Cinema of Wales
Encyclopedia
The Cinema of Wales comprises the art of film and creative movies made in Wales
or by Welsh
filmmakers abroad. Welsh cinema began in the late-19th century, led by Welsh-based director William Haggar. Wales continued to produce film of varying quality throughout the 20th century, in both the Welsh and English language, though indigenous production was curtailed through a lack of infrastructure and finance, which prevented the growth of the industry nationally. Despite this, Wales has been represented in all fields of the film making process, producing actors and directors of note.
has a long film making history, with the first films to be shot in Wales happening in 1896, just a year after the development of the Lumières'
cinematographe. The first film was recorded by American Birt Acres
featuring a royal visit to Cardiff
by the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII
. The film was later shown at the Great Fine Art, Industrial and Maritime Exhibition in Cardiff's Cathays Park
in June 1896. Indigenous film production began in 1898, when Rhyl
based Arthur Cheetham
began recording silent 'short' films of local events. His first film was shown in January 1898 of children playing on Rhyl sands.
The first Wales based film-maker of enduring stature was William Haggar
, who made over 30 fiction films between 1901 and 1908. Haggar's work received a world wide audience mainly through the Gaumont
and Urban
companies. Haggar's most notable film was Desperate Poaching Affray
(1903) which is recognised for its violence, iconoclasm and progressive editing. The film, along with Frank Mottorshaw's Daring Daylight Burglary and Edwin Stanton Porter's The Great Train Robbery, has in the early Twenty-first century, been credited with influencing the chase sub-genre of American films.
Other extant pre-Great War films to be shot in Wales were made by film-makers from outside the country. These included the British Biograph Company's film Conway Castle (1898) and Charles Urban Company's Wales, England: Land of Castles and Waterfalls (1907). The 1906 British Home Championship
encounter between Wales and Ireland at Wrexham was filmed by Blackburn firm Mitchell and Keynon, and is now the oldest surviving film of an international football match. While the oldest footage of any football match is the 1898 film by Arthur Cheetham, Blackburn Rovers v West Bromwich Albion.
During the first few decades of Welsh cinema Wales was at the height of an industrial revolution, but there is little sense of the industrial landscape or life captured in the early silent movies taken within the country. Visiting companies, such as Edison
and British and Colonial
tended to favour filming in rural Wales.
, which starred Florence Turner
. Henry Edwards
who directed A Welsh Singer, also created the 1930 film Aylwin, from the novel by Theodore Watts-Dunton, drawing into the world of gypsies and a mythical, mystical Wales. The 1930s saw the first Welsh language
film, Y Chwarelwr directed by Ifan ab Owen Edwards
in 1935. The decade also saw two important agitprop
documentaries, Today We Live (1937) set among the unemployed miners of the village of Pentre
in the Rhondda Valleys
, and Donald Alexander
's Eastern Valley (1937). The outbreak of World War II saw the backdrop of a mining valley in Wales being used as the setting for a war propaganda film, The Silent Village
(1943). Designed as a tribute to the mining community of Lidice
, Czechoslovakia, which had suffered from Nazi atrocities, The Silent Village transpose the events to a Wales; and was also used to draw analogies with the oppression of the Welsh language.
The coming of the sound era
had little impact on Welsh cinema, though 1938's The Citadel
an adaptation of A. J. Cronin
's 1937 novel
brought Wales to a large audience; though King Vidor
's interpretation failed to express the novel's political message. The first Hollywood 'talkie' to be set in Wales was James Whale's The Old Dark House
. The best known films connected to Wales during this period failed to harness Welsh talents, The Proud Valley
(1940) and How Green Was My Valley
(1940) were neither directed or adapted for the screen by Welsh people. John Ford
's How Green Was My Valley is notable for starring just one Welsh actor, Rhys Williams
, and for being shot in the United States. Although John Ford's view of Wales was based on a mythical and romantic view of the industrialised valleys, Jill Cragie's Blue Scar (1949), part financed by the National Coal Board
, raised serious and radical questions about the nationalisation of the coal industry and has striking location photography around south Wales. Another release from 1949 to make an important cultural statement was Emlyn Williams
' The Last Days of Dolwyn
, the plot of which centred around the flooding of a Welsh village to create a reservoir; a subject that became extremely controversial in Wales in the 1960s.
The 1950s and 1960s saw the output of two of the country's best documentary makers. Jack Howells and John Ormond
dealt primarily with Welsh people and subjects. Howells is best known for his impressionistic, lyrical documentaries that included Nye! (1965) and Dylan Thomas
(1962). Dylan Thomas is the only Welsh film to have won an Oscar (for best short documentary
), it features Richard Burton as narrator, visiting the haunts of Dylan Thomas
. Ormond, a poet foremost, is remembered for his sensitive portrayals of writers and authors, and for documentaries concerned with the working class and with refugees, in particular Borrowed Pastures (1960) which follows two Polish ex-soldiers struggling to get by on a Carmarthenshire
smallholding.
The period directly following the end of the Second World War saw political and social commentary disappear from Welsh cinema. The first few decades after the war saw few notable Welsh films; stand out exceptions included Tiger Bay
(1959) and Only Two Can Play
(1962). The main problems facing Welsh cinema during this period were a lack of a film production infrastructure, Welsh producers and finance. The fact that Wales was unable to produce films from within its own borders resulted in the stereotyping and common preconceptions of Welsh life formed by 'outside' film-makers. One of the few beacons of light for the industry came in the late 1970s with the output of left wing producer and director Karl Francis
; whose controversial portrayal of contemporary life in the south Wales valleys was typified by his 1976 film Above us the Earth. Welsh language films were few, notably the films produced in the 1970s by the Bwrdd Ffilmiau Cymraeg (Welsh Film Board).
, a Welsh language television channel, which began producing and funding longer dramas and films in the Welsh and English language. Initial output was poor, but after reassessing its responsibilities in 1986, the company produced films of note, including Boy Soldier (1986) and Rhosyn a Rhith (1986) the first film in the Welsh language to gain a London West End cinema release. Although the production of Welsh features from S4C aided the emergence of talented Welsh film-makers, such as Endaf Emlyn
, Marc Evans
and Stephen Bayly
. S4C's 1995 policy, to produce up to two feature films a year, to be released to cinemas before television transmission allowed Welsh film-makers new opportunities. Yet the reluctance of London-based distributors to handle Welsh language films make it difficult for Welsh films to reach a wider audience.
The early 1990s began with the release of Welsh language film Hedd Wyn
. It won the Royal Television Society
Best Drama award and became the first Welsh film to gain a nomination in the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
. Despite this it failed to gain a British distributor. The 1990s also saw two important films from Endaf Emlyn, Un Nos Ola Leuad (1991) is seen as one of the finest Welsh films made, while his Gadael Lenin (1993) was voted by viewers at the 1993 London Film Festival as the most popular British film.
The later 1990s saw three English language films that found a home in mainstream British cinema. The first of the three was Marc Evans' House of America which drew comparisons to the realism of Karl Francis' work. Then in 1998, Kevin Allen
produced Twin Town
, a bawdy comedy satirising the older cultural traditions of Wales. This though was surpassed at the box office by Justin Kerrigan's Human Traffic
(1999), a stylised comedy focusing on the club and drug culture of Cardiff. 2000 saw the release of Paul Morrison's
Solomon & Gaenor
the second film to be nominated for the foreign language Academy Award.
Films of note in the early twenty-first century set in Wales include comedies House!
(2000) and Very Annie Mary
(2000), and horror films The Dark
(2005) and Evil Aliens
(2006). In 2009 a biopic of the early relationship between Welsh poet Dylan Thomas
and his wife Caitlin Macnamara was released entitled The Edge of Love
.
Despite an improvement in film production in Wales, finance is still an issue with very few being created without external funding. House of America took its funding from six different sources while Multinationals funded both Twin Town (PolyGram
) and The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain
(Miramax
).
in Wales. The one notable exception being Sid Griffiths' Jerry the Tyke (1925-1927), a mischievous dog who was used for Pathé cinema news magazines. Since 1982, with S4C producing the popular children's animation SuperTed
made by Siriol Productions
. Siriol eventually branched into making feature length animations, including an adaptation of Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood
(1992) and a joint venture with Hungarian company PannóniaFilm
, The Princess and the Goblin
(1992).
The opportunities afforded by S4C's animation unit encouraged an influx of talented British artists into Wales. The best known of this group of animators was Joanna Quinn
, who gained an Oscar nomination in 1998
for Famous Fred, and produced one of the segments of The Canterbury Tales, which was Oscar nominated the year after
.
Welsh-born directors who have gained international recognition include Richard Marquand
, (Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
), Peter Greenaway
(Drowning by Numbers
) and Terry Jones
(Erik the Viking
). Two of the more notable directors from Wales who have retained a strong connection with the culture of Wales are Karl Francis, who for two decades was the most powerful, distinctive and combatative voice in Welsh film-making; and Stephen Weeks whose commercial features look back to a medieval or imperialist past, or a misty Celtic world. Francis' work is embedded in a realistic exploration of Wales, its language and identity, in films such as Milwr Bychan (Boy Soldier) and The Mouse and the Women. Weeks came to prominence after directing I, Monster
, an adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Weeks would later film two versions of the Arthurian myth of Gawain and the Green Knight. First as Gawain and the Green Knight
(1973) featuring Murray Head
in the lead role and again as Sword of the Valiant in 1984.
Later Welsh directors, such as Sara Sugarman
and Marc Evans made films set in Wales.
, who came to prominence through cinema after starring in The Lodger
(1927) and Downhill
(1927); Gareth Hughes
, often cast as a youthful charmer, gained excellent notices for the now-lost Sentimental Tommy (1921) and Lyn Harding
, whose stature and presence made him a sought after villain playing Moriarty in several early Sherlock Holmes films.
The 1940s saw Rhondda
's Donald Houston
break through in his first two features The Blue Lagoon
(1949) and A Run for Your Money
(1949). In 1945 Ray Milland
became the first Welsh actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor
, for his role as an alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend.
The most significant period for Welsh actors came during the 1950s and 1960s. A new wave of realism entered British acting, and at the forefront came Welsh actors Richard Burton
, Stanley Baker
and Rachel Roberts
. The period also saw Welsh character actor's such as Hugh Griffith
, who won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role in the 1959 version of Ben Hur
.
The most distinctive Welsh actor of the 1990s through to the 2000s was Anthony Hopkins
. Hopkins has appeared in film since the 1960s, starring in Hollywood costume dramas such as The Lion in Winter
. Starring in films as diverse as Richard Attenborough
's Magic and David Lynch
's The Elephant Man
, Hopkins became a Hollywood star after his Academy Award winning performance as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (1992). Hopkins continued to impress throughout the 1990s with critically acclaimed performances in Shadowlands
and Remains of the Day.
The 1990s produced an abrasive group of Welsh actors, including Rhys Ifans
and Matthew Rhys
. The 1990s also saw the success of Catherine Zeta-Jones
, who became one of Hollywood's highest paid stars, appearing alongside Antonio Banderas
and Anthony Hopkins in The Mask of Zorro
and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
for Chicago
. The 2000s are most notable for the emergence of Ioan Gruffudd
, who took the lead role in 2006 historical drama Amazing Grace
.
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
or by Welsh
Welsh people
The Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language.John Davies argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman departure from Britain, although Brythonic Celtic languages seem to have...
filmmakers abroad. Welsh cinema began in the late-19th century, led by Welsh-based director William Haggar. Wales continued to produce film of varying quality throughout the 20th century, in both the Welsh and English language, though indigenous production was curtailed through a lack of infrastructure and finance, which prevented the growth of the industry nationally. Despite this, Wales has been represented in all fields of the film making process, producing actors and directors of note.
Origins and early history
WalesWales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
has a long film making history, with the first films to be shot in Wales happening in 1896, just a year after the development of the Lumières'
Auguste and Louis Lumière
The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas and Louis Jean , were among the earliest filmmakers in history...
cinematographe. The first film was recorded by American Birt Acres
Birt Acres
Birt Acres was a photographer and film pioneer.Born in Richmond, Virginia to English parents, he invented the first British 35 mm moving picture camera, the first daylight loading home movie camera and projector, Birtac, was the first travelling newsreel reporter in international film history and...
featuring a royal visit to Cardiff
Cardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
by the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII
Edward VII of the United Kingdom
Edward VII was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910...
. The film was later shown at the Great Fine Art, Industrial and Maritime Exhibition in Cardiff's Cathays Park
Cathays Park
In addition to the large lawn in front of the City Hall, Cathays Park includes three formal gardens. All of the spaces are within conservation areas and many of the surrounding buildings are listed. The open spaces are very important to the image of the city. Several important buildings overlook...
in June 1896. Indigenous film production began in 1898, when Rhyl
Rhyl
Rhyl is a seaside resort town and community situated on the north east coast of Wales, in the county of Denbighshire , at the mouth of the River Clwyd . To the west is the suburb of Kinmel Bay, with the resort of Towyn further west, Prestatyn to the east and Rhuddlan to the south...
based Arthur Cheetham
Arthur Cheetham
Arthur Cheetham was an English-born film-maker who became the first of his profession to be based in Wales. His legacy is a collection of eight surviving films, including the oldest extant British football 'short' from 1898...
began recording silent 'short' films of local events. His first film was shown in January 1898 of children playing on Rhyl sands.
The first Wales based film-maker of enduring stature was William Haggar
William Haggar
William Haggar was a British pioneer of the cinema industry. Beginning his career as a travelling entertainer, Haggar, whose large family formed his theatre company, later bought a Bioscope show and earned his money in the fairgrounds of south Wales...
, who made over 30 fiction films between 1901 and 1908. Haggar's work received a world wide audience mainly through the Gaumont
Gaumont Film Company
Gaumont Film Company is a French film production company founded in 1895 by the engineer-turned-inventor, Léon Gaumont . Gaumont is the oldest continously operating film company in the world....
and Urban
Charles Urban Trading Company
The Charles Urban Trading Company was formed in 1903 by the Anglo-American film producer Charles Urban. It specialised in travel, educational and scientific film. It made its name with coverage of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 from Joseph Rosenthal and George Rogers...
companies. Haggar's most notable film was Desperate Poaching Affray
Desperate Poaching Affray
Desperate Poaching Affray is a 1903 British chase film by William Haggar. Three minutes long, the film is recognised as an early influence on narrative drama in American film, especially in chase genre. The film used a number of innovative techniques including on location shooting, panning shots...
(1903) which is recognised for its violence, iconoclasm and progressive editing. The film, along with Frank Mottorshaw's Daring Daylight Burglary and Edwin Stanton Porter's The Great Train Robbery, has in the early Twenty-first century, been credited with influencing the chase sub-genre of American films.
Other extant pre-Great War films to be shot in Wales were made by film-makers from outside the country. These included the British Biograph Company's film Conway Castle (1898) and Charles Urban Company's Wales, England: Land of Castles and Waterfalls (1907). The 1906 British Home Championship
1906 British Home Championship
The 1906 British Home Championship was the 22nd edition of the annual international football tournament played between the British Home Nations. The trophy was shared between the two sides which regularly dominated the competition, England and Scotland who each gained four points.England and...
encounter between Wales and Ireland at Wrexham was filmed by Blackburn firm Mitchell and Keynon, and is now the oldest surviving film of an international football match. While the oldest footage of any football match is the 1898 film by Arthur Cheetham, Blackburn Rovers v West Bromwich Albion.
During the first few decades of Welsh cinema Wales was at the height of an industrial revolution, but there is little sense of the industrial landscape or life captured in the early silent movies taken within the country. Visiting companies, such as Edison
Edison Studios
Edison Studios was an American motion picture production company owned by the Edison Company of inventor Thomas Edison. The studio made close to 1,200 films as the Edison Manufacturing Company and Thomas A. Edison, Inc. until the studio's closing in 1918...
and British and Colonial
British and Colonial Films
British and Colonial Films was a British company making predominantly silent films, which operated in London between 1908 and 1924. It was also known by the abbreviation B & C....
tended to favour filming in rural Wales.
1914 to 1980
Much of the cinema of Wales in the later 1910s and 1920s has been lost. In 1920 nine films were shot in Wales, all now lost. One of the most notable and celebrated of the films from this period is A Welsh Singer (1915), adapted from a work by Welsh writer Allen RaineAllen Raine
Allen Raine was the pseudonym of the Welsh novelist Anne Adalisa Beynon Puddicombe .She was born Anne Adalisa Evans in Newcastle Emlyn, Carmarthenshire, the daughter of a lawyer Benjamin and Letitia Grace Evans...
, which starred Florence Turner
Florence Turner
Florence Turner was an American actress, who became known as the "Vitagraph Girl" in early silent films.Born in New York City, she was pushed into appearing on the stage at age three by her ambitious mother...
. Henry Edwards
Henry Edwards (actor)
Henry Edwards was an English actor and film director. He appeared in 81 films between 1915 and 1952. He also directed 67 films between 1915 and 1937...
who directed A Welsh Singer, also created the 1930 film Aylwin, from the novel by Theodore Watts-Dunton, drawing into the world of gypsies and a mythical, mystical Wales. The 1930s saw the first Welsh language
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
film, Y Chwarelwr directed by Ifan ab Owen Edwards
Ifan ab Owen Edwards
Sir Ifan ab Owen Edwards , was a Welsh academic, writer and film-maker, best known as the founder of Urdd Gobaith Cymru, the Welsh League of Youth....
in 1935. The decade also saw two important agitprop
Agitprop
Agitprop is derived from agitation and propaganda, and describes stage plays, pamphlets, motion pictures and other art forms with an explicitly political message....
documentaries, Today We Live (1937) set among the unemployed miners of the village of Pentre
Pentre
Pentre is a village and community, near Treorchy in Rhondda valley, falling within the county borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales. The village's name is taken from the Welsh word Pentref, which translates as homestead, though Pentre is named after a large farm that dominated the area before the...
in the Rhondda Valleys
Rhondda
Rhondda , or the Rhondda Valley , is a former coal mining valley in Wales, formerly a local government district, consisting of 16 communities built around the River Rhondda. The valley is made up of two valleys, the larger Rhondda Fawr valley and the smaller Rhondda Fach valley...
, and Donald Alexander
Donald Alexander
Donald Crichton Alexander was a tax lawyer and Nixon administration official.Alexander was appointed Commissioner of Internal Revenue by President Richard Nixon in May 1973, and was replaced in February 1977, early in the Jimmy Carter administration.Alexander resisted attempts by Nixon to use the...
's Eastern Valley (1937). The outbreak of World War II saw the backdrop of a mining valley in Wales being used as the setting for a war propaganda film, The Silent Village
The Silent Village
The Silent Village is a 1943 British propaganda short film in the form of a drama documentary, made by the Crown Film Unit and directed by Humphrey Jennings...
(1943). Designed as a tribute to the mining community of Lidice
Lidice
Lidice is a village in the Czech Republic just northwest of Prague. It is built on the site of a previous village of the same name which, as part of the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, was on orders from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, completely destroyed by German forces in reprisal...
, Czechoslovakia, which had suffered from Nazi atrocities, The Silent Village transpose the events to a Wales; and was also used to draw analogies with the oppression of the Welsh language.
The coming of the sound era
Sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
had little impact on Welsh cinema, though 1938's The Citadel
The Citadel (film)
The Citadel is a 1938 film based on the novel of the same name by A. J. Cronin, first published in 1937. The film was directed by King Vidor and produced by Victor Saville.-Plot:...
an adaptation of A. J. Cronin
A. J. Cronin
Archibald Joseph Cronin was a Scottish physician and novelist. His best-known works are Hatter's Castle, The Stars Look Down, The Citadel, The Keys of the Kingdom and The Green Years, all of which were adapted to film. He also created the Dr...
's 1937 novel
The Citadel (novel)
The Citadel is a novel by A. J. Cronin, first published in 1937, which was groundbreaking with its treatment of the contentious theme of medical ethics. It is credited with laying the foundation in Great Britain for the introduction of the NHS a decade later...
brought Wales to a large audience; though King Vidor
King Vidor
King Wallis Vidor was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter whose career spanned nearly seven decades...
's interpretation failed to express the novel's political message. The first Hollywood 'talkie' to be set in Wales was James Whale's The Old Dark House
The Old Dark House
The Old Dark House is an American comedy horror film directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff, produced just one year after their success with Frankenstein, also released by Universal Studios.-Background:...
. The best known films connected to Wales during this period failed to harness Welsh talents, The Proud Valley
The Proud Valley
The Proud Valley is a 1940 Ealing Studios film starring the African-American actor Paul Robeson. Filmed on location in the South Wales coalfield the heart of the main coal mining region of Wales, the film tells the story of a Black American miner and singer who gets a job in a mine and joins a male...
(1940) and How Green Was My Valley
How Green Was My Valley (film)
How Green Was My Valley is a 1941 drama film directed by John Ford. The film, based on the 1939 Richard Llewellyn novel, was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and written by Philip Dunne. The film stars Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Anna Lee, Donald Crisp, and Roddy McDowall...
(1940) were neither directed or adapted for the screen by Welsh people. John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
's How Green Was My Valley is notable for starring just one Welsh actor, Rhys Williams
Rhys Williams (actor)
Rhys Williams was a Welsh character actor in movies and television, whose career spanned several decades.He made his film debut in How Green Was My Valley . This movie takes place in rural Wales with a large cast of Welsh characters, but was actually filmed in Hollywood with Canadian, American,...
, and for being shot in the United States. Although John Ford's view of Wales was based on a mythical and romantic view of the industrialised valleys, Jill Cragie's Blue Scar (1949), part financed by the National Coal Board
National Coal Board
The National Coal Board was the statutory corporation created to run the nationalised coal mining industry in the United Kingdom. Set up under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, it took over the mines on "vesting day", 1 January 1947...
, raised serious and radical questions about the nationalisation of the coal industry and has striking location photography around south Wales. Another release from 1949 to make an important cultural statement was Emlyn Williams
Emlyn Williams
George Emlyn Williams, CBE , known as Emlyn Williams, was a Welsh dramatist and actor.-Biography:He was born into a Welsh-speaking, working class family in Mostyn, Flintshire....
' The Last Days of Dolwyn
The Last Days of Dolwyn
The Last Days of Dolwyn is a 1949 British drama film directed by Russell Lloyd and Emlyn Williams and starring Edith Evans, Richard Burton and Anthony James...
, the plot of which centred around the flooding of a Welsh village to create a reservoir; a subject that became extremely controversial in Wales in the 1960s.
The 1950s and 1960s saw the output of two of the country's best documentary makers. Jack Howells and John Ormond
John Ormond
John Ormond , was a Welsh poet and filmmaker.Ormond was born in Dunvant, near Swansea, and was educated at Swansea University.He joined the staff of Picture Post in 1945. He returned to Swansea in 1949 and, in 1957, began what was to be a distinguished career with BBC Wales as a director and...
dealt primarily with Welsh people and subjects. Howells is best known for his impressionistic, lyrical documentaries that included Nye! (1965) and Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas (film)
Dylan Thomas is a 1962 short documentary film directed by Jack Howells. It won an Academy Award at the 35th Academy Awards in 1963 for Documentary Short Subject....
(1962). Dylan Thomas is the only Welsh film to have won an Oscar (for best short documentary
35th Academy Awards
The 35th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film for 1962, were held on April 8, 1963 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica, California...
), it features Richard Burton as narrator, visiting the haunts of Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
. Ormond, a poet foremost, is remembered for his sensitive portrayals of writers and authors, and for documentaries concerned with the working class and with refugees, in particular Borrowed Pastures (1960) which follows two Polish ex-soldiers struggling to get by on a Carmarthenshire
Carmarthenshire
Carmarthenshire is a unitary authority in the south west of Wales and one of thirteen historic counties. It is the 3rd largest in Wales. Its three largest towns are Llanelli, Carmarthen and Ammanford...
smallholding.
The period directly following the end of the Second World War saw political and social commentary disappear from Welsh cinema. The first few decades after the war saw few notable Welsh films; stand out exceptions included Tiger Bay
Tiger Bay (film)
Tiger Bay is a 1959 British crime drama film directed by J. Lee Thompson and produced and co-written by John Hawkesworth. It stars John Mills as a police superintendent who investigates a murder, his daughter Hayley Mills, in her first major film role, as a girl who witnesses the murder, and Horst...
(1959) and Only Two Can Play
Only Two Can Play
Only Two Can Play is a 1962 comedy film based on the novel That Uncertain Feeling by Kingsley Amis. Sidney Gilliat directed the film from a screenplay by Bryan Forbes....
(1962). The main problems facing Welsh cinema during this period were a lack of a film production infrastructure, Welsh producers and finance. The fact that Wales was unable to produce films from within its own borders resulted in the stereotyping and common preconceptions of Welsh life formed by 'outside' film-makers. One of the few beacons of light for the industry came in the late 1970s with the output of left wing producer and director Karl Francis
Karl Francis
Karl Francis is a Welsh film and television director, producer and screenwriter, associated with left-wing political causes. His work is inspired by the likes of Chris Marker and Ken Loach and has included output in both the English and Welsh languages.-Biography:Francis was born in Bedwas in...
; whose controversial portrayal of contemporary life in the south Wales valleys was typified by his 1976 film Above us the Earth. Welsh language films were few, notably the films produced in the 1970s by the Bwrdd Ffilmiau Cymraeg (Welsh Film Board).
1980 to present
1982 saw the launch of S4CS4C
S4C , currently branded as S4/C, is a Welsh television channel broadcast from the capital, Cardiff. The first television channel to be aimed specifically at a Welsh-speaking audience, it is the fifth oldest British television channel .The channel - initially broadcast on...
, a Welsh language television channel, which began producing and funding longer dramas and films in the Welsh and English language. Initial output was poor, but after reassessing its responsibilities in 1986, the company produced films of note, including Boy Soldier (1986) and Rhosyn a Rhith (1986) the first film in the Welsh language to gain a London West End cinema release. Although the production of Welsh features from S4C aided the emergence of talented Welsh film-makers, such as Endaf Emlyn
Endaf Emlyn
Endaf Emlyn is a Welsh musician, film and television director.Emlyn was born in Bangor, Wales. He began his television career as scriptwriter and presenter for HTV Wales, but had a simultaneous career as a musician...
, Marc Evans
Marc Evans
Marc Evans is a Welsh-born film director, whose credits include the films House of America, Resurrection Man and My Little Eye.-Biography:Evans was born in 1963 in Carmarthen, Wales...
and Stephen Bayly
Stephen Bayly
Stephen Bayly is an American born film producer and film director. His film Coming Up Roses was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival.-Selected filmography:* Coming Up Roses...
. S4C's 1995 policy, to produce up to two feature films a year, to be released to cinemas before television transmission allowed Welsh film-makers new opportunities. Yet the reluctance of London-based distributors to handle Welsh language films make it difficult for Welsh films to reach a wider audience.
The early 1990s began with the release of Welsh language film Hedd Wyn
Hedd Wyn (film)
Hedd Wyn is a 1992 Welsh anti-war biopic, written by Alan Llwyd and directed by Paul Turner.Based on the life of Ellis Humphrey Evans , killed in the First World War, the cinematography starkly contrasts the lyrical beauty of the poet's native Meirionnydd with the bombed-out horrors of Passchendaele...
. It won the Royal Television Society
Royal Television Society
The Royal Television Society is a British-based educational charity for the discussion, and analysis of television in all its forms, past, present and future. It is the oldest television society in the world...
Best Drama award and became the first Welsh film to gain a nomination in the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the Academy Awards of Merit, popularly known as the Oscars, handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
. Despite this it failed to gain a British distributor. The 1990s also saw two important films from Endaf Emlyn, Un Nos Ola Leuad (1991) is seen as one of the finest Welsh films made, while his Gadael Lenin (1993) was voted by viewers at the 1993 London Film Festival as the most popular British film.
The later 1990s saw three English language films that found a home in mainstream British cinema. The first of the three was Marc Evans' House of America which drew comparisons to the realism of Karl Francis' work. Then in 1998, Kevin Allen
Kevin Allen (actor)
Kevin Allen is a British screenwriter, film director, film producer and actor. He is best known for writing and directing the cult black comedy feature Twin Town set in Swansea . He also directed the films The Big Tease and Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London and hit UK TV series Benidorm...
produced Twin Town
Twin Town
Twin Town is a 1997 revenge comedy film made and set in South West Wales. It was directed by Kevin Allen and had a working title of Hot Dog; a hot dog van features in a number of scenes in the film. It stars real-life brothers Rhys Ifans and Llŷr Ifans and also features Dougray Scott...
, a bawdy comedy satirising the older cultural traditions of Wales. This though was surpassed at the box office by Justin Kerrigan's Human Traffic
Human Traffic
Human Traffic is a British independent film written and directed by Welsh filmmaker Justin Kerrigan. The film explores themes of coming of age, drug and club cultures, as well as relationships. It includes scenes provoking social commentary and the use of archive footage to provide political...
(1999), a stylised comedy focusing on the club and drug culture of Cardiff. 2000 saw the release of Paul Morrison's
Paul Morrison (director)
Paul Morrison is a British film director and screenwriter. He has mainly directed documentaries and drama films. His movie Solomon and Gaenor was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film....
Solomon & Gaenor
Solomon & Gaenor
Solomon & Gaenor is a BAFTA Awarded and Academy nominated Welsh film released in 1999 and directed by Paul Morrison. It was filmed twice, once with principal dialogue in English and again in Welsh.-Plot:...
the second film to be nominated for the foreign language Academy Award.
Films of note in the early twenty-first century set in Wales include comedies House!
House!
House! is a 2000 British comedy film written by Eric Styles and Jason Sutton and directed by Julian Kemp. The film stars Kelly MacDonald, known for independent films such as Trainspotting and mainstream releases such as Nanny McPhee.-Plot:...
(2000) and Very Annie Mary
Very Annie Mary
Very Annie Mary is a 2001 comedy film and musical from the United Kingdom, written and directed by Sara Sugarman and starring Rachel Griffiths and Jonathan Pryce. It is a coming-of-age tale, set in south Wales, about a woman in her 30s who lives with her verbally abusive father...
(2000), and horror films The Dark
The Dark (film)
The Dark is a 2005 horror film, based on the novel Sheep by Simon Maginn.- Plot :While in Wales visiting her husband James , Adele tries to fix her relationship with her obnoxious and volatile pre-teen daughter Sarah...
(2005) and Evil Aliens
Evil Aliens
Evil Aliens , is a British "splatstick" horror-comedy film directed by Jake West, in the tradition of films such as Braindead, House, and Evil Dead....
(2006). In 2009 a biopic of the early relationship between Welsh poet Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
and his wife Caitlin Macnamara was released entitled The Edge of Love
The Edge of Love
The Edge of Love is a 2008 John Maybury film starring Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller, Cillian Murphy and Matthew Rhys from a script by Sharman Macdonald, Knightley's mother...
.
Despite an improvement in film production in Wales, finance is still an issue with very few being created without external funding. House of America took its funding from six different sources while Multinationals funded both Twin Town (PolyGram
PolyGram
PolyGram was the name of the major label recording company started by Philips from as a holding company for its music interests in 1945. In 1999 it was sold to Seagram and merged into Universal Music Group.-Hollandsche Decca Distributie , 1929-1950:...
) and The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain
The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain
The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain is a 1995 film written by Ivor Monger and directed by Christopher Monger. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival....
(Miramax
Miramax Films
Miramax Films is an American entertainment company known for distributing independent and foreign films. For its first 14 years the company was privately owned by its founders, Bob and Harvey Weinstein...
).
Animation
Prior to the formation of S4C in 1982, there was very little work produced in the field of animationAnimation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
in Wales. The one notable exception being Sid Griffiths' Jerry the Tyke (1925-1927), a mischievous dog who was used for Pathé cinema news magazines. Since 1982, with S4C producing the popular children's animation SuperTed
SuperTed
SuperTed is a Welsh teddy bear who has magical super powers. He along with his friend Spotty try to do good. SuperTed was a series of stories created by Mike Young who eventually created a television series based on those stories.-Creation:...
made by Siriol Productions
Siriol Productions
Calon is a Welsh animation Television production based in Cardiff, who primarily produce animation series in Welsh for S4C. The company was formerly known as Siriol Productions.- History :...
. Siriol eventually branched into making feature length animations, including an adaptation of Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood
Under Milk Wood
Under Milk Wood is a 1954 radio drama by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, adapted later as a stage play. A movie version, Under Milk Wood directed by Andrew Sinclair, was released during 1972....
(1992) and a joint venture with Hungarian company PannóniaFilm
PannóniaFilm
Pannonia Film Studio is the largest animation studio in Hungary, based in the capital of Budapest.-History:...
, The Princess and the Goblin
The Princess and the Goblin (film)
The Princess and the Goblin is a 1992 European animated fantasy film directed by József Gémes. It is an adaptation of 1872 novel of the same name by George MacDonald....
(1992).
The opportunities afforded by S4C's animation unit encouraged an influx of talented British artists into Wales. The best known of this group of animators was Joanna Quinn
Joanna Quinn
Joanna Quinn is an English film director and animator. She was born in Birmingham. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Famous Fred in 1998....
, who gained an Oscar nomination in 1998
70th Academy Awards
The 70th Academy Awards were noted for their high ratings and the 11 wins obtained by the Best Picture Titanic. Billy Crystal hosted the ceremony for the sixth time, and received an Emmy award for his performance....
for Famous Fred, and produced one of the segments of The Canterbury Tales, which was Oscar nominated the year after
71st Academy Awards
The 71st Academy Awards ceremony, Sunday, March 21, 1999, was the last to take place at Los Angeles County Music Center, and was Whoopi Goldberg's third time hosting the Awards. It was the first time the ceremony took place on a Sunday....
.
Welsh film directors
Wales has produced film directors of quality throughout its history, though those that have found success have more often needed to leave Wales to gain recognition. Although based in Wales neither Cheetham or Haggar were Welsh born, similar for Sidney Northcote who in 1912 produced a number of short films shot based on Welsh and Cornish myths and tales, including The Pedlar of Penmaenmawr, The Witch of the Welsh Mountains and The Belle of Bettwys-y-Coed.Welsh-born directors who have gained international recognition include Richard Marquand
Richard Marquand
Richard Marquand was a Welsh film director best known for directing the 1983 blockbuster Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi.-Early life:...
, (Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi is a 1983 American epic space opera film directed by Richard Marquand and written by George Lucas and Lawrence Kasdan. It is the third film released in the Star Wars saga, and the sixth in terms of the series' internal chronology...
), Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway, CBE is a British film director. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular...
(Drowning by Numbers
Drowning by Numbers
Drowning by Numbers is a 1988 British film directed by Peter Greenaway. It was entered into the 1988 Cannes Film Festival.-Plot:The film's plot centers on three women — a grandmother, mother and daughter — each named Cissie Colpitts. As the story progresses each woman successively drowns her husband...
) and Terry Jones
Terry Jones
Terence Graham Parry Jones is a Welsh comedian, screenwriter, actor, film director, children's author, popular historian, political commentator, and TV documentary host. He is best known as a member of the Monty Python comedy team....
(Erik the Viking
Erik the Viking
Erik the Viking is a 1989 feature film written and directed by Terry Jones. The film was inspired by Jones's children's book The Saga of Erik the Viking , but the plot is completely different. Jones also appears in the film as King Arnulf....
). Two of the more notable directors from Wales who have retained a strong connection with the culture of Wales are Karl Francis, who for two decades was the most powerful, distinctive and combatative voice in Welsh film-making; and Stephen Weeks whose commercial features look back to a medieval or imperialist past, or a misty Celtic world. Francis' work is embedded in a realistic exploration of Wales, its language and identity, in films such as Milwr Bychan (Boy Soldier) and The Mouse and the Women. Weeks came to prominence after directing I, Monster
I, Monster
I, Monster is a 1971 British horror film directed by Stephen Weeks for Amicus Productions. It is an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with the main characters' names changed to Dr. Charles Marlowe and Mr...
, an adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Weeks would later film two versions of the Arthurian myth of Gawain and the Green Knight. First as Gawain and the Green Knight
Gawain and the Green Knight (1973 film)
Gawain and the Green Knight is a 1973 film directed by Stephen Weeks, and starring Murray Head as Gawain and Nigel Green in his final theatrical film as the Green Knight...
(1973) featuring Murray Head
Murray Head
Murray Seafield Saint-George Head is a British actor and singer, most recognised for his international hit songs "Superstar" and "One Night in Bangkok" and his album Say It Ain't So...
in the lead role and again as Sword of the Valiant in 1984.
Later Welsh directors, such as Sara Sugarman
Sara Sugarman
Sara Sugarman is a Welsh actress and film director whose work includes Disney's Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen and Very Annie Mary...
and Marc Evans made films set in Wales.
Welsh movie actors
Wales has a long tradition of producing film-actors who have made an impact on the world stage. During the silent period Welsh actors of note included Ivor NovelloIvor Novello
David Ivor Davies , better known as Ivor Novello, was a Welsh composer, singer and actor who became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century. Born into a musical family, his first successes were as a songwriter...
, who came to prominence through cinema after starring in The Lodger
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog is a silent film directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1926 and released on 14 February 1927 in London and on 10 June 1928 in New York City. The film, based on a story by Marie Belloc Lowndes and a play Who Is He? co-written by Belloc Lowndes, concerns the hunt for a...
(1927) and Downhill
Downhill (film)
Downhill is a 1927 silent film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and based on the play Down Hill. It is Hitchcock's fifth film as director.-Plot:...
(1927); Gareth Hughes
Gareth Hughes
Gareth Hughes was a Welsh stage and silent screen actor. Usually cast as a callow, sensitive hero in Hollywood silent films, Hughes got his start on stage during childhood and continued to play youthful leads on Broadway....
, often cast as a youthful charmer, gained excellent notices for the now-lost Sentimental Tommy (1921) and Lyn Harding
Lyn Harding
Lyn Harding was a Welsh actor who spent 40 years on the stage before entering British made silent films, talkies and radio...
, whose stature and presence made him a sought after villain playing Moriarty in several early Sherlock Holmes films.
The 1940s saw Rhondda
Rhondda
Rhondda , or the Rhondda Valley , is a former coal mining valley in Wales, formerly a local government district, consisting of 16 communities built around the River Rhondda. The valley is made up of two valleys, the larger Rhondda Fawr valley and the smaller Rhondda Fach valley...
's Donald Houston
Donald Houston
Donald Daniel Houston was a Welsh actor whose first two films – The Blue Lagoon with Jean Simmons, and A Run for Your Money with Sir Alec Guinness – were highly successful...
break through in his first two features The Blue Lagoon
The Blue Lagoon (1949 film)
The Blue Lagoon is a 1949 British romance and adventure film produced and directed by Frank Launder, starring Jean Simmons and Donald Houston. The screenplay was adapted by John Baines, Michael Hogan and Frank Launder from the novel The Blue Lagoon by Henry De Vere Stacpoole...
(1949) and A Run for Your Money
A Run for Your Money
A Run for Your Money is a 1949 Ealing Studios comedy film starring Donald Houston and Meredith Edwards as two Welshmen visiting London for the first time...
(1949). In 1945 Ray Milland
Ray Milland
Ray Milland was a Welsh actor and director. His screen career ran from 1929 to 1985, and he is best remembered for his Academy Award–winning portrayal of an alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend , a sophisticated leading man opposite a corrupt John Wayne in Reap the Wild Wind , the murder-plotting...
became the first Welsh actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor
Academy Award for Best Actor
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
, for his role as an alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend.
The most significant period for Welsh actors came during the 1950s and 1960s. A new wave of realism entered British acting, and at the forefront came Welsh actors Richard Burton
Richard Burton
Richard Burton, CBE was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role , and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid...
, Stanley Baker
Stanley Baker
Sir Stanley Baker was a Welsh actor and film producer.-Early career:William Stanley Baker was born in Ferndale, Rhondda Valley, Wales. In the mid-1930s his parents moved to London, where Baker spent most of his formative years...
and Rachel Roberts
Rachel Roberts
Rachel Roberts may refer to:*Rachel Roberts *Rachel Victoria Roberts, British actress sometimes credited as Rachel Roberts*Rachel Roberts *Rachel Roberts, author of the Avalon: Web of Magic series...
. The period also saw Welsh character actor's such as Hugh Griffith
Hugh Griffith
Hugh Emrys Griffith was a Welsh film, stage and television actor.-Early life:Griffith was born in Marianglas, Anglesey, Wales, the son of Mary and William Griffith. He was educated at Llangefni County School and attempted to gain entrance to university, but failed the English examination...
, who won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role in the 1959 version of Ben Hur
Ben-Hur (1959 film)
Ben-Hur is a 1959 American epic film directed by William Wyler and starring Charlton Heston in the title role, the third film adaptation of Lew Wallace's 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. The screenplay was written by Karl Tunberg, Gore Vidal, and Christopher Fry. The score was composed by...
.
The most distinctive Welsh actor of the 1990s through to the 2000s was Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, KBE , best known as Anthony Hopkins, is a Welsh actor of film, stage and television...
. Hopkins has appeared in film since the 1960s, starring in Hollywood costume dramas such as The Lion in Winter
The Lion in Winter (1968 film)
The Lion in Winter is a 1968 historical drama made by Avco Embassy Pictures, based on the Broadway play by James Goldman. It was directed by Anthony Harvey and produced by Joseph E...
. Starring in films as diverse as Richard Attenborough
Richard Attenborough
Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough , CBE is a British actor, director, producer and entrepreneur. As director and producer he won two Academy Awards for the 1982 film Gandhi...
's Magic and David Lynch
David Lynch
David Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...
's The Elephant Man
The Elephant Man (film)
The Elephant Man is a 1980 American drama film based on the true story of Joseph Merrick , a severely deformed man in 19th century London...
, Hopkins became a Hollywood star after his Academy Award winning performance as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (1992). Hopkins continued to impress throughout the 1990s with critically acclaimed performances in Shadowlands
Shadowlands
Shadowlands is a 1985 television film, written by William Nicholson, directed by Norman Stone and produced by David M. Thompson for BBC Wales. Its subject is the relationship between Oxford don and author, C. S. Lewis and Joy Gresham....
and Remains of the Day.
The 1990s produced an abrasive group of Welsh actors, including Rhys Ifans
Rhys Ifans
Rhys Ifans is a Welsh actor and musician. He is known for his portrayal of characters such as Spike in Notting Hill and Jed Parry in Enduring Love and as a member of the Welsh rock groups Super Furry Animals and The Peth. Ifans also appeared as Xenophilius Lovegood in Harry Potter and the Deathly...
and Matthew Rhys
Matthew Rhys
Matthew Rhys Evans , known professionally as Matthew Rhys, is a Welsh actor, best known as Kevin Walker on the U.S. ABC family drama Brothers & Sisters, and as Dylan Thomas in The Edge of Love.-Early life:...
. The 1990s also saw the success of Catherine Zeta-Jones
Catherine Zeta-Jones
Catherine Zeta-Jones, CBE, is a British actress. She began her career on stage at an early age. After starring in a number of United Kingdom and United States television films and small roles in films, she came to prominence with roles in Hollywood movies such as the 1998 action film The Mask of...
, who became one of Hollywood's highest paid stars, appearing alongside Antonio Banderas
Antonio Banderas
José Antonio Domínguez Banderas , better known as Antonio Banderas, is a Spanish film actor, film director, film producer and singer...
and Anthony Hopkins in The Mask of Zorro
The Mask of Zorro
The Mask of Zorro is a 1998 American swashbuckler film based on the Zorro character created by Johnston McCulley. It was directed by Martin Campbell and stars Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Stuart Wilson...
and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...
for Chicago
Chicago (2002 film)
Chicago is a 2002 musical film adapted from the satirical stage musical of the same name, exploring the themes of celebrity, scandal, and corruption in Jazz-age Chicago....
. The 2000s are most notable for the emergence of Ioan Gruffudd
Ioan Gruffudd
Ioan Gruffudd is a Welsh actor.Trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he started off in Welsh language film productions, then came to international attention as Fifth Officer Harold Lowe in the film Titanic , and as Lt. John Beales in Black Hawk Down...
, who took the lead role in 2006 historical drama Amazing Grace
Amazing Grace (2006 film)
Amazing Grace is a 2006 U.S.–UK co-production film, directed by Michael Apted, about the campaign against slave trade in the British Empire, led by William Wilberforce, who was responsible for steering anti-slave trade legislation through the British parliament. The title is a reference to the hymn...
.