An Evening with John Henshall

I apologize for the lack of new posts lately, but I had been trying to enjoy my last days in London, and face my first moving out experience. I came back to Italy on Tuesday, and since the nostalgia for the city is increasing day by day, the only way to defeat the sadness is to remember the last amazing events I have attended.
Right after the meeting with Lois Burwell's inspiring persona, I had the chance to meet and listen to the life, the brilliant genius and humour, of John Henshall, a key figure in British Television.

The evening was structured in this way: Mr Henshall had prepared a rich and awesome presentation covering his whole career and showing rare (and sometimes considered lost) footage, part of his incredible archive.
John Henshall is so well known that the audience was already smiling waiting for his jokes, and, in my opinion, the presence of most of the audience meant friendship, and that gratitude you can only develop while working together on something so special as the moving image. Ex-colleagues, directors, actors, photographers, television personalities, everyone was there to be amazed by the great man behind his camera.

John Henshall started working at the BBC Studios when he was 18, two years later he was already part of the staff. His talent, uncredited for many years, was finally acknowledged after he left the BBC.
He worked on all kinds of television productions: commercial, tv drama, Top of the Pops, comedies, early music videos, etc.

However, his career's distinctive feature is that he has been an inventor in both photography, and camera-work. Many of the effects, and television tools we are used to today have to be accredited to his experimentations: the fish-eye lens, the first home-telerecording, early experimental colour transmissions, early light-weight videocameras, and, the great work he did on early music videos.

In fact, I now want to focus on the last part of this memorable evening. He had the chance to work and film some of the most famous artists of the 60s and 70s, who are still immortal icons nowadays: David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Blondie, Cher, Freddie Mercury, The Rolling Stones, Roy Orbinson, Cher, and many many others.
How to forget David Bowie's "The Jean Jenie", from the 1973 Christmas episode of Top of the Pops which was considered lost until two years ago? Mr Henshall had a copy of it.
On that particular performance, he used his experimental lens, along with other visual special effects, through his camera-work that epic performance is representative of the 70s as a decade, and of the glam rock.

Here is the performance, shown on the BBC, December 2011:

Thanks to these meetings I'm developing a 360° view on films' world. I now think that we don't have to think only in directors/actors terms. There is much more to discover, and many more people who stay behind the curtain (or behind the camera, in this case), but give a massive contribution to the film/tv show/music video/tv drama and its status of work of art.
My congratulations and greetings go to John Henshall, and the people who worked with him , like Moira Armstrong (director), Miriam Margolyes (actress), Ron Green (colleague cameraman), to the present or not in the audience, to all who share this passion, for making me understand that making films and television together is not only a job, it is a wonderful way to find real, and lasting friendship ties.