Glass Houses

Commissioned by the British Council and arising out of participating in Counterpoint, the British Council’s cultural relations think-tank, ‘Glass Houses’ was researched and directed by the researcher.

The premise for the research was to reveal an alternative view of Britain to contrast with the often dominant British view of the rest of the world. When wore broke out in the Middle East in 2003, Counterpoint created a network of seventeen journalists from across the world to comment on cultural developments. One year on, Counterpoint brought these journalists together in the UK and commissioned the researcher to make a film of their work. The approach taken by the researcher was to invite the journalists to comment on a British institution or aspect of British life that had a parallel in their own country including the Anglican church, the BBC and the Northern Ireland police force. These were edited to create a narrative flow of verbal observations and visual images that present Britain from ‘the outside in’. Research undertaken as a former co-editor of the New Internationalist and contributing editor of India Magazine formed a general cultural background to ‘Glass Houses’.

‘Glass houses’ was premièred at the ‘Eye to Eye’ global conference on cultural relations 2-4 November 2004, which marked the 70th anniversary of the founding of the British Council. The keynote lecture was delivered by Ziauddin Sarder and delegates included Annette Kuhn. The researcher also chaired one of the conference workshops, ‘Difference and Death,’ whose members included Eva Keller, Director of the Institute for Forensic Medicine at Semmelweis University, Budapest. No Ordinary Life: Being Young in the Worlds of Islam (ed Nushin Arbabzadah), an anthology of the writing of the journalists who feature in ‘Glass Houses’ was launched at the event.

The ‘Glass Houses’ DVD is available through the Counterpoint-online website.

• https://www.lotusfilms.co.uk/glass-house...
• https://vimeo.com/71572240