Kevin Brownlow

Kevin Brownlow (born Robert Kevin Brownlow; 2 June 1938) is a British film historian, television documentary-maker, filmmaker, author, and film editor. He is best known for his work documenting the history of the silent era, having become interested in silent film at the age of eleven. This interest grew into a career spent documenting and restoring film. Brownlow has rescued many silent films and their history. His initiative in interviewing many largely forgotten, elderly film pioneers in the 1960s and 1970s preserved a legacy of early mass-entertainment cinema. He received an Academy Honorary Award at the 2nd Annual Governors Awards given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on 13 November 2010. This was the first occasion on which an Academy Honorary Award was given to a film preservationist. Early life Brownlow was born in Crowborough, Sussex, the only child of Thomas Brownlow, an Irish commercial artist making film posters for The Rank Organisation and Disney, and his wife Ninya (née Fortnum), also an artist, who was the daughter of a Governor of Trinidad and Tobago. He grew up in Finchley Road, north London. His first exposure to films came at prep school, where films rented from Wallace Heaton were screened. He attended Haileybury, where his contemporaries included John Howard Davies. He was rejected from national service due to short-sightedness. He began collecting silent films at the age of 11, and aged 15, he began apprenticing in the British film industry: he began as an office boy, and within five days was assigned as a trainee assistant editor, becoming an editor in 1958, working on a string of documentaries. Writing fan letters to silent film directors, he began to strike up a correspondence with figures from silent-era cinema. It Happened Here and Winstanley Brownlow's interest in the Second World War prompted the creation of his alternative-history film It Happened Here, premised upon the Nazis having conquered Britain. Brownlow began work on the film at the age of 18 and soon began to collaborate with a 16-year-old friend, Andrew Mollo. After eight years of struggle, during which the film's content changed dramatically, it was completed in 1964 with the last-minute aid of Tony Richardson. The film was widely seen in the UK at film festivals, and it was picked up for major distribution by United Artists (UA).