• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Foxtrot Films

creative original storytelling
films by Margy Kinmonth

  • About Us
  • Films
    • Revolution – New Art for a New World
      • Press Cuttings Scrapbook
      • The London Premiere
      • Special VIP Sponsors’ Screening
      • Moscow Premiere at Tretyakov Gallery
    • WAR ART with Eddie Redmayne
      • Press Cuttings Scrapbook
    • Hermitage Revealed
    • Royal Paintbox
    • Looking for Lowry
    • Mariinsky Theatre
    • Nutcracker Story
    • Steven Berkoff
    • To The Western World
    • The Secret World of Haute Couture
    • Dawn French
    • The Strange World of Barry Who?
    • More Films
  • News
  • Buy DVDs
  • Partners & Supporters
  • Contact

ITV Launch “Looking for Lowry” Website

Friday, April 15, 2011

Looking For Lowry will be transmitted on Easter Sunday, 24th April at 22.15 on ITV network

Ian McKellen in Lowry archive
Ian McKellen and Lowry painting
Production still Ian McKellen - Looking for Lowry

“LOOKING FOR LOWRY” – By Ian McKellen

I was brought up in industrial Lancashire down the road from where L.S. Lowry (1887 ­-1976) lived and painted in Manchester.  We shared the same polluted skies.

My mother hung out the washing on a Monday and if the wind was in the wrong direction, by the end of the day, it would be grimy, because of all the soot in the air.  Lowry knew a thing or two about soot but he made a virtue of it in his paintings.

During our filming in Salford for “Looking for Lowry”, I have been enjoying The Lowry’s large collection of paintings and drawings.  Both on show in the galleries and in the archive there is evidence and proof that Lowry is one of the greatest C20th painters.  It was moving to feel I was in his company and enjoy his most familiar paintings up close.

I am a recent convert to his empty paintings of sea and mountains but if you want any proof that Lowry was a great painter, look at his crowds. Until Samuel Beckett wrote “Waiting for Godot” nobody seems to have noticed that most of our lives are to do with waiting, and until Lowry painted his crowds, no other artist had noticed how people (and animals) look and behave en masse.

Once you have seen how Lowry saw us, you cannot ever see or be in a football crowd, nor watch kids playing, workers leaving the factory, queuing, or stopping to chat or hear the fairground barker, without saying “Lowry! It’s a Lowry painting!”  Going about our business, we are all subjects of his vision.

He was not a naturalistic painter and didn’t intend to be. He was not a camera; he didn’t even own one. He rather stood across the road from his subjects and observed. Often in the crowd scenes there are a number of individuals peering back at him.

He wasn’t an insider, advocating social change, pleading on behalf of his less fortunate neighbours. He lived through the 30’s depression, the suffragette movement and the First and Second World Wars, but they are not specified in the paintings; he is a painter not a politician. Yet his portraits and crowds reflect his good-humoured humanity and his unsentimental inquisitiveness.  His continuing popularity is not surprising.

Click here to visit the ITV Perspectives website

Click here to visit Ian McKellen’s website

Click here to visit the Crane Kalman Gallery website

Follow @LookingForLowry on Twitter

To order your DVD version of Looking For Lowry click here.

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Related

Leave a Comment

Reader Interactions

Share your comments & feedback Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Foxtrot Films

Foxtrot Films is an independent film and television production company owned by film director Margy Kinmonth and producer Maureen Murray.

We have an international reputation for making arts films of the highest quality.

Our work is distinctive, entertaining and inventive. We are renowned for producing award winning work that is moving and original.

We hope you enjoy finding out more about Foxtrot on our website. You can see clips of our shows and learn more about the films we make.

Recent News

  • Royal Paintbox. HRH The Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021)
  • Hermitage Revealed on ARTE
  • Secret Policeman’s Treasure Trove
  • Secret Policeman Returns
  • Origin “Spirit of Festival” Award NYC
  • Viewers’ response to “To The Western World” American Premiere
  • How John Huston voiced “To the Western World”
  • To The Western World US Premiere
  • Nutcracker – as much part of Christmas as Brussel sprouts…
  • Thanks for tuning in to my talk…

Foxtrot Films Around the Web

  • Charles Saumarez Smith on “To the Western World”
  • For Jack Yeats and for Ireland…” | Irish America
  • 5 foreign-produced documentaries to better understand Russians
  • WFTV Mentors 2019
  • Charles Saumarez Smith on Hermitage Revealed
  • Revolution Film Review: International eXcellence Luxury Magazine
  • Review in Russian Press: Izvestia
  • Revolution through the eyes of artists: a British film about Russian art
  • Charles Saumarez Smith on Revolution
  • Talkin’ bout a revolution | Notting Hill Post
  • Screen Daily: Arts Alliance picks up Russian arts doc backed by Alisher Usmanov
  • Variety: Arts Alliance Acquires Margy Kinmonth’s ‘Revolution — New Art for a New World’
  • Hermitage screening announced in the Tribune de Genève
  • David D’Arcy on film: From the Tsars to the Cellars in ManifestaMenu Item
  • ReelTalk Movie Reviews: It Will Never Pass into Nothingness, by Donald Levit
  • INTERVIEW: Editor Theodora Clarke speaks to Margy Kinmonth, director of the Hermitage Revealed documentary
  • Hermitage film chronicles great museum’s turbulent history
  • A brush with the royal artist formally known as Prince: Christopher Stevens reviews last night’s TV
  • Huffington Post: Royal Paintbox Documentary Reveals Royal’s Hidden Artistic Side
  • Mail Online: Revealing documentary shows royal artworks
  • Royal Paintbox: Radio Times Review
  • What’s on TV: Royal Paintbox
  • Absolutely Chelsea Royal Paintbox feature
  • Discussion of A Month in the Country
  • Filming in the archives of The Lowry with Sir Ian McKellen
  • Pavlova Diaries review ‘Looking for Lowry’ – Portrait of an artist
  • Simon Gray Diary

Archives

Footer

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2008-2021 · Foxtrot Films Ltd · Company Directors Margy Kinmonth & Maureen Murray · All rights reserved · Please read our Site Terms, Cookies & Privacy Policy · GDPR Compliance Statement · Site Map · Website by LiT Web Studio

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.