Murray Grigor - Career

Career

Grigor made first film, the documentary Mackintosh, in 1968, about the then neglected Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh. With photography by Eddie McConnell and Oscar Marzaroli, a haunting score by Frank Spedding and Bill Forsyth as editor. The film won five international awards and together with the Edinburgh Festival touring exhibition, curated by Andrew McLaren Young, did much to re-establish the reputation of the now renowned architect.

During the 1970s, Grigor wrote and directed several sponsored documentaries for Films of Scotland, most notably "Travelpass" with John Bett and Alex Norton, "Suilven Spring" with Bill Paterson and "Clydescope" on the tourist attractions around the River Clyde with Billy Connolly and innovative animations devised by his friend the artist John Byrne and brought to the screen by Donald Holwill. Connolly's original songs were augmented by the 'compleat musician' Ron Geesin and the great Irish actor Micheal Mac Liammoir read the picaresque send-up narration. This production with his partner Patrick Higson and the cameraman David Peat was such a fun experience that Grigor persuaded Billy Connolly to put up the money for a weekend foray to Ireland which resulted in "Big Banana Feet', inspired by "Don't Look Back - D.A. Pennebaker's film of Bob Dylan's UK tour.

Already during the 1970s, Grigor made arts and architecture as a focus of his filmmaking. He has made documentaries about many renowned American, British and Italian architects, including Robert Adam, John Lautner, Carlo Scarpa, Sir John Soane, Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, Alexander "Greek" Thomson, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Grigor's documentaries on artists include "BLAST" on the Vorticists, 'E.P. Sculptor" on Eduardo Paolozzi in association with the Edinburgh Festival 1984 exhibition initiated by Barbara Grigor. "The Why?sman" brought together George Wyllie's play, "Day Down a Goldmine" with Bill Paterson and freely explored Glasgow's most popular artist, the creator of the much loved 'Straw Locomotive', and the "Paper Boat" - great public art inspired by his friend Joseph Beuys.

Grigor also worked on, and curated, art exhibitions. In 1976, for the opening exhibition of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, titled Man TransForms. For this Grigor was invited by the Austrian architect and designer Hans Hollein to direct film loops on aspects of design. He was awarded a US/UK Bicentennial Fellowship to research and write a feature length documentary film on Frank Lloyd Wright, which he finally made with David Peat as cameraman in 1981, with the architect's granddaughter providing the narration. "The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright" received many awards including a 'Citation by the American Institute of Architects,' the first ever to have been awarded to a film-maker. In 1981, Murray Grigor, together with his wife Barbara, curated the provocative touring exhibition Scotch Myths questioning a Scotland portrayed by kitsch and stereotypes of fatigued romanticism. A documentary about this exhibition followed in 1982 for the opening of Channel 4, a British television channel. In 2008, Grigor produced seven film loops for the exhibition Between Earth and Heaven about the architecture of John Lautner, which coincided with the premiere of his documentary Infinite Space on the same subject.

Since the 1980s, Grigor widened his film focus to cover more international, and particularly American subjects, such as the 1986 landmark 8 part series Pride of Place with Robert A. M. Stern for the American television channel PBS. In 1997, he directed the PBS series "The Face of Russia" with James Billington, the Librarian of Congress. "Contemporary Days" on the iBritish designers Robin and Lucienne Day for Design Onscreen of Denver Colorado, was premiered at the Glasgow Film Festival in February 2011.

Grigor also worked as film producer and writer. Together with his wife, he founded, in 1981, the film company Viz Ltd based in Inverkeiting, Scotland. Grigor has also written screenplays for some of his films, and exhibition catalogues to accompany some of his exhibitions. He was co-author of "The Architects' Architect on.C.R Mackintosh with Richard Murphy and 'Sean Connery - Being a Scot" with Sir Sean Connery, published in 2008 and which is now published in 7 languages. .