Synopsis
Since the 1950s, Geoffrey R. Llewellyn Jones has been making multi-award-winning short films that look, sound and feel like nothing else. With his extraordinary marriage of images, music and rhythm, he ranks alongside such luminaries as
Norman McLaren and
Len Lye, and remains one of Britain's true film artists. Born in London in 1931, of Welsh parents,
Geoffrey Jones trained at Central School of Art in interior design, graphic design and photography. Mesmerised by cinema since he was a child and later inspired by
Dziga Vertov and
Luciano Emmer, his first film project, a satire on the commuter society, envisaged images cut to very rhythmic music, a technique that became his hallmark. Although the film was never actually made, the drawings led to work, when he was just 24 as a one man band: 'The Experimental Film and TV Department' of advertising agency Crawford International, where early work included an acclaimed commercial for Martini. He went on to make films for global companies like Shell and BP, and innovative animated shorts.
Geoffrey Jones is best known as the director of three seminal films for British Transport Films;
Snow (1963), which was nominated for an Oscar,
Rail (1967) and
Locomotion (1975), all shown at festivals around the world. In films such as
Snow, where trains and
railway workers battle against severe weather conditions,
Rail, a commemoration of the steam age and celebration of the electric age, and the travelogue
Trinidad & Tobago (1964), images react, combine and dance together to create a living, pulsing journey. In
Locomotion, the entire history of the British
railways is illustrated through a captivating and accelerating rhythm. Most of his work was in the sometimes precarious area of industrial shorts, but his unique vision is also revealed in his more personal works such as the
Seasons Project and the two
Chair-a-Plane films.