William Alexander Murray Grigor was born on 1939 and is a Scottish film-maker, writer, artist, exhibition curator and amateur architect who has served as director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
14 Facts About Murray Grigor
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Murray Grigor has made over 50 films with a focus on arts and architecture.
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Murray Grigor started his career as a film editor at the BBC which he left in 1967 to become director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
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Murray Grigor contributed to an accompanying book of essays entitled Scotch Reels: Scotland in Cinema and Television edited by Colin McArthur.
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The success of the exhibition led Channel 4 to commission Murray Grigor to write and direct the film Scotch Myths which was screened at the Festival of Film and Television from the Celtic Countries held in Glasgow in March 1983.
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Scotch Myths received a cold reception from Scotland's film establishment and with little prospect of securing Scottish funding for films that addressed cultural matters, Murray Grigor shifted his focus to international, and particularly American subjects, in such as the 1986 landmark 8 part series Pride of Place with Robert AM Stern for the American television channel PBS.
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Together with Barbara Murray Grigor, he founded, in 1972, the film company Viz Ltd based in Inverkeithing, Scotland.
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Murray Grigor has written screenplays for all his films, and a number of exhibition catalogues to accompany his exhibitions.
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Murray Grigor was co-author of The Architects' Architect on Charles Rennie Mackintosh with Richard Murphy and Being a Scot with Sir Sean Connery, published in 2008 and which is published in 5 languages.
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In 2008, Murray Grigor produced seven film loops for Los Angeles' Hammer Gallery exhibition Between Earth and Heaven about the architecture of John Lautner, which coincided with the premiere of his documentary Infinite Space on the same subject.
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Murray Grigor was appointed, in 2007, as a member of the Scottish Broadcasting Commission.
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Murray Grigor is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and was the first film maker to be made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland and the Royal Institute of British Architects.
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Murray Grigor is Visiting Professor of Film Studies at the Anglia Ruskin University, from which he received, in 2010, an Honorary Doctor of Arts.
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Murray Grigor was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to architecture and the film industry.