George Orwell is a hero of mine and this is a clip from a docu-drama I made about his life. Orwell was a tweedy action-man and profound thinker but his medium was the written word and there is no surviving moving picture archive of him. So I created it, turning his essays and journalism into short films and film news reports. This film won numerous awards (including an EMMY and a Grierson) but when it was first broadcast I was accused of making a drama not a documentary. Yes we wrote a script, worked with actors, costume designers and sets, but this is still a documentary that sets out to reveal the emotional and intellectual journey that led to 1984. In this clip, Orwell’s elegant and uplifting prose about simple pleasures becomes a stylish film essay.
90 minutes, a Wall to Wall production broadcast on BBC2
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