Arcadia England

We are very excited to share Laurence Scott’s upcoming news. On April 6th we will all be tuning in to listen to his Sunday feature on BBC Radio 3. He will be celebrating 50 years of Merchant Ivory Films, and his list of guest speakers is really quite incredible.

Merchant Ivory Productions is a film company that was founded back in 1961 by producer Ismail Merchant, and director James Ivory. James Ivory will be one of the guests on Laurence’s documentary and will be talking about the rich history of the production company.

Another guest will be Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Man Booker Prize in 1989 for The Remains of the Day. This novel was adapted by James Ivory in 1993.

Laurence will also speak with Helena Bonham Carter. The world renowned actress featured in a number of Merchant Ivory films and will be sharing her memories of those experiences.

We are all immensely proud of Laurence and are excited to listen in.

Make sure you listen in. The official description from the BBC is as below:

Style, flair, individuality, ideas... and stars. The film output of the remarkable three-person association of creative talents that is collectively known as 'Merchant Ivory' has endured since the early 1960s.

For The Sunday Feature, Laurence Scott re-assesses the team's output. From their early success 'Shakespeare Wallah', through the trio of big English hits - 'A Room with a View', 'Howards End' and 'The Remains of the Day' - as well as less popular, but equally stylish American and French-based movies, Merchant Ivory pictures have always combined visual sophistication with stupendous acting talent. Yet despite their many triumphs, 'Merchant Ivory' became for some critics a tainted brand, redolent of a sort of big-house costume drama that epitomized all that was wrong with British cinema. Why? And were the criticisms fair?

Merchant Ivory was a unique combination of cinema talents, 'a three-person marriage' in the words of one of their biggest stars, Helena Bonham-Carter: James Ivory directed, his late partner Ismail Merchant produced, and most of the films were written by the screenwriter and novelist Ruth Prawer-Jhabvala.

While he was in London recently preparing his latest film Jim Ivory talked over three days with Laurence Scott, and explored his lifetime of film-making.

Also in the program, alongside Helena Bonham-Carter whose career was largely launched by the team, is veteran Indian actress Madhur Jaffrey, who brought Jim and Ismail together and starred in a number of their Indian films and novelist and screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro. Plus, the man who as a schoolboy got Ivory and Merchant to star in his home movies - we savoir the broadcast premiere - and went on to run the company, Richard Macrory.