, 1975), starring Alain Delon and Annie Girardot. In 1977, he played the male lead in the coming-of-age erotic romantic drama Bilitis (1977) directed by photographer David Hamilton with a music score by Francis Lai. It starred Patti D'Arbanville as Bilitis. The film was shot in the soft-focus schmaltz style that was common of David Hamilton's photography. Giraudeau also co-starred with Jodie Foster in the French film Moi, fleur bleue/Stop Calling Me Baby! (Eric le Hung, 1977). He co-starred again with Alain Delon in the futuristic war film Le Toubib/The Medic (Pierre Granier-Deferre, 1979), and appeared in the hit comedy Boum/The Party (Claude Pinoteau, 1980) with Sophie Marceau in her film début. Then followed his breakthrough as a handsome dashing officer who falls desperately in love with an ugly but passionate woman (Valeria d’Obici) in the Italian drama Passione d'amore/Passion of Love (Ettore Scola, 1981). The film was entered into the 1981 Cannes Film Festival and served as the inspiration for the 1994 Broadway musical Passion by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. Soon followed leading roles in international films like the French-Swiss drama Hecate (Daniel Schmid, 1982) with Lauren Hutton, the French-Canadian crime film Le Ruffian/The Ruffian (José Giovanni, 1983) also starring Lino Ventura and Claudia Cardinale, and the French drama L'année des méduses/The Year of the Jellyfish (Christopher Frank, 1985) with Valérie Kaprisky. Another box-office hit in France was the buddy-action film Les Spécialistes/The Specialists (Patrice Leconte, 1985). in which he co-starred with Gérard Lanvin. DB Dumonteil at IMDb: “A deft, energetic buddy movie interspersed with unexpected twists, suspenseful chases and stunts and a sharp humor into the bargain. Everything you could wish for to spend a comfortable evening in front of the telly without reservations. (…) One shouldn't forget the two main actors which contribute in making the film a little winner. Gérard Lanvin and Bernard Giraudeau are on top form.”

 

In 1987, Bernard Giraudeau made his first film as director the TV film La Face de l'ogre (1988), though he continued to work as an actor. He co-starred with Isabelle Huppert in the romance Après l'amour/Love After Love (Diane Kurys, 1992). In the drama Le Fils préferé/The Favourite Son (Nicole Garcia, 1994), he played the brother of Gérard Lanvin and Jean-Marc Barr. He also appeared in the lauded historical drama Ridicule (Patrice Leconte, 1996), set in the 18th century at the decadent court of Versailles. The film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and received several César awards, but Giraudeau was only nominated as best Supporting Actor. He played Molière in another historical film, Marquise (Véra Belmont, 1997) with Sophie Marceau and Lambert Wilson. In Italy he appeared in the drama Marianna Ucrìa (Roberto Faenza, 1997). In France he starred in François Ozon’s drama Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brûlantes/Water Drops on Burning Rocks (2000, based on a German play by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Tropfen auf heisse Steine, written when he was 19 years old. Elbert Ventura at AllMovie: “The movie has an undercurrent of absurdist humor, but its laughs are muffled for the most part, with the exception being an out-of-left-field dance number that injects some needed energy into the dour, claustrophobic story. Beautifully structured and meticulously filmed, Water Drops on Burning Rocks is clearly the work of an intelligent filmmaker.”Also interesting is 'Une affaire de goût/A Question of Taste (Bernard Rapp, 2000). About the growing dependency between a rich CEO (Giraudeau) and a handsome young waiter (Jean-Pierre Lorit) whom the C|EO hires at an astronomical sum to serve as a personal food taster. David Anderson at Bunched Undies: “A Matter of Taste is a well-executed film: excellent production, nicely photographed and well-acted. But by the time it’s over, like the principle characters, you may find yourself feeling a bit empty.” The film received 5 César Award nominations, including nominations for Best Film and for Giraudeau as Best Actor.

 

As a writer, Bernard Giraudeau wrote the text of books of photography and published children's stories (Contes d'Humahuaca, 2002) and several novels. He was also the reader on the French audiobooks of the Harry Potter series. Since 1976, he was married to actress and author Anny Duperey, whom he had met while acting in the same play. They acted together on-screen in five productions, the TV series La nuit des Césars/The Night of the Césars (1976), the crime drama Le grand pardon/Grand Pardon (Alexandre Arcady, 1982), Meurtres à domicile/Evil in the house (Marc Lobet, 1982), La face de l'ogre (Bernard Giraudeau, 1988), and Contre l'oubli/Against Oblivion (Bernard Giraudeau a.o., 1991). They divorced in 1993. From 1996 to his death, he was the companion of Tohra Mahdavi. Giraudeau and Duperey had two children: son Gaël and daughter Sara. Sara Giraudeau achieved success as an actress. In 2000 Bernard Giraudeau suffered a cancer which led to the removal of his left kidney, with a subsequent metastasis in 2005 affecting his lungs. He said that the cancer led him to re-evaluate his life and understand himself better. He devoted some of his time to the support of cancer victims through the Institut Curie and the Institut Gustave-Roussy in Paris. His later films included La petite Lili/Little Lili (Claude Miller, 2003), featuring Ludivine Sagnier, the comedy Ce jour-là/That Day (Raúl Ruiz, 2003), and . the thriller Je suis un assassin/The Hook (Thomas Vincent, 2004) with François Cluzet and Karin Viard. In 2010, Bernard Giraudeau died of his cancer in a Paris hospital. He was 63.

 

Sources: David Anderson (Bunched Undies), DB Dumonteil (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Italian postcard by Aser, no. 37. Photo: Venturini.

 

Leda Gloria (1912-1997) was one of Federico Fellini’s favorite film actresses, having a prolific career in the 1930s and 1940s but is also remembered as wife of Peppone in the Don Camillo films.

 

Leda Gloria, pseudonym of Leda Nicoletti Data was born in Rome, on 30 August 1912 . She started her film career already at a young age, winning a film contest held by an American film company in Italy. She dropped her studies as harpist and acted in various silent Italian and German films, one of which next to Lil Dagover, the German early sound film Es gibt eine Frau die dich niemals vergisst (Leo Mittler 1930), also with Ivan Petrovich. Gloria’s first film seems to have been the comedy Ragazze non scherzate (Alfred Lind 1929) with Maurizio D’Ancora. With the coming of sound cinema she became one of the most active and popular Italian actresses. She first made her mark two films by Alessandro Blasetti, Terra madre (1931) and Palio (1932), playing lively and spontaneous country girls. In Terra madre Gloria played country girl Emilia opposite Sandro Salvini, former love interest in the silent diva films. Here he plays a duke who wants to sell his estate and move to the city, but after a fire extinguished with the help of the farmers he decides to stay. In Palio, in which jockey’s representing various neighborhoods (contrada’s) fight each other, love makes blind. Jockey Zarre (Guido Celano) breaks his affair with young Fiora (Gloria) when she is courted by a captain from a rival contrada. When a singer in whom he is infatuated, sets up a trap with his rival in love and horse-riding, Zarre almost fails but stills manages to win the Palio, gaining Fiora back as bonus. Contrasting the bleak and bloodless 19th century vamps, Gloria showed a healthy beauty and simple but often convincing and solid acting, as in La tavola dei poveri (Blasetti 1932) and Il cappello a tre punte (Mario Camerini 1934). She encountered a big success with her first dramatic character in Montevergine (Carlo Campogalliani 1939), starring Nazzari and a story about a man bound for revenge as he has been wrongly accused of murder and innocently imprisoned.

 

Among Gloria’s films from the war years were Antonio Meucci (Enrico Guazzoni 1940) starring Luigi Pavese as the telephone inventor and Gloria as his wife Ester, Anime in tumulto (Giulio Del Torre 1942) on a surgeon’s wife who steals a baby when she cannot have one, and Dagli Appennini alle Ande (Flavio Cavalzara 1943) on a boy (Cesare Barbetti) crossing the ocean and the whole of Argentine in search of his mother (Gloria). After the war she was involved in variety at the Company of Giulio Donadio, returning with a serious, supporting part in the neorealist film Il mulino del Po (Carlo Lizzani 1949), starring Carla Del Poggio and Jacques Sernas and situated in the late 19th century countryside near Ferrara. Future film director Federico Fellini was one of the scriptwriters for this film. Subsequently she satisfied with parts as supporting actress, often as mothers of the leading characters, but always playing moderated and well-delivered, e.g. as Cosetta Greco’s’s mother in Le ragazze di Piazza di Spagna (Luciano Emmer 1952) and Raf Mattioli’s mother in Guendalina (Alberto Lattuada 1957). Gloria is well remembered as Gino Cervi’s wife Maria Botazzi in the Don Camillo films with Cervi as the communist mayor Peppone and Fernandel as Don Camillo: Don Camillo (Julien Duvivier 1952), Il ritorno di Don Camillo (Julien Duvivier 1953), Don Camillo e l’onorevole Peppone (Carmine Gallone 1955), Don Camillo monsignore… ma non troppo (Carmine Gallone 1961) and Il compagno Don Camillo (Luigi Comencini 1965). She also played Eduardo De Filippo’s wife in the comedy Napoli milionaria (Side Street Story, Eduardo De Filippo 1950) about a Neapolitan cafe owner during WWII. Il compagno Don Camillo was Gloria’s last film. After a long illness, Leda Gloria died in Rome on 16 March 1997. She was one of Federico Fellini’s favorite actresses.

 

Sources: Adnkronos, Wikipedia (Italian) and IMDb.

It all started in 1994. TV scriptwriter Stefan Struik had an interview with a meditating hermit in Baarn (NL) who was complaining about gnomes who disturbed the power network in his house. A month later he ran into trolls in a Norwegian clothing store in the Dutch-Frisian village Dokkum. A year before he got surprised by the amount of one meter high garden gnomes just across the border between Germany and Poland. It all seemed to point into a new direction he would hit a few months later. In December 1994 he opened with his sister a small game and bookstore in Delft (NL), named Elf Fantasy Shop. The games were a golden opportunity. Three years later the duo could open an second store in The Hague.

 

In 1995 Stefan also started a new adventure with a free magazine called Elf Fantasy Magazine. In 2001 the magazine became professionalized and despite it never realised any profits it existed until 2009.

 

Stefan and his sister already organised lectures in the Elf Fantasy Shops about druidism, Tolkien and other fantasy related subjects. In 2001 Stefan decided to combine a few things into a totally new and unique festival concept that later would be copied many times: the Elf Fantasy fair. Starting in the historical theme parc Archeon (NL) it moved the year after to the largest castle in the Netherlands: castle de Haar. With the exception of 2004 (castle Keukenhof, Lisse) it remained in castle de Haar, Haarzuilens since then. In 2009 a second version of the Elf Fantasy Fair started 400 meters from the border with Germany in the small village Arcen in Northern Limburg. In January 2013 the name Elf Fantasy Fair™ was replaced by the name Elfia™. The spring edition of Elfia is also called the 'Light Edition', while the autumn edition is characterized as the 'dark edition'.

 

Spanish minicard (collector card) by Reclam Films, Mallorca, card 3 of 6. Photo: Gaumont. Scene from the third episode of the French silent crime serial Fantomas, episode La Mort qui tue (Louis Feuillade, 1913). A devastated Elisabeth Dollon (Fabienne Fabrèges) hears from the judge that her husband has killed a baroness and is arrested. On the left, Fandor (Georges Melchior) assists.

 

Georges Melchior (1889-1944) was a French film actor, active in French cinema between 1911 and 1937, and known for the Fantômas serials by Louis Feuillade (1913-1914), and L'Atlantide (1921).

 

Fabienne Fabrèges (1889-?) was a French actress, but also scriptwriter and director of the silent film. She had a rich career at Gaumont, and afterward in Italian silent film.

Vintage German postcard, 1920s. Photo by R. Lippmann, Berlin. Ross Verlag, No. 1407/2,

 

Alfred Braun (* 3 May 1888 in Berlin; † 3 January 1978 in Berlin) was a pioneer of German radio. Braun became famous as a radio reporter and radio play director, among other things. He was also an actor, stage and film director and screenwriter.

 

Alfred Braun grew up in proletarian Berlin North-East, later calling himself a ‘boy from Prenzlauer Berg’. At the age of 17, he abandoned his higher education, which was made possible by a scholarship for gifted students, in favour of his passion for the theatre. He became a pupil of Max Reinhardt and received his first engagement as an actor at Berlin's Schiller Theatre in 1907. From the early 1910s he also acted as supporting actor on screen in films by the early companies Duskes, Eiko and Messter - something he continued to do in the 1920s, even if not intensively.

 

During the First World War, Braun was the only breadwinner in his family and was exempted from military service. From November 1924, he began working in radio, initially as an announcer and later also as a director for Funk-Stunde Berlin, Germany's first radio station. His work for radio was so intense, he temporarily quit his stage and film career. Braun's live reports from the funeral service for Reich Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann (6 October 1929) and the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Thomas Mann (10 December 1929) have gone down in radio history, as has his production of SOS ... rao rao ... Foyn (about the rescue operation of the crew of Umberto Nobile's zeppelin Italia at Spitsbergen), the oldest surviving complete radio play in the German language. This production by Alfred Braun has been preserved in the German Broadcasting Archive (DRA) and was released as an audio CD by the DRA's own publishing house at the end of 2013.

 

Braun was head of the acting department at Funk-Stunde Berlin until 1933. He also repeatedly took on film roles himself. The Social Democrat Braun was one of the most popular figures of the Weimar Republic. Braun's work came to an end in 1933 when the National Socialists came to power. The Gestapo arrested Braun in August 1933, accusing him of being the main representative of the ‘Weimar System Broadcasting’ and responsible for the ‘Judaisation of the radio hour’, and took him to the Oranienburg concentration camp for six weeks, then to the Berlin-Moabit remand prison. Braun was not charged in the planned ‘Reich Radio Trial’, which was held in autumn 1934. At the end of September 1933, the prominent Swiss theatre maker Ferdinand Rieser secured Braun's release, which was linked to his emigration to Switzerland. Rieser initially engaged him at the Schauspielhaus Zurich in 1933. Braun then worked as an actor and director at the Stadttheater Basel from 1935 to 1937. After Joseph Goebbels rejected his application for rehabilitation and re-employment at Berlin Radio, Carl Ebert offered him the position of rhetoric teacher at the theatre and opera department of the Turkish National Academy in Ankara in 1937.

 

Oddly enough, when war broke out in 1939, Braun returned to Berlin (possibly by mediation of the German ambassador in Turkey, Franz von Papen), and became a war correspondent, initially anonymously, and then a scriptwriter. The 1940 German Stage Yearbook lists Alfred Braun as the provisional head of Production I - Current Affairs at the German Television Broadcasting Corporation, Kaiserdamm 77. In 1940, Braun was assistant director for Veit Harlan's anti-Semitic smear film Jud Süß, acted as narrator for the 1941 aeroplane advertising film Himmelsstürmer and then wrote the screenplays for Harlan's films Die goldene Stadt, Opfergang, Immensee and Kolberg. Thanks to Harlan he also managed to direct his first film Augen der Liebe, which only came out in 1951. During the war he also directed Der Puppenspieler (1944/45), which also came out after the war.

 

Before the end of the war, Braun had retreated to Stuttgart, where he had acquired a small property in 1943. In the post-war period, he worked for the American occupying forces in radio from 1945 to 1947. Requested by the Soviet occupying power as an ‘anti-fascist’, Braun moved to the East Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg in 1947 to become a commentator on communist Berlin radio, where he conducted anti-American propaganda. He ended this activity in 1949 and subsequently enjoyed success in West Germany and West Berlin as a radio play director and as film director, including the popular 1953 Zarah Leander film Ave Maria. His productions had a strongly emotional and romantic character, which was common in West German films of the 1950s. In the biopic Stresemann (1956), with Ernst Schröder in the title role, Braun once again devoted himself to the German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann.

 

Despite his nazi and communist past, in 1954 the Berlin Senate appointed Braun director of the newly founded Sender Freies Berlin in West Berlin, after which he was programme director there from 1957 to 1958 and also directed several films. Alfred Braun died in West Berlin at the beginning of 1978 at the age of 89. His daughter is the actress Etta Braun (born 1928), who acted e.g. in Ave Maria.

 

Sources: German Wikipedia, Filmportal, IMDb.

 

Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet [翠星のガルガンティア] is an original sci-fi mecha anime coming in April 2013. The story is a collaboration between director Murata Kazuya [村田和也] (Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos) and scriptwriter Urobuchi Gen (Madoka Magica, Fate/Zero). Animation production will be handled by Production I.G (009 RE:CYBORG, Eden of the East).

   

View more at www.dannychoo.com/post/en/26805/Gargantia+on+the+Verdurou...

It all started in 1994. TV scriptwriter Stefan Struik had an interview with a meditating hermit in Baarn (NL) who was complaining about gnomes who disturbed the power network in his house. A month later he ran into trolls in a Norwegian clothing store in the Dutch-Frisian village Dokkum. A year before he got surprised by the amount of one meter high garden gnomes just across the border between Germany and Poland. It all seemed to point into a new direction he would hit a few months later. In December 1994 he opened with his sister a small game and bookstore in Delft (NL), named Elf Fantasy Shop. The games were a golden opportunity. Three years later the duo could open an second store in The Hague.

 

In 1995 Stefan also started a new adventure with a free magazine called Elf Fantasy Magazine. In 2001 the magazine became professionalized and despite it never realised any profits it existed until 2009.

 

Stefan and his sister already organised lectures in the Elf Fantasy Shops about druidism, Tolkien and other fantasy related subjects. In 2001 Stefan decided to combine a few things into a totally new and unique festival concept that later would be copied many times: the Elf Fantasy fair. Starting in the historical theme parc Archeon (NL) it moved the year after to the largest castle in the Netherlands: castle de Haar. With the exception of 2004 (castle Keukenhof, Lisse) it remained in castle de Haar, Haarzuilens since then. In 2009 a second version of the Elf Fantasy Fair started 400 meters from the border with Germany in the small village Arcen in Northern Limburg. In January 2013 the name Elf Fantasy Fair™ was replaced by the name Elfia™. The spring edition of Elfia is also called the 'Light Edition', while the autumn edition is characterized as the 'dark edition'.

 

The son of Hungarian immigrants, Tony Packo was a native East Toledoan. Tony was born in 1908, just a stone's throw from Consaul and Genesee streets. Tony Packo started out as a factory worker. That all changed when, in 1932, he and his wife got a $100 loan from relatives. No small feat, mind you, for this was during the hardest of hard times, the first years of the Great Depression. That same year he opened a sandwich and ice cream shop just around the corner from the place he was born. Tony had learned the restaurant business working for his older brother John, who owned a place across Consaul Street in what is now Tony Packo's parking lot. There was no beer at Packo's that first year. Prohibition would not be lifted until 1933.

 

Because Tony was Hungarian-American and lived in a Hungarian neighborhood, Tony’s creation was called the Hungarian hot dog. Until Toledo-born Tony invented it, there was no such thing as a Hungarian hot dog, say those who know the Old Country's food.

 

Packo's food was an instant hit in the neighborhood. Within months of opening, Tony and Rose knocked out a wall and expanded their first shop, in what is now called the Consaul Tavern. By 1935, success had taken them to the point where they could buy a building of their own. They purchased the wedge-shaped establishment at Front and Consaul. The building houses part of today's Tony Packo's, but with a few more additions. The restaurant is still run by the Packo family.

 

THE M*A*S*H CONNECTION

The words that came out of Jamie Farr's mouth on Feb. 24, 1976 would put Tony Packo's in the spotlight. Farr, a native Toledoan himself, appeared in the television show "M*A*S*H," playing Corporal Max Klinger, a crazy medical corpsman who was also from Toledo. In the episode that made Packo's future, a man playing a television newsman talked to Klinger about his hometown. Farr wrote a little local color into his reply. The lines read, "If you're ever in Toledo, Ohio, on the Hungarian side of town, Tony Packo's got the greatest Hungarian hot dogs. Thirty-five cents..." Thus a new epoch began. The name appealed to the scriptwriters, who wrote Packo's into five subsequent episodes. In one show, the mobile hospital unit asked Packo's to send sausage casings to be used in a blood-filtering machine. Packo's was also mentioned in the two-and-a-half-hour final episode in 1983.

 

THE MOST POPULAR BUNS IN THE MIDWEST

The Farr coup was actually the second time that good fortune, in the form of a celebrity, graced Tony Packo's. In June 1972, Burt Reynolds was playing "The Rainmaker" at a local auditorium, and Nancy (Tony Sr.'s daughter) got a notion to get him into her restaurant. "I thought, well, he's got to eat somewhere." Nancy wrote a letter and took it to Reynold's hotel.

 

About two nights later he showed up. Reynolds was the first big name to eat at Packo's and sign a hot dog bun. Nancy wanted him to write his name on something to commemorate his visit. It occurred to Reynolds to put his pen to Packo's breadstuff. This precedent was followed by scores of celebrities, including presidential candidates, whose autographed hot dog buns now are enshrined on Packo's walls. Thus the tradition of "bun signing" began, and has continued to this day.

Spanish postcard by Postalcolor, Hospitalet (Barcelona), no. 134. Photo: Unifrance.

 

French, but Danish-born Anna Karina (1940-2019) was a film actress, singer, director and the queen of the Nouvelle Vague. Karina was the muse of director Jean-Luc Godard and starred in eight of his films.

 

Anna Karina was born Hanne Karen Blarke Bayer in Solbjerg, Denmark, in 1940. Her mother was a dress shop owner and her father was a ship's captain. Before she turned one, her father had left her mother. First, she was raised by her maternal grandparents, where she stayed until the age of four. Then she spent time in and out of foster homes, before returning to live with her mother from the age of eight. She has described her childhood as 'terribly wanting to be loved' and as a child, she made numerous attempts to run away from home. She began her career in Denmark, where she sang in cabarets and worked as a model playing in commercials. At age 14, she appeared in the Danish short film Pigen og skoene/Girls and Shoes (Ib Schedes, 1954), which won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. She studied dance and painting in Denmark and for a while made a living selling her paintings. In 1958, after a row with her mother, she hitchhiked to Paris. She had a break when sitting briefly at the cafe Les Deux Magots, she was approached by a woman from an advertisement agency who asked her to pose for some photos. Hanne became a rising fashion model and met Coco Chanel and Pierre Cardin. Chanel advised her to use a professional name, Anna Karina. She made a series of Palmolive ads in a bath covered in soapsuds and was noticed by Jean-Luc Godard, then a film critic for Cahiers du cinéma. Godard was casting his debut feature film, À bout de souffle/Breathless (1960) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. He offered her a small role, but she refused when he mentioned that there would be a nude scene. However, she eventually accepted his offer to play a major role in his second film, Le Petit Soldat/The Little Soldier (1960) with Michel Subor. Karina, who was still under 21 had to persuade her estranged mother to sign the contract for her.

 

Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard married during the shooting of their next film, Une femme est une femme/A Woman Is a Woman (1961) with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean-Claude Brialy. It is a tribute to American musical comedy and the first film Godard shot in colour and Cinemascope. Judd Blaise at AllMovie: "Rather than the sometimes alienating, dense intellectualism of later Godard works, Une femme est une femme offers aesthetic pleasure through luxurious visuals and a charming musical score by Michel Legrand. Against this bright backdrop, Karina proves particularly fetching, capturing the film's frolicsome mood in an unforced manner. While not one of Godard's most groundbreaking or influential films, Une femme est une femme is one of his most appealing and pleasurable efforts." J. Hoberman at Criterion: "Mainly, A Woman Is a Woman is a valentine to Karina, who became pregnant during the movie’s production; she and Godard were married in March 1961, an event that made the cover of Paris Match." At the Berlin Film Festival in 1961, Anna Karina was awarded Best Actress for Une femme est une femme. In the following years, the couple made Vivre sa Vie/My Life to Live (1962), Bande à part/Band of Outsiders (1964), Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution/Alphaville, a Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution (1965) with Eddie Constantine, Pierrot le fou/Pierrot Goes Wild (1965) with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Made in U.S.A. (1966) with Jean-Pierre Léaud and the anthology film Le plus vieux métier du monde/The Oldest Profession (1967). Though their cinematic collaboration seemed harmonious, behind the scenes, their relationship was tumultuous and bitter, made all the more difficult by the fact that it was under constant public scrutiny. Their three-year marriage ended in 1964, though they continued to work together until 1966. In 1967, Godard and Karina divorced.

 

Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "From all reports, Karina and Godard's relationship was symbiotic; it is certainly no coincidence that both actress and director went into a temporary artistic eclipse after their 1967 breakup." Anna Karina's acting career was not, however, limited to Godard's films, and she had a successful collaboration with other well-known directors. Some consider her role in La Religieuse/The Nun (Jacques Rivette, 1966) as her best performance. In this film, she plays an intelligent, freedom-loving woman who is forced into a convent against her will. She also acted in the Italian productions Le Soldatesse/The Camp Followers (Valerio Zurlini, 1965) and the Albert Camus adaptation Lo Straniero/The Stranger (Luchino Visconti, 1967) starring Marcello Mastroianni. Karina also maintained a singing career and scored hits with 'Sous le soleil exactement' and 'Roller Girl'. Both songs were taken from the TV musical Anna (Pierre Koralnik, 1967), which Serge Gainsbourg had especially written for her. After her divorce in 1967, she went to Hollywood. She acted in Justine (George Cukor, 1969) and returned to Paris. Her later films included Laughter in the Dark (Tony Richardson, 1969), Rendez-vous à Bray/Appointment in Bray (André Delvaux, 1971) with Mathieu Carrière, Pane e cioccolata/Bread and Chocolate (Franco Brusati, 1973) starring Nino Manfredi, Chinesisches Roulette/Chinese Roulette (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1976), and Olyan mint otthon/Just Like Home (Márta Mészáros, 1978) with Jan Nowicki.

 

Anna Karina acted in but also wrote, produced and directed Vivre ensemble/Living Together (1973). She has also written three novels and made several appearances on television. She appeared on stage in Jacques Rivette's adaptation of La Religieuse/The Nun, Pour Lucrece, Toi et Tes Nuages, Francoise Sagan's Il Fait Beau Jour et Nuit and Ingmar Bergman's Apres La Répétition/After the Repetition. In 2005 she released 'Chansons de Films', a collection of songs sung in films. Incidentally, she played in films like L'oeuvre au noir/The Abyss (André Delvaux, 1988) with Gian Maria Volonté, Haut bas fragile/Up, Down, Fragile (Jacques Rivette, 1995) and the romantic thriller The Truth About Charlie (Jonathan Demme, 2002) starring Mark Wahlberg. James Travers at Le Film Site on L'oeuvre au noir/The Abyss : "This sombre adaptation of Marguerite Yourcenar’s acclaimed literary work was directed by the acclaimed Belgian filmmaker André Delvaux. Visually, the film is impressive and it boasts an excellent cast, but for all its excellent production values it is a heavy and somewhat laboured affair." Karina's most recent film as a director was Victoria (2008) in which she also starred. Mark Deming at AllMovie: "Thirty-five years after directing her first feature film, iconic actress Anna Karina once again steps behind the camera for this charming comedy-drama shot in Canada. Jimmy (Emmanuel Reichenbach) and Stanislas (Jean-Francois Moran) are a pair of nightclub performers who play second-rate gay nightclubs as part of a drag act called 'Les Lolitas'." After Godard, Anna Karina was married three times more: to scriptwriter-actor Pierre Fabre (1968–1973), actor-director Daniel Duval (1978–1981) and director Dennis Berry (1982–1994). In 2009 she married Maurice Cooks. On 14 December 2019, Anna Karina died in a Paris hospital of the effects of cancer at the age of 79, her agent Laurent Balandras told AFP, adding that she passed away in the company of her fourth husband, American director Dennis Berry.

 

Sources: Judd Blaise (AllMovie), J. Hoberman (Criterion), James Travers (Le Film Guide), Mark Deming (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), The Guardian, Fuck yeah! Anna Karina, IMDb and Wikipedia.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Chase Craig (1910-2001), a prolific editor and scriptwriter for Western Publishing in the 1940's and 1950's, receives in Inkpot Award at the 1982 San Diego Comic Con from Shel Dorf (1933-2009).

 

Shel Dorf (July 5, 1933 - November 3, 2009) was a primary founder of the San Diego Comic Con, today known as Comic Con International.

 

The awards were held in the Continental Room of the Hotel San Diego. The hotel was demolished in 2006.

 

Sergio Aragones can be seen drawing on the paper behind.

NOTE: Permission granted to copy, publish, broadcast or post any of my photos, but please credit "photo by Alan Light" if you can. Thanks

American Arcade postcard by Exhibit Supply Co, Chicago, Ill. Charles Ray in Some Pun'kins (Jerome Storm, 1925).

 

Charles Ray (1891-1943) was an American actor, scriptwriter, and director of the silent screen, who knew a parabole from rags to riches and back again. He worked for Paramount, his own company, United Artists and MGM. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, he was a very popular actor and one of Hollywood's best-paid stars.

 

Charles Edgar Ray was born in Jacksonville, Illinois, in 1891. He moved several times in his youth before settling in Los Angeles, where he finished his education. Ray started his career as an actor on stage. Later he also began to act in short silent films, making his debut as an extra in The Fortunes of War (Thomas Ince, 1911). He appeared in several bit parts before moving on to supporting roles. From 1913 he had a steady career as the male lead in one- and two-reel short Western, Quaker, and Civil War dramas at Kaybee Pictures, Broncho Pictures, and Domino Pictures. In these films, he would be paired with actresses such as Enid Markey, Bessie Barriscale, Louise Glaum, and Dorothy Davenport. Ray must have worked fast then, as in 1913 and 1914 he had a ratio of a film every two weeks. At Kaybee, Ince would direct him at times, at times also Raymond West, while at Bronco he was often directed by Charles Giblyn and in 1915 a few times by William S. Hart. In 1915, Ray had his breakthrough in his first feature The Coward, produced by Thomas Ince for Kay-Bee and directed by Reginald Barker. In this Civil War drama, Ray played the son of a Virginia colonel (Frank Keenan), who needs to overcome his cowardice.

 

Charles Ray's popularity rose after appearing in a series of films, as Wikipedia writes "which cast him in juvenile roles, primarily young, wholesome hicks or naive 'country bumpkins' that foiled the plans of thieves or con men and won the heart of his dream girl." Triangle Distributing now distributed Ray's Kay-Bee films. Victor Schertzinger, the musician who had provided the music for The Coward, turned director at Kay-Bee and directed Ray in several films in 1917. Ray, Ince, and Schertzinger moved over to Paramount in 1917, where Ince got his own production company and where Schertzinger directed Ray in more films, such as The Claws of the Hun (Victor Schertzinger, 1918), a propaganda film signalling the US's participation in the First World War. Ray's star rose and rose. By 1920, he was earning a reported $11,000 a week (approximately $138,000 today). Ray had also earned a reputation for being egomaniacal and difficult to work with. In 1920, he left Paramount after studio head Adolph Zukor refused to give him a substantial pay raise. Ray started his own production company. Charles Ray Productions, and bought a studio on Sunset Boulevard where he began producing and shooting his own films. While he initially was fairly successful, an experiment for First National with a film without intertitles, The Old Swimmin' Hole (1921), co-starring Laura La Plante, had critical but not a huge popular success. Mind you, this was years before Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's famous Der Letzte Mann/The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau, 1924), which was made with only one intertitle.

 

In 1922, Charles Ray signed a contract with United Artists and starred in e.g. The Girl I Loved (1923) with Patsy Ruth Miller. He was fed up with the hillbillies types and strove to profile himself as a romantic lead and man of the world. Against everybody's advice to avoid lengthy historical drama, Ray insisted on the making of The Courtship of Miles Standish (1923), investing $500,000 (approximately $7,353,000 today) of his own money, including a $65,000 (approximately $956,000 today) 180-ton replica of the Mayflower. The film was a box office failure, Ray lost all his money and his reputation went down too. It did not mean his career was all over (despite what Wikipedia writes), because he first continued as a leading actor at smaller companies, produced by Ince, and in 1925 he got a contract at MGM, where he played for two years and acted as the male lead opposite actresses such as Pauline Starke, Joan Crawford, and May McAvoy. In those years Ray and his wife Clara Grant were enormous spendthrifts, with an over-the-top villa in Beverly Hills, a huge staff, and expensive cars. Grant would never wear a dress twice. Yet, in December 1925 Ray had to file for bankruptcy and his production company went under as well. Though he continued to act after MGM the companies he worked for were less prestigious, such as Universal. In 1928 he made his last silent film, The Count of Ten (James Flood, 1928), after which he acted on stage for years, in off-Broadway productions, without much success. In 1932 Ray returned to the sets, but without success, and in 1934 he declared bankruptcy again. In 1935 he got divorced from Clara Grant, from whom he was already separated as of 1930. Ray still acted in cinema but in the mid-1930s in minor parts and in the early 1940s on uncredited parts. He tried to earn money by writing short stories and a popular movie magazine but to no avail. Charles Ray died of a systemic infection caused by an impacted wisdom tooth in 1943. He was only 52. In 1960 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contribution to the motion picture industry.

 

Sources: Wikipedia (English, French and Italian), and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

It all started in 1994. TV scriptwriter Stefan Struik had an interview with a meditating hermit in Baarn (NL) who was complaining about gnomes who disturbed the power network in his house. A month later he ran into trolls in a Norwegian clothing store in the Dutch-Frisian village Dokkum. A year before he got surprised by the amount of one meter high garden gnomes just across the border between Germany and Poland. It all seemed to point into a new direction he would hit a few months later. In December 1994 he opened with his sister a small game and bookstore in Delft (NL), named Elf Fantasy Shop. The games were a golden opportunity. Three years later the duo could open an second store in The Hague.

 

In 1995 Stefan also started a new adventure with a free magazine called Elf Fantasy Magazine. In 2001 the magazine became professionalized and despite it never realised any profits it existed until 2009.

 

Stefan and his sister already organised lectures in the Elf Fantasy Shops about druidism, Tolkien and other fantasy related subjects. In 2001 Stefan decided to combine a few things into a totally new and unique festival concept that later would be copied many times: the Elf Fantasy fair. Starting in the historical theme parc Archeon (NL) it moved the year after to the largest castle in the Netherlands: castle de Haar. With the exception of 2004 (castle Keukenhof, Lisse) it remained in castle de Haar, Haarzuilens since then. In 2009 a second version of the Elf Fantasy Fair started 400 meters from the border with Germany in the small village Arcen in Northern Limburg. In January 2013 the name Elf Fantasy Fair™ was replaced by the name Elfia™. The spring edition of Elfia is also called the 'Light Edition', while the autumn edition is characterized as the 'dark edition'.

 

[View south]

   

Parc Cwm Darran occupies the former site of the Ogilvie Colliery, one of the Powell Dyffryn group of pits in the Rhymney Valley: [ www.caerphilly.gov.uk/countryside/english/countryparks/cw... ]

 

===

 

Today's lake and parkland setting, popular with dog walkers, is hard to envisage as a hive of industry. To the south end of the Park the colliery site is memorialized by the remnants of a coal dram, a capped shaft and winding wheels.

 

Ogilvie was a radical pit whose lodge, along with Mardy (Rhondda), was the joint founder of the South Wales Miner's Federation in the 1920s.

 

But what has fired many people's imaginations is that this is the location of the 1973 Dr Who episode The Green Death, as an online search highlights. "An ambitious computer unleashes giant maggots in Wales" : www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/episodeguide/greendeath/d.... I remember it well, because waiting for the school bus in the mornings I could see the Doctor's car being driven up the valley from Cardiff to the film location ( the actors followed in a bus behind). In the short-circuit of our imaginations we assumed that Doctor Who was on the side of the Miners - why else go up there? The scriptwriters had certainly engaged the current political agenda, in the assertion of an environmental utopianism amidst a global energy crisis in which the whole question of oil and coal assumed an apocalyptic dimension.

  

Source: livinghistories.newcastle.edu.au/nodes/view/52925

 

This photo appeared in the NEWS in 1986. The text was:

 

"PEACE - Newcastle Lecture

 

Freda Whitlam is the Moderator of the Uniting Church, NSW Synod. She is also a member of the NSW Higher Education Board. She has spent most of her working life teaching and administering in private schools, having been principal of PLC Corydon for 19 years until he retirement.

 

Miss Whitlam considered some possible definitions of the ‘Peace’. She recalled that her own given name, Freda, and the name Irene, originated from a word meaning peace, or rather meaning absence of war. It was notable that there were a great many words relating to war and violence in the English language but very few synonyms for Peace.

 

In our culture, war and conflict are not merely accepted but encouraged and approved. This is particularly evident from the language used to report sporting events. Phrases such at “The Wallabies drew first blood” abound. Sport people generally regard violence or the prospect of it, as a major drawcard in attracting spectators. There is also conscious encouragement of aggression on the roads, witnessed by the names given to different models of motor car, such as Meteor, Falcon.

 

Much television entertainment, including even the cartoons watched by children, contains violence. But, of course, violence is all right if the scriptwriter is Shakespeare or Verdi and it’s on the ABC!

 

Australians have only recently begun to accept openly how much violence occurs at the home in the family.

 

While the majority of people see peace in a negative way, as non-violence, there are some who see it in a more positive sense as tranquillity, or calm in the face of difficulty. But even this perception has its negative side, as an absence of activity or involvement. During visits to parishes in New South Wales over the last year Miss Whitlam has observed the effect of such lack of involvement in the form of opposition to change.

 

Peace can mean non-violence and tranquillity. It can also mean concord, a word with many more synonyms than has peace, such as agreement, harmony and co-operation. It stresses relationship.

 

Australia would be a better place if people worked harder at promoting understanding and co-operation among the different groups that exist in society. In fact, we tend to promote differences. We should study more contemporary foreign languages and less of our own history. Australians tend to be complacent about themselves and indifferent to people of other cultures. There is a lack of enthusiasm for intellectual challenge. This shows up in a carelessness in the use of the English Language. This was particularly regrettable, Miss Whitlam said, as “we have in English the richest language in the world – a wonderful tool which we should be prising, admiring and sharpening by constant training and use.”

 

To work for harmony and co-operation we need to be able to express ourselves effectively, to be able to say what we mean and to listen to what others are saying.

There is a particular need, in the year of concord, to look for new opportunities for communication across disciplines, for collaboration between unfamiliar specialities.

Another meaning for Peace is contained in the Hebrew word ‘Shalom. This means both harmony of individual body, mind and spirit and harmony within a community. It is also acceptable of the integrity of the land in which we live. In the past, while Australians have used the land carelessly, but we are becoming more sensitive to ecological issues and beginning to consider to possible future effects of current methods of land use.

 

Australia’s urban development conflicts with the idea of ‘Shalom’. The common forms of suburban development create loneliness, isolating, one age group from another, and particularly children from their extended family, grandparents, aunts and uncles. This is particularly the case in the Western suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne. There is a great need for community development in such areas. It is good to see such things as women’s refugees and Neighbourhood Watch being established through the action of local communities. There are encouraging signs of ‘Shalom’ in the increased caring role of fathers towards their children and in a variety of other aspects of our community life.

 

In all the activity directed towards improvement of our physical well-bring we should not forget our spiritual needs. Miss Whitlam appealed for a special effort to set our spiritual life free in this Year of Peace."

 

This image was scanned from a photograph in the University's historical photographic collection held by Cultural Collections at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia.

 

If you have any information about this photograph, or would like a higher resolution copy, please contact us.

 

Ángel Gonzalez Monteverde nació en Mar del Plata, Argentina en tiempos donde apenas comenzaba la revolución Cubana. Es Arquitecto además de: Videísta; Realizador y asistente escenográfico; Escritor y guionista.

Desde temprana edad lleva consigo una cámara, la pasión por documentar ha sido uno de los pilares en su tarea cotidiana de crear.

Su paso por las galerías de filmación, de la mano de Carlos Sorín y Fabián Bielinsky marcó a fuego en su corazón la pasión por el séptimo arte.

Actualmente está escribiendo un guión cinematográfico junto a Pablo Zoya y terminando detalles de su última novela de próxima aparición.

 

Angel Gonzalez Monteverde was born in Mar Del Plata, Argentina in times where as the Cuban revolution began. He is Architect; video producer ; stage scene assistant; Writer and scriptwriter.

From early age it takes with himself a camera, the passion to document has been one of the pillars in its daily task to create.

Its pass by the shooting studies, of the hand of Carlos Sorín and Fabian Bielinsky it marked fire in its heart the passion by the seventh art.

At the moment a cinematographic script next to Pablo Zoya is writing and finishing details of its last novel of next appearance.

 

www.mireyabaglietto.com/gracias1.htm

www.mireyabaglietto.com

 

Vintage Spanish collector's card. Empresa Cinematografica Barcelona, No. A-12. Scene from the Franco-Spanish production La vida de Cristóbal Colon/ Vida de Cristóbal Colón y su descubrimiento de América/ La vie de Christophe Colomb/ Christophe Colomb/ The Life of Christopher Columbus (Gérard Bourgeois, Argos P.C., Films Cinematographiques 1916), starring Georges Wague (Columbus, Jean Garat (Bartholomew Columbus) and Léontine Massart (Queen Isabella). Script by Charles Jean Drossner. Cinematography by Edouard Renault, Ramón de Baños, and José María Maristany. Caption: Soon after the conquering of Granada, Columbus meets the Catholic Royal Couple. While Ferdinand of Aragon is a practical man and doesn't care about theory nor ideals, Queen Isabella is inclined to help Columbus' visions, feeling her generosity may also offer new stars to her crown. This card shows the actors at the Alhambra in Granada.

 

During the First World War, the Spanish company Argos Films of José Carreras, together with the French company Films Cinématographiques, embarked on what was claimed to be the most expensive film made in Spain until then, costing a million pesetas. While the director, scriptwriter and main actors were French, the crew was mostly Spanish. The film was made in two parts, released in France as La Vie de Christophe Colomb and La Découverte de l'Amérique. In France, the second part of the film was only first released in 1919, while the first already had been shown in 1916. For the full film, see also www.europeanfilmgateway.eu/detail/La%20vida%20de%20Crist%....

 

Sources: Cine-Ressources, IMDb, Europeana.

It all started in 1994. TV scriptwriter Stefan Struik had an interview with a meditating hermit in Baarn (NL) who was complaining about gnomes who disturbed the power network in his house. A month later he ran into trolls in a Norwegian clothing store in the Dutch-Frisian village Dokkum. A year before he got surprised by the amount of one meter high garden gnomes just across the border between Germany and Poland. It all seemed to point into a new direction he would hit a few months later. In December 1994 he opened with his sister a small game and bookstore in Delft (NL), named Elf Fantasy Shop. The games were a golden opportunity. Three years later the duo could open an second store in The Hague.

 

In 1995 Stefan also started a new adventure with a free magazine called Elf Fantasy Magazine. In 2001 the magazine became professionalized and despite it never realised any profits it existed until 2009.

 

Stefan and his sister already organised lectures in the Elf Fantasy Shops about druidism, Tolkien and other fantasy related subjects. In 2001 Stefan decided to combine a few things into a totally new and unique festival concept that later would be copied many times: the Elf Fantasy fair. Starting in the historical theme parc Archeon (NL) it moved the year after to the largest castle in the Netherlands: castle de Haar. With the exception of 2004 (castle Keukenhof, Lisse) it remained in castle de Haar, Haarzuilens since then. In 2009 a second version of the Elf Fantasy Fair started 400 meters from the border with Germany in the small village Arcen in Northern Limburg. In January 2013 the name Elf Fantasy Fair™ was replaced by the name Elfia™. The spring edition of Elfia is also called the 'Light Edition', while the autumn edition is characterized as the 'dark edition'.

 

Something is about to change when a foreigner, constantly irritating his neighbour with bouzouki playing, loses his most precious possession

 

Under the Same Roof – monoco.eu/en/underthesameroof

 

Starring: Nikola Dodov, Panagiotis Chronis, Iva Todorova, Alexander Goncharov, Emelyne Bukeyeneza, Kiril Milkov, Emona Tsoncheva

Director & Producer: Simeon Tsonchev

Scriptwriter: Christos Zacharakis

Cinematographer: Dimitar Nedelchev

Production Designer: Vanina Geleva

Sound Designer: Boris Trayanov

Music: Apostolos Chatzichristos, Kostas Skarvelis, Markos Vamvakaris, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Co-producers: Konstantin Popov, Eduard Moskalenko, Boris Trayanov, Krastyo Lambev, Grigor Grigorov

Executive producer: Valentin Marinov Pelo

Production: Mono Collective

Supported by: Bulgarian National Film Centre

[Taken in Paris (France) - 07Apr10]

 

The Forum des Images organizes the first season of the "Series Mania" festival, showing a selection of around 80 episodes of 33 different tv-shows from around the world.

Conferences, debats, and presentations with and from writers, creators, and specialists take place during the entire week. Two entire seasons (True Blood season 2, and Mad Men season 2) are shown during two 12 hours screening marathons.

 

See all the photos of this festival in this set : 06-11Apr10 - Séries Mania Saison 01 [Event]

See all the iPhone Hipstamatic app photos in this set : [iPhone - Hipstamatic]

See all the random portraits in this set : Portraits [Random]

Chef Simon Hulstone from Devon, artist and designer Pascal Anson from Brighton, and scriptwriter Prasanna Puwanarajah from London have been announced as the winners of the BA Great Britons Programme. They were selected as the ‘best in British’ in the categories of Food, Art and Film and will work with the airline and mentors Heston Blumenthal, Tracey Emin and Richard E Grant, in the run up to the London 2012 Olympic Games.

 

More information: press.ba.com/?p=1887

North-Macedonian poster cardAstérix & Obélix contre César / Asterix & Obelix Take on Caesar (Claude Zidi, 1999) with Christian Clavier, Gérard Depardieux and Roberto Benigni.

 

French comic book hero Astérix by Alberto Uderzo and René Goscinny has become a major film franchise, both in animated and live-action form. Most notable is the feature Astérix & Obélix contre César/Asterix & Obelix Take on Caesar (Claude Zidi, 1999), starring Christian Clavier, Gerard Depardieu, and Roberto Benigni. At the time of its release, the film was the most expensive production in French cinema of all time. It was a box-office success and would be followed by several sequels.

 

In 1927, the French comic book artist and scriptwriter Albert Uderzo was born in the town of Fismes, in the Marne department of north-eastern France. In the 1930s, Albert developed a fascination for American comic and animated cartoons and was particularly impressed with the works of Walt Disney. He was a poor student at school but received good grades in sketching and art-related lessons. By the 1950s, Albert had become a professional artist, and he met his partner René Goscinny in 1951. During the 1950s, Uderzo provided the artwork for moderately successful series such as the historical fiction series 'Oumpah-pah' and 'Jehan Pistolet' (both written by Goscinny) and the aviation comic series 'Tanguy et Laverdure' (written by Jean-Michel Charlier). Asterix debuted in October 1959 in the French magazine Pilote, created by René Goscinny and Uderzo. In 1961, the first stand-alone effort, 'Astérix le Gaulois' (Asterix the Gaul), was released. It was turned into an animation film, Astérix le Gaulois/Asterix the Gaul (Ray Goossens, 1965). The comic book series centres around the titular Asterix, the bravest warrior in a small town in the middle of Roman-occupied Gaul in the year 50 B.C. — and the one burg that has not surrendered to the occupation. Instead, with the help of a magic potion that gives him super-strength (and his best friend Obélix, who fell into a cauldron of the potion as a child, and as such is permanently superhumanly strong), he spends each instalment fighting and defeating the Roman army and keeping his village safe from harm. Asterix became one of the most successful European comic book series. There were many film adaptations, including the animation films Astérix et Cléopâtre/Asterix & Cleopatra (René Goscinny, Albert Uderzo, 1968), and Les 12 travaux d'Astérix/The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (René Goscinny, Henri Gruel, Albert Uderzo, Pierre Watrin, 1976). After the success of Astérix & Obélix contre César/Asterix & Obelix Take on Caesar (Claude Zidi, 1999) with Christian Clavier as Asterix and Gérard Dépardieu as Obélix, followed more live-action adaptations including Astérix & Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre/Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (Alain Chabat, 2002) with Monica Bellucci as Cleopatra, and Astérix aux jeux olympiques/Asterix at the Olympic Games (Frédéric Forestier, Thomas Langmann, 2008) with Alain Delon as Julius Caesar. Astérix & Obélix contre César/Asterix & Obelix Take on Caesar combines plots of several Asterix stories, mostly Asterix the Gaul (Getafix's abduction), Asterix and the Soothsayer, Asterix and the Goths (the Druid conference), Asterix the Legionary (Obelix becoming smitten with Panacea) and Asterix the Gladiator (the characters fighting in the circus) but jokes and references from many other albums abound, including a humorous exchange between Caesar and Brutus taken from Asterix and Cleopatra, and the villain Lucius Detritus is based on Tullius Detritus, the main antagonist of Asterix and the Roman Agent (known as Tortuous Convolvulus in the English translation of the comic). "Asterix and Obelix Take on Caesar is not a masterpiece in any shape or form and has its problems but it is not an awful movie", Bethany Cox writes on IMDb: "In the French version there are enough deft touches in the script to amuse I think. The pacing is good, while the acting is fine. Christian Clavier and Gerard Depardieu are well cast in the title roles, while Roberto Benigni sinks his teeth into his role as the scheming centurion. In conclusion, nothing fantastic, but it isn't that bad."

 

The Asterix series has gone on to sell more than 400 million copies, translated into more than 100 languages internationally. It makes the series the best-selling European comic book series, and the second best-selling comic book series in history after 'One Piece'. René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo collaborated on the comic until the death of Goscinny in 1977. Uderzo then took over the writing until 2009. Since 1951, Uderzo was married to Ada Milani, with whom he had a daughter Sylvie Uderzo. He sold his shares of the company Editions Albert René (which owns the rights to Astérix) to the publishing company Hachette in 2007. He had a public falling out with daughter Sylvie who also owned shares of the original company and disagreed with her father's decision. After a few years of mostly working on short stories and comic strips, Uderzo announced his retirement in 2011. Since Uderzo's retirement, the work on Asterix has been handled by writer Jean-Yves Ferri and artist Didier Conrad under a deal that allows Lagardere-owned publisher Hachette to continue producing the series. The most recent book is 'L'Iris blanc' (Asterix and the White Iris), published in 2023. It is the first to be written by Fabcaro, and the sixth to be illustrated by Didier Conrad. Parc Astérix, a French theme park based on the property, has brought in 50 million visitors since opening outside Paris in 1989.

 

Sources: The Hollywood Reporter, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

British postcard, London, no. FS 200. Photo: Pommer-Laughton 'Mayflower' production. Publicity still for Jamaica Inn (Alfred Hitchcock, 1939).

 

Last Saturday, Irish born Maureen O’Hara, one of the icons of Hollywood’s Golden Age, has died. The feisty and fearless actress starred in John Ford’s Oscar-winning drama How Green Was My Valley (1941), set in Wales, and Ford’s Irish-set The Quiet Man (1952) opposite John Wayne. The famously red-headed actress also worked successfully with Charles Laughton at Jamaica Inn (1939) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), starred in the perennial Christmas hit Miracle on 34th Street (1947), and appeared in the Disney children’s hit The Parent Trap (1961). O'Hara was 95.

 

Maureen O’Hara was born Maureen FitzSimons in the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh in 1920. Her mother, Marguerita Lilburn FitzSimons, was an accomplished contralto. Her father, Charles FitzSimons, managed a business in Dublin and also owned part of the renowned Irish soccer team The Shamrock Rovers. From the age of 6 to 17, Maureen trained in drama, music, and dance, and at the age of 10, she joined the Rathmines Theatre Company and worked in amateur theatre in the evenings after her lessons. O'Hara's dream at this time was to be a stage actress. By age 14 she was accepted to the prestigious Abbey Theater and pursued her dream of classical theater and operatic singing. Her first screen test was for a British film called Kicking the Moon Around (Walter Forde, 1938) at Elstree Studios, It was arranged by American bandleader Harry Richman, who was then appearing in Dublin. The result was deemed unsatisfactory, but when Charles Laughton later saw it he was intrigued by her large and expressive eyes. He arranged for her to co-star with him in the British film Jamaica Inn (Alfred Hitchcock, 1939). Laughton was so pleased with O'Hara's performance that she was cast in the role of Esmeralda opposite him in the Hollywood production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (William Dieterle, 1939). The epic film was an extraordinary success and international audiences were now alerted to her natural beauty and talent. From there, she went on to enjoy a long and highly successful career in Hollywood. Director John Ford cast her as Angharad in How Green Was My Valley (1941), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. She starred in Swashbucklers such as The Black Swan (Henry King, 1942), opposite Tyrone Power, and Sinbad the Sailor (Richard Wallace, 1947), with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., She also starred as Doris Walker and the mother of a young Natalie Wood in Miracle on 34th Street (George Seaton, 1947), which became a perennial Christmas classic.

 

Maureen O'Hara made a number of films with John Wayne. She met Wayne through director John Ford, and the two hit it right off. O'Hara: "I adored him, and he loved me. But we were never sweethearts. Never, ever.” Opposite Wayne, she played Mary Kate Danaher in The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952), an iconic film that is still very much celebrated in Ireland and abroad. In total, they made five films together between 1948 and 1972, also including Rio Grande (John Ford, 1950), The Wings of Eagles (John Ford, 1957), McLintock! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1963) and Big Jake (George Sherman, 1971). O’Hara most often played strong and willful women, but offscreen she was the same. In 1957 her career was threatened by scandal when the tabloid Confidential magazine claimed she and a man had engaged in 'the hottest show in town' in the back row of Hollywood’s Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. However, as she later told the Associated Press, at the time she “was making a movie in Spain, and I had the passport to prove it”. She testified against the magazine in a criminal libel trial and brought a lawsuit that was settled out of court. The magazine eventually went out of business.

 

Maureen O'Hara was married three times. In 1939, at the age of 19, O'Hara secretly married Englishman George H. Brown, a film producer, production assistant, and occasional scriptwriter, who she had met on the set of Jamaica Inn. The marriage was annulled in 1941. Later that year, O'Hara married American film director William Houston Price (dialogue director in The Hunchback of Notre Dame), but the union ended in 1953, reportedly as a result of his alcohol abuse. They had one child, a daughter named Bronwyn FitzSimons Price (1944). In later life, Maureen O’Hara married her third husband, Brigadier General Charles Blair. The couple lived in the US Virgin Islands, where he operated an airline. He died in a plane crash in 1978 and O’Hara took over management of the airline, which she eventually sold. “Being married to Charlie Blair and traveling all over the world with him, believe me, was enough for any woman,” she said in 1995. “It was the best time of my life.” O'Hara remained retired from acting until 1991, when she starred in the film Only the Lonely (Chris Columbus, 1991), playing Rose Muldoon, the domineering mother of a Chicago cop played by John Candy. In the following years, she continued to work, starring in several made-for-TV films. Her autobiography, 'Tis Herself, was published in 2004 and was a New York Times Bestseller. She was never nominated for an Oscar, instead of being given an honorary award in 2014. After accepting her statuette from a wheelchair, the then 94-year-old star protested when her speech of thanks was cut short. Maureen O'Hara died in her sleep at home in Boise, Idaho. She was 95 years old.

 

Sources: The Guardian, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Comic Relief is an operating British charity, founded in 1985 by the comedy scriptwriter Richard Curtis and comedian Lenny Henry in response to famine in Ethiopia. The highlight of Comic Relief's appeal is Red Nose Day, a biennial telethon held in March, alternating with sister project Sport Relief. Comic Relief is one of the two high profile telethon events held in the United Kingdom, the other being Children in Need, held annually in November.

 

It’s been 25 years since Red Nose Day first burst onto our screens and this year, once again, the nation is gearing up to put on their Noses, pull out all the stops, and get fundraising.

 

Whether it’s at work, at school or at home, the money raised is used to transform the lives of countless people, both here at home in the UK and across Africa.

Uzbekistan

Amber Fort is a short bus ride out from the historic center of Jaipur, and is well worth the journey. Unfortunately, these photos were all taken as the light was starting to fade, but hopefully you get some sense of the spectacular scale and great sequence of spaces along the length of this huge complex. And that's not even considering the emergency backup fort, Jaigarh, visible uphill in the background; it was too late in the day to attempt a visit there. I can only assume it's worth it, even just for the view back down to Amber Fort.

 

But the absolute, number one reason to visit this place is (wait for it) the preposterous audio guide. While it eschews the madcap, left-field uselessness and character of the genre's apex, it has such a wonderfully stupid conceit that it's become one of my standard Tales of India for my archi-friends.

 

Essentially, the idea is this: the narrators (I recall there being two, for some reason) will regale you with some long-winded anecdote about the feature of the building you're currently observing. Then, just as you're about to hit "stop" and walk on to the next thing, they'll pull the Reading Rainbow card: "But you don't have to take my word for it! Let's ask the building itself what it's like to be an entry pavilion!"

 

What?

 

"Oh, Gate, tell us what it was like in the days of the first maharajas of Jaipur!" "Oh...ho...hoooo! Truly these were wonderful times in which to be a gate! Each day I had many people coming and going through me, bringing gifts and news to the mighty maharaja. (pause, change to a sadder tone) Then for so many years, it was silent in the fort, and it was a lonely time to be a gate. (The voice brightens.) However, thanks to the great generosity of the current maharani of Jaipur, the fort is restored and open to the public and once again I get to welcome people from all over the world!"

 

And so on. By itself, this would be a kooky, basically harmless redundancy. However, presumably to add some more back-and-forth liveliness, the scriptwriters introduce an unfortunate plot twist: often, the narrators are wrong about the fort, and have to be corrected by the mighty rumble of the building's voice. "Tell us, Courtyard, how many elephant jousts were there in this place?" "Ha ha ha! Oh, Abhijit, what miserable so-and-so told you such a lie? I am far too small of a courtyard to host an elephant joust, and anyway, what sense would it make to bring elephants all the way up here where no-one could see them, rather than hosting the battles in the center of town! Such a joker!"

 

I appreciate the myth-busting approach, but God help you if you just cut this silliness off before the "building interview" segment comes in to disabuse you of the popular wisdom. It's a really strange choice, and anyway it just makes the audio tour take way too long. Granted, I'm a relatively impatient and fidgety tourist, and could stand to slow down a little more. But with a guide like this, you're more inclined to turn it off entirely and just start sprinting around in order to catch what's left of the sunlight and the opening hours, having wasted half your time on the great elephant courtyard debate.

 

The opposite temptation, of course, is to stay and listen in hopes of catching an even goofier exchange, but such pleasures are ephemeral and it is a very big fort. But perhaps I'm wrong about this. Let's ask the Internet itself for comments on whether this is a good idea!

French postcard. Cinématographes Méric. Publicity still for the French romantic and adventurous road movie through France: La course à l'amour (Charles Keppens/ Paul Barlatier, 1924), starring Gina Relly, Edouard Mathé and Mario Guaita - Ausonia.

 

Athletic muscleman Mario Guaita aka Ausonia (1881-1956) was an Italian actor, director, producer and scriptwriter in the silent era. He had his international breakthrough with Spartaco (Enrico Vidali 1913) and became a major actor in the Italian forzuto genre. In the early 1920s he moved to Marseille, made a few films there and ran a cinema. Gina Relly (1891-1985) was an actress of the French silent cinema, who starred in L'empereur des pauvres (René Leprince, 1921), with Léon Mathot. Édouard Mathé (1886-1934) was an extremely popular French actor, in particular in the silent crime serials by Louis Feuillade.

It all started in 1994. TV scriptwriter Stefan Struik had an interview with a meditating hermit in Baarn (NL) who was complaining about gnomes who disturbed the power network in his house. A month later he ran into trolls in a Norwegian clothing store in the Dutch-Frisian village Dokkum. A year before he got surprised by the amount of one meter high garden gnomes just across the border between Germany and Poland. It all seemed to point into a new direction he would hit a few months later. In December 1994 he opened with his sister a small game and bookstore in Delft (NL), named Elf Fantasy Shop. The games were a golden opportunity. Three years later the duo could open an second store in The Hague.

 

In 1995 Stefan also started a new adventure with a free magazine called Elf Fantasy Magazine. In 2001 the magazine became professionalized and despite it never realised any profits it existed until 2009.

 

Stefan and his sister already organised lectures in the Elf Fantasy Shops about druidism, Tolkien and other fantasy related subjects. In 2001 Stefan decided to combine a few things into a totally new and unique festival concept that later would be copied many times: the Elf Fantasy fair. Starting in the historical theme parc Archeon (NL) it moved the year after to the largest castle in the Netherlands: castle de Haar. With the exception of 2004 (castle Keukenhof, Lisse) it remained in castle de Haar, Haarzuilens since then. In 2009 a second version of the Elf Fantasy Fair started 400 meters from the border with Germany in the small village Arcen in Northern Limburg. In January 2013 the name Elf Fantasy Fair™ was replaced by the name Elfia™. The spring edition of Elfia is also called the 'Light Edition', while the autumn edition is characterized as the 'dark edition'.

 

In the 3rd part of Golem & The Mechanical Man of the Future focused on Golem and Czech animation.

 

The old school and the new school of Czech animation is represented in this photo.

 

In the back you can see stills from the Golem animation created by Old Prague Legends, that will be screened at EXPO 2015 in Milan, and in the front, film screenwriter and writer, Prof. MgA. Edgar Dutka, who is the script-writer of Jiri Barta's Golem animation.

 

Dutka finished FAMU in Prague (Department of Screenwriting and Dramaturgy) in 1971 and spent next 17 years in animation studios (Jiri Trnka and Brothers in Trick) as a dramaturg, screenwriter and director.

 

He realised as a writer or co-writer 44 animated films. His films got many awards on International Film Festivals as End of the Cube Prix of jury in Cannes (1980) and nomination of the British Academy Award, The Club of Disposed (1989) in Bilbao or The incredible Dream for UNO etc.

 

He had cooperated as a writer with many directors-animators and specially with his colleque and friend Jiri Barta to these days.

 

From 1992 he went back to FAMU as a teacher, and as a professor of History of animation he wrote two textbooks - The Animated Film and Minimum from the history of the Czech animation and Minimum from the history of the World animation.

Dutch postcard by Art Unlimited, Amsterdam, no. B 1198. Photo: Erwin Olaf, 1987. Caption: Theo & Thea 'Fashion'.

 

Arjan Ederveen (1956) is a Dutch actor, comedian, TV scriptwriter and TV director. He participated in the classical satirical Dutch TV series Theo en Thea / Theo and Thea (1985-1989), Kreatief met Kurk / Creative with Cork (1993-1994) and 30 minuten / 30 Minutes (1995-1997). He also played in the stage musicals 'Hairspray' and 'Lang en Gelukkig' (Happily Ever After) and appeared in several films.

 

Arjan Ederveen Janssen was born in 1956 in Hilversum, The Netherlands. His mother, Greetje van Schaik, was an actress, who appeared in the popular radio show De bonte dinsdagavondtrein. He had two brothers, who both died young, respectively of AIDS and a rare blood disease. Ederveen did his high school education at Comenius College in Hilversum. During a school project, he made his first film, Appel aan de Stok: De Musical (1971). With this film, he won a local film competition. Ederveen studied at the Academie voor Kleinkunst in Amsterdam where he met fellow student Kees Prins. After graduating, they started their career together as The Duos. Between 1981 and 1984, they created four theatre performances and the television programme De Duo's doen alsof / The Duos are pretending. Ederveen made his screen debut in the German Werktheater production Waldeslust / Bosch en Lucht (Friedrich Schaller, 1981) with Joop Admiraal and Kees Prins. He also appeared in two Dutch films, the Virginia Woolf adaptation Golven / Waves (Annette Apon, 1981) and another Werktheater production, Een zwoele zomeravond / A Hot Summer Night (Frans Weisz, Shireen Strooker, 1982) with Gerard Thoolen. He also played a bellboy in the American comedy Still Smokin' (Tommy Chong, 1983) in which Cheech and Chong fly to the marijuana capital of the world, Amsterdam. Together with Tosca Niterink, Ederveen formed a new TV duo Theo & Thea (Robert Wiering, Pieter Kramer, 1985-1989). The characters became hugely famous in The Netherlands and a whole generation remembers the duo with the big front teeth. Although Theo & Thea was a children's programme, it became popular among students. Incidentally, the series was not always popular with parents. The programme was criticised for its adult themes, such as drugs, sexual harassment and prostitution. Theo and Thea returned in the film Theo en Thea en de Ontmaskering van het Tenenkaasimperium / Theo and Thea and the Unmasking of the Toe Cheese Empire (Pieter Kramer, 1989) with Adèle Bloemendaal and Marco Bakker. Other features in which Ederveen appeared were Everybody Wants to Help Ernest (Alejandro Agresti, 1991) and Filmpje! (Paul Ruven, 1995) starring Paul de Leeuw. In the 1990s Ederveen made the mockumentary TV series Kreatief met Kurk / Creative with Cork (Pieter Kramer, 1993-1994), 30 minuten / 30 Minutes (Pieter Kramer, 1995-1997) and Borreltijd / Schnaps Time (Pieter Kramer, 1996), in which he also played recurring roles. All his shows were critically praised. Especially 30 minuten, a stylistic satire of documentaries and reality television, earned Ederveen and director Pieter Kramer several awards, including the Zilveren Nipkowschijf (Silver Nipkow Disk) and a Gouden Kalf (Golden Calf). The title refers to its half-hour length and was inspired by the BBC documentary series Sixty Minutes. The series is filmed in a mockumentary style with tragicomic undertones.

 

In 2001, Arjan Ederveen starred in a spin-off of 30 minuten, 25 minuten / 25 Minutes (Pieter Kramer, 2001), which was more absurd in its mockumentary style. In 2004, he wrote and acted in the VPRO television series De Troubabroers (Pieter Kramer, 2004), together with Alex Klaasen. The following year, he made the garden show Wroeten / Rooting (Lernert Engelberts, 2005). Ederveen also participated in several children's films, including as the choreographer in the musical Ja zuster, nee zuster / Yes Nurse! No Nurse! (Pieter Kramer, 2002) starring Loes Luca, chemist Geelman in Pietje Bell / Peter Bell (Maria Peters, 2002), Mr. Pen and his brother, a hermit, in Pluk van de Petteflet / Puffin's Pluck (Ben Sombogaart, Pieter van Rijn, 2004) and Professor Lupardi in Kapitein Rob en het Geheim van Professor Lupardi / Captain Rob and the secret of Professor Lupardi (Hans Pos, 2007) with Thijs Römer en Katja Schuurman. In 2010 he was a recurring panel member in the game show Wie van de drie? / To Tell the Truth. Besides his television and film work, Ederveen was also active as a stage actor. He performed the role of Cinderella's stepmother in the Ro Theater's show 'Lang en Gelukkig', which was also filmed as Lang & Gelukkig / Happily Ever After (Pieter Kramer, 2010). He played Fabio, the right-hand man of the Greek goddess Hera, in 'Hera, de goddelijke musical' (Hera, the Divine Musical) (2008-2009). In 2009, he starred with Jack Wouterse at the Ro Theatre in the play 'Tocht' (Journey), an Easter play he wrote himself. In the 2009/2010 season, he performed the role of Edna Turnblad in the musical 'Hairspray'. In the 2010/2011 season, he wrote and starred in the Ro Theatre's play 'Moord in de Kerststal' (Murder in the Nativity Scene). In 2018, he played the role of Pontius Pilate in The Passion (David Grifhorst, 2018). As a voice actor, Ederveen provided the voice of Rex in the Dutch version of Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995) and the sequels. He also dubbed Gonzo in The Muppets (James Bobin, 2011) and Muppets Most Wanted (James Bobin, 2014) as well as Vlad in Hotel Transylvania 2 (Genndy Tartakovsky, 2015) and Hotel Transylvania 3 (Genndy Tartakovsky, 2018). Ederveen played Doctor Feelgood in My Foolish Heart (Rolf van Eijk, 2018) about the mysterious demise of jazz icon Chet Baker and he was James in the comedy Bon Bini: Judeska in da House (Jonathan Herman, 2020) starring Jandino Asporaat. Last year, Arjan Ederveen appeared in the television show The Masked Singer. He also played the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in Scrooge Live (David Grifhorst, 2024). This year, he appeared in the American film Jimpa (Sophie Hyde, 2025) starring John Lithgow and Olivia Coleman. The film is a celebration of LGBTQI+ culture. Arjan Ederveen is openly gay and has an American husband, Howie.

 

Sources: Theater.nl (Dutch), Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

It all started in 1994. TV scriptwriter Stefan Struik had an interview with a meditating hermit in Baarn (NL) who was complaining about gnomes who disturbed the power network in his house. A month later he ran into trolls in a Norwegian clothing store in the Dutch-Frisian village Dokkum. A year before he got surprised by the amount of one meter high garden gnomes just across the border between Germany and Poland. It all seemed to point into a new direction he would hit a few months later. In December 1994 he opened with his sister a small game and bookstore in Delft (NL), named Elf Fantasy Shop. The games were a golden opportunity. Three years later the duo could open an second store in The Hague.

 

In 1995 Stefan also started a new adventure with a free magazine called Elf Fantasy Magazine. In 2001 the magazine became professionalized and despite it never realised any profits it existed until 2009.

 

Stefan and his sister already organised lectures in the Elf Fantasy Shops about druidism, Tolkien and other fantasy related subjects. In 2001 Stefan decided to combine a few things into a totally new and unique festival concept that later would be copied many times: the Elf Fantasy fair. Starting in the historical theme parc Archeon (NL) it moved the year after to the largest castle in the Netherlands: castle de Haar. With the exception of 2004 (castle Keukenhof, Lisse) it remained in castle de Haar, Haarzuilens since then. In 2009 a second version of the Elf Fantasy Fair started 400 meters from the border with Germany in the small village Arcen in Northern Limburg. In January 2013 the name Elf Fantasy Fair™ was replaced by the name Elfia™. The spring edition of Elfia is also called the 'Light Edition', while the autumn edition is characterized as the 'dark edition'.

 

British postcard by Karizzma Enterprises in the series Coronation Street Hall of Fame, ref K K6. Photo: Granada Promotions, 1986.

 

Coronation Street (1960-) is the world's longest-running TV soap with more than 8,000 episodes. The British series focuses on the everyday lives of working class people in Greater Manchester, England. 'Corrie' is now a significant part of British culture and has been one of the most financially lucrative programmes on commercial television in the U.K., underpinning the success of Granada Television and ITV.

 

The programme centres on Coronation Street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on Salford, its terraced houses, corner shop, newsagents, textile factory and The Rovers Return pub. The fictional street was built in the early 1900s and named in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII. At the centre of many early stories, there was Ena Sharples (Violet Carson), caretaker of the Glad Tidings Mission Hall, and her friends: timid Minnie Caldwell (Margot Bryant), and bespectacled Martha Longhurst (Lynne Carol). The trio were likened to the Greek chorus, and the three witches in William Shakespeare's Macbeth, as they would sit in the snug bar of the Rovers Return, passing judgement over family, neighbours and frequently each other. Other central characters during the 1960s were Elsie Tanner played by Patricia Phoenix and Annie Walker played by Doris Speed. y remained with the show for 20 years and like Ena Sharples became archetypes of British soap opera.

 

Coronation Street was devised in 1960 by scriptwriter Tony Warren at Granada Television in Manchester. Warren's initial kitchen sink drama proposal was rejected by the station's founder Sidney Bernstein, but he was persuaded by producer Harry Elton to produce the programme for thirteen pilot episodes. The first episode was aired on 9 December 1960. Between 9 December 1960 and 3 March 1961, Coronation Street was broadcast twice weekly, on Wednesday and Friday. In March 1961, Coronation Street reached No.1 in the television ratings and remained there for the rest of the year. 15 million viewers tuned into Corrie at the end of 1961, and by 1964 the programme had over 20 million regular viewers. Coronation Street's creator, Tony Warren continued to write for the programme intermittently until 1976.

 

Coronation Streetis made by Granada Television at MediaCity near Manchester and shown in all ITV regions, as well as internationally. On 17 September 2010, it became the world's longest-running TV soap opera in production. Coronation Street is noted for its depiction of a down-to-earth working class community combined with light-hearted humour, and strong characters. After appearing in 288 episodes, Violet Carson and her character Ena Sharples left the series in 1980. William Roache, who plays Kenneth Barlow, is the only remaining member of the original cast,Coronation Street. This currently makes him the longest-serving actor in Coronation Street , as well as in British and global soap history. Emily Bishop (Eileen Derbyshire) has remained in the series since first appearing in early 1961, when the show was just weeks old. Helen Worth as Gail Platt, who appears since 1974 in the series, has played in the most episodes: 1.780, according to IMDb. Today, the programme still rates as one of the most watched programmes on UK television for every day it is aired. Coronation Street is also shown in various countries worldwide. In Australia it was in 1966 more popular than in the UK. Other countries which aired - or still air - Coronation Street are Canada, Ireland, United Arab Emirates and the Netherlands, where it was broadcasted by the Vara between 1967 and 1974. I dearly remember watching the series as a kid with the whole family.

 

Sources: Wikipedia (English and Dutch) and IMDb.

How does it feel to be portraying legendary Hollywood Icon Marilyn Monroe when it's raining on Hollywood Blvd and ruining your makeup, your expensive Marilyn wig and strapless, low-cut dress and high heels ? How do you keep your poise and flash that gorgeous smile with a runny nose and cold toes, all for a Dollar tip, day after day ? You just do it, like Melissa J. Weiss the Indie Scriptwriter, Actress, Producer, Director, Dancer and Choreographer among other things, does.

 

Check out her YouTube page : www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuqpeXw0MNc

 

My Blog about this encounter :

virtualpoona.blogspot.com/2009/12/celluloid-heroes-revisi...

He also lived in Walthamstow(See comment below)

Famous for writing Goodbye Mr Chips and Lost Horizon in this house. James Hilton was born in Leigh, Lancs and died in California. Hilton brought us the utopian concept of Shangri-La, a fictional place in Lost Horizon ; allso a popular name for a house (not this one)

The plaque resides on a pleasant and very early George V house

It all started in 1994. TV scriptwriter Stefan Struik had an interview with a meditating hermit in Baarn (NL) who was complaining about gnomes who disturbed the power network in his house. A month later he ran into trolls in a Norwegian clothing store in the Dutch-Frisian village Dokkum. A year before he got surprised by the amount of one meter high garden gnomes just across the border between Germany and Poland. It all seemed to point into a new direction he would hit a few months later. In December 1994 he opened with his sister a small game and bookstore in Delft (NL), named Elf Fantasy Shop. The games were a golden opportunity. Three years later the duo could open an second store in The Hague.

 

In 1995 Stefan also started a new adventure with a free magazine called Elf Fantasy Magazine. In 2001 the magazine became professionalized and despite it never realised any profits it existed until 2009.

 

Stefan and his sister already organised lectures in the Elf Fantasy Shops about druidism, Tolkien and other fantasy related subjects. In 2001 Stefan decided to combine a few things into a totally new and unique festival concept that later would be copied many times: the Elf Fantasy fair. Starting in the historical theme parc Archeon (NL) it moved the year after to the largest castle in the Netherlands: castle de Haar. With the exception of 2004 (castle Keukenhof, Lisse) it remained in castle de Haar, Haarzuilens since then. In 2009 a second version of the Elf Fantasy Fair started 400 meters from the border with Germany in the small village Arcen in Northern Limburg. In January 2013 the name Elf Fantasy Fair™ was replaced by the name Elfia™. The spring edition of Elfia is also called the 'Light Edition', while the autumn edition is characterized as the 'dark edition'.

 

I was born in 1989 in Estonia.

 

I have Estonian citizenship but a Danish father. I have lived in different countries (Estonia, Russia, Sweden and Denmark) because my father was a diplomat.

I became an author as a result of the passing of my mother who died of cancer in 2006 after seven years of illness.

 

Who am I?

 

I believe I am a friendly guy. I would personally say that I have no humor. Though I think people around me would say that is debatable. I have a passion for learning and trying out new things. People might find me punctual at times. I have a tendency to appear at least one hour before the start of the meeting.

 

It started from these extra classes of French I took while I visited my father and my little brother in Brussels (Saint Job). Apparently from Saint Job there were only two trains I could pick either to come two hours before or then 5 minutes late. I picked the first alternative.

 

About True Story of Dracula:

 

True Story of Dracula is a horror book. It is written as if Dracula had existed. So it starts with Vlad III, from his early childhood, and tries to give him a character one can relate to, until the moment he was killed and how he was transformed into Dracula. How Dracula was and acted among his fellow humans. Not to forget how he managed to stay hidden for all those years.

 

Then we begin with the main plot of the book, a class from California traveling to Romania on a research trip. As they are to discover it turns from a research trip to a getaway trip.