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Award-winning film director whose eclectic oeuvre included Midnight Express, Bugsy Malone, Angel Heart and Evita
In 2013, Alan Parker, who has died aged 76, received the Bafta fellowship award “in recognition of outstanding achievement in the art forms of the moving image”. Parker was praised for his energetic style, his keen visual sense and his storytelling skills, and for resuscitating the movie musical. He was also credited with having broken down the barriers between the American and British film industries and paving the way for fellow Brits – with Adrian Lyne, Hugh Hudson, and Ridley and Tony Scott having come from advertising like himself – to pursue Hollywood careers.
Although Parker directed only two bona fide British productions – Bugsy Malone (1976) and Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982) – in 1998 he was appointed chairman of the board of governors of the British Film Institute (BFI) and in 1999 first chairman of the Film Council. And yet, a little more than a decade earlier, Parker had made a television documentary called A Turnip Head’s Guide to the British Film Industry (1985) in which he tackled “the pomposity, stupidity, pretension and avarice of the film industry”. Continue reading...