James Scott (artist)

James Scott (born 1941) is a British filmmaker, painter, draughtsman and printmaker.

James Scott was born in the city of Wells, England, the youngest son of two artists, William and Mary Scott. As a young man, he studied painting and theater design at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. After his first student art exhibition, he was featured in The London Times review of the Young Contemporaries exhibit. His interest in film-making and photography led him to write and direct his first movie while still at the Slade, a 16mm dramatic short called The Rocking Horse (1962). The film was given an X-certificate by the board of film censors, but went on to become an official British entry at the Venice and Vancouver film festivals that year. This attention led to Scott meeting Tony Richardson and John Osborne of Woodfall Films, who signed him to write and direct his first feature film The Sea, but the film was never completed. In 1964, Scott wrote and produced the short dramatic film Changes which featured the young Anthony Hopkins fresh from acting school (RADA). In 1965, he founded the production company Maya Film Productions with Barney Platts-Mills and Adam Barker-Mill.

In the mid-1960s, Scott began directing a series of artist’s documentaries. The first, Love’s Presentation (1966), follows David Hockney as he worked on his Cavafy etching series. After this came 1967’s RB Kitaj and 1969’s Richard Hamilton, both made for the Arts Council of Great Britain. In 1970 he made his next artist documentary, The Great Ice Cream Robbery. The double-screen film was based on a visit to London with Claes Oldenburg and Hannah Wilke at the time of Oldenburg’s retrospective at the Tate Gallery. In 1974, he began a new film on Antoni Tapies (incomplete) In 1979-1980, he wrote and directed the award-winning documentary Chance, History, Art… for the Arts Council of Great Britain.

...
Wikipedia