OOM With A View: Pogus Caesar: Past, Present, Futuristic - included a screening of selected highlights from Caesar’s award winning career, including work produced and directed for Central Television, BBC, Channel 4 and Carlton Television.
Pogus was in conversation with Roger Shannon, Professor of Film & Television at Edge Hill University, discussing Caesar’s inspirations, travels and experiences during his 30-year career. This event was held as part of the Black International Film Festival which ran from October 29th until November 2nd. www.biffestival.co.uk
The first video clip we saw was Pogus as interviewee, talking about his pointillist pictures which led on to him working in photography, television, presenting, film making, film festivals and participation in the general media life of Birmingham.
During the 1980's his pointillist paintings attracted the attention of Trevor Phillips (then a producer at London Weekend Television; now Chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission) who encouraged Pogus to extend his creative skills to include television researching for Channel 4's 'BLACK ON BLACK' series, which was quickly followed by presenting and producing for Carlton/Central Television, the BBC and his own company Windrush Productions.
The next clip showed Pogus interviewing legendary raggae singer Burning Spear for the weekly ‘HERE & NOW’ series on Central TV. Pogus described how this period saw the first stirrings of an inter cultural creativity in the city and talked about his desire to document for future generations everything that was happening.
Pogus explained that in those days he worked with a large production team which was highly unionised - shooting on film that was then developed in a Processing Lab before Editing took place literally using a razor blade and some chalk.
Working on 'Here & Now' provided ample opportunities to interview some of the big personalities of the day and to cover major news stories from a intensely human-interest angle, interviewing for example a survivor of the tragic Kings Cross fire.
Within Central Television Pogus developed beyond the role of Presenter to become a Producer and Director with the hard hitting ‘TUESDAY SPECIAL’. In the early 90's Pogus set up his own production company Windrush to bid for multi cultural programme strands, Carlton Television commissioned him to make the award winning series ‘XPRESS’ for their daytime schedule featuring subjects such as women who visit Kenya in search of husbands to a documentary on the late R&B star Aaliyah. The working environment changed dramatically, crews reduced in size to no more than five people working with Betacam SP so that five or six items were being shot in a single day and post produced for broadcast more or less straight away. The 'XPRESS' series was a typical example of this way of working.
Next came a series called ‘RESPECT’ for Carlton TV on the topic of sport personalities – interviewees included Lennox Lewis, Gladstone Small, Judy Simpson and Diana Bowles. This was followed by the BBC's ‘A-FORCE’ series that featured, amongst others, the footballer George Weah in Italy and Jada Pinkett Smith, Isaac Hayes and film director John Singleton in Canada.
Our audience had been treated to many intriguing clips and were thoroughly absorbed in the conversation with Pogus that had been so skilfully led by Roger. As we saw some brief clips of some of the films Pogus has been making more recently, the evening ended with questions from the floor.
We were thoroughly inspired by everything we’d heard and could have continued for longer, so much so that we departed to the Woodman pub for more networking and extended an invitation to Pogus and Roger to return to Creative Networks in the near future to present OOM WITH A VIEW Part II of their Showcase. This will cover more of Pogus’ film-making and bring us up-to-date with his prolific output, but we can count ourselves privileged to have viewed his extensive archive in this his first visit to Creative Networks.
Our thanks must go to Pogus Caesar and Professor Roger Shannon for entertaining us with so much creative content, comment and motivation. We look forward to welcoming them again to our monthly event whenever they’re next available.
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