About Philip Donnellan
Philip Donnellan (1924-99) worked for the BBC from 1948-84. Much of his professional life was spent in the Midlands where he worked first in radio and then in television. One of his contemporaries and colleagues was the trailblazing radio producer Charles Parker and they collaborated on a number of works and shared many ideas about broadcasting and how it might better serve and represent society. Both expressed a belief in the value of ordinary life and culture and the need to give working people and underrepresented social minorities a space in which to articulate their concerns in their own voices.
Donnellan's triumphs were in television documentary where he wrote, directed or produced some of his most effective work, seeking out new social subjects and dealing with them in formally innovative ways. Often, his progressive ideas resulted in programmes that generated wide acclaim and, occasionally, the opprobrium of his superiors and the suppression of his work.
His first TV film Joe the Chainsmith (1958) recorded a disappearing industry in the Black Country while films such as The Colony (1964) and The Irishmen (1965, still untransmitted on UK TV) allowed the voices and experiences of locally based migrant communities to be represented for themselves with dignity and respect. His politically committed approach is illustrated by the empathy of his 1969 film Strangers in a Town. Concerning the experiences of Sikh migrants in Wolverhampton, this work was conceived as a direct response to Enoch Powell's infamous 'Rivers of Blood' speech of the previous year (This film can be seen at Wolverhampton's Lighthouse http://www.light-house.co.uk).
Donnellan produced what is still considered by many to be the best TV feature on the BBC radio tradition Pure Radio (1977) while his two-part Gone for a Soldier (1980) provided a televisual manifestation of the Thompsonian 'history from below'.
After his retirement from the BBC Donnellan contributed to various community video projects in an attempt to realise the democratic principles of TV.
