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Malachi's Cove: Filming in Cornwall

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Visiting the flat where I grew up
Walter Lassally Film-maker
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Shooting in Berlin gave me the opportunity to visit the flat where I was... where I grew up. The first time was in '51 when I went to that World Youth Festival, and at that time they'd divided the flat into two and I only had access to one half because the other half had refugees from the East in it, who were very suspicious and they wouldn't let me in. But by the time Die Frau Gengnüber was made, the flat had been reunited into one flat. It was a six-room flat, I think. The funny thing is, when you visit a place like that, where you grew up, it all seems terribly small, because in your mind it's much larger. That was particularly true, not only of the flat, but of the little park nearby. There's a park with a lake in it where I used to go skating in the winter, and the slope where we played with the toboggan, all that seemed miniaturised to the way that I had it in my mind. Of course, this is common knowledge that this is what happens when you have... your memories date back that far. But it was very nice. It was an architect living... a young architect was living in the flat, and he welcomed me and we discussed old times and new times. Anyway, that was a nice experience for me.

Born in Germany, cinematographer Walter Lassally (1926-2017) was best known for his Oscar-winning work on 'Zorba the Greek'. He was greatly respected in the film industry for his ability to take the best of his work in one area and apply it to another, from mainstream to international art films to documentary. He was associated with the Free Cinema movement in the 1950s, and the British New Wave in the early 1960s. In 1987 he published his autobiography called 'Itinerant Cameraman'.

Listeners: Peter Bowen

Peter Bowen is a Canadian who came to Europe to study and never got round to heading back home. He did his undergraduate work at Carleton University (in Biology) in Ottawa, and then did graduate work at the University of Western Ontario (in Zoology). After completing his doctorate at Oxford (in the Department of Zoology), followed with a year of postdoc at the University of London, he moved to the University's newly-established Audio-Visual Centre (under the direction of Michael Clarke) where he spent four years in production (of primarily science programs) and began to teach film. In 1974 Bowden became Director of the new Audio-Visual Centre at the University of Warwick, which was then in the process of introducing film studies into the curriculum and where his interest in the academic study of film was promoted and encouraged by scholars such as Victor Perkins, Robin Wood, and Richard Dyer. In 1983, his partner and he moved to Greece, and the following year he began to teach for the University of Maryland (European Division), for which he has taught (and continues to teach) biology and film courses in Crete, Bosnia, and the Middle East.

Tags: World Youth Festival, Die Frau Gengnüber

Duration: 1 minute, 18 seconds

Date story recorded: June 2004

Date story went live: 24 January 2008