Bill Douglas My Best Friend
Synopsis
Bill Douglas was Scotland’s finest director, celebrated by the likes of Lynne Ramsay, Lenny Abrahamson, Satajit Ray and Yuliya Solntseva. In his short career he made four films: an autobiographical trilogy about his appalling childhood – MY CHILDHOOD, MY AIN FOLK, THE WAY HOME - and COMRADES, an epic about a momentous moment in English history. Every shot in these films is an art work and every sequence a poem. Bills life was turned around in the Egyptian desert when he met the man who would become his lifelong friend, Peter Jewell. The two men had very different backgrounds but they formed a unique bond that channelled a tremendous creative energy. In this film Peter reminisces about the life he shared with Bill in their tiny Soho flat filled with cinema memorabilia. Their shared love of the movies led them to start experimenting with an 8mm camera. Peter’s memories and musings about the legacy Bill left behind are illustrated with these never-before-seen short films.
Official Selection Venice International Film Festival 2023 - Venice Classics - World premiere
Details
- Year
- 2023
- Type of project
- Features
- Running time
- 78 min
- Format
- 2k
- Director
-
Jack Archer 1st Feature
- Producer
- John Archer
- Executive Producer
- Clara Glynn, Mark Thomas
- Editor
- James Alcock; Edit Assistant: Noora Lappalainen; Online Editor: Chas Chalmers
- Director of Photography
- Jack Archer; Additional Camera: Dan McKay, Jordan Sellers
- Sound
- Rob MacNeacail
- Composer
- Scott Twynholm
- Principal cast
- With contributions from: Peter Jewell, Brian Cox, Lynne Ramsay, Lenny Abrahamson, Dr. Phil Wickham
- Associate Producer
- Andy Kimpton-Nye
Categories
Production Status
Production Company
Hopscotch Films
John ArcherFilm City Glasgow
401 Govan Road
Glasgow
G51 2QJ
Page updates
This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.
See also
You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.
Spacewoman
Director: Hannah Berryman
Year: 2024
A landmark feature documentary about astronaut Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot and command the Space Shuttle. Eileen’s incredible journey starts with her smalltown beginnings, sees her smash through many glass ceilings, and culminates in four dramatic space shuttle missions, the last being possibly the most dangerous and most important of them all. At its heart the film is the moving human drama of one family, where a mother’s extraordinary career takes us straight to the big philosophical question of what is the level of acceptable risk in human endeavour? This film celebrates Commander Collins’ trailblazing NASA career which opened the way for women to become spacecraft pilots and commanders, and proved a perfect riposte to a previous generation of male astronauts who thought there was no place for women to lead the way in space. Official Selection DOC NYC 2024 - World premiere Official Selection CPH:DOX 2025 - European premiere
Third Person (Plural)
Director: Aikaterini Gegisian
Year: 2023
A cinematic essay composed of over 200 postwar U.S. informational films and newsreels from the Library of Congress and the National Archives. What begins as an inquiry into America’s vision of early European integration becomes a feminist re-reading of the masculine gaze that shaped the postwar world. Through archival images once used to define ‘the global’ and ‘the other,’ the film exposes the links between Hollywood, propaganda, and the military-industrial complex in constructing Western modernity. By casting a female gaze on these histories, THIRD PERSON (PLURAL) challenges the authority of the archive and reveals the unseen many who inhabit it - the collective ‘third person’ who looks back at the camera.
Monsters
Director: Andy Field, Beckie Darlington
Year: 2025
Created in collaboration with local children in one of the most environmentally fragile areas of the UK, this experimental documentary repurposes the tropes of Hollywood monster movies to explore young people’s real feelings and fears through an imaginary framework. This fantasy apocalypse becomes a safe space for the children to reflect on adaptation, resilience and an uncertain future.