12201163680?profile=originalIn My Father And Me, documentary film director Nick Broomfield explores his relationship with his father, photographer Maurice Broomfield (right). The film is both memoir and tribute, and in its intimate story of one family, takes an expansive, philosophical look at the 20th century itself.

For decades among the foremost names in documentary (more recently for Marianne And Leonard: Words Of Love; Whitney: Can I Be Me; Tales Of The Grim Sleeper), Nick Broomfield has often implicated himself in the filmmaking process with honesty and candor. Yet never has he made a movie more distinctly personal than this complex and moving film about his relationship with his humanist-pacifist father Maurice Broomfield, a factory worker turned photographer of vivid, often lustrous images of industrial post-WWII England. These images inspired Nick’s own filmmaking career, but also speak of a difference in outlook between Maurice and Nick.

Alongside the family story, My Father And Me also documents the changes taking place in Britain itself, the rise and fall of industry in the North and the class divide. Rich in striking imagery, it is photographed by Nick’s son Barney Broomfield and Sam Mitchell, and is produced by Mark Hoeferlin, Shani Hinton and Kyle Gibbon.

Nick Broomfield is the recipient of awards including Sundance First Prize, Bafta, Prix Italia, Dupont Peabody Award, Grierson Award, Hague Peace Prize, Amnesty International Doen Award. My Father And Me was commissioned by Mark Bell for BBC Arts.

See the film on BBC2,  20 March 2021 at 2145-2315

The V&A Museum holds Maurice Broomfield's photography archive.

See: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O243084/maurice-broomfield-photography-photograph-broomfield-maurice/

An exhibition of Broomfield's work is due to open in the V&A's Photography Centre from November 2021, curated by Martin Barnes. See: https://mauricebroomfield.photography/

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