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Private Notes
Ten years ago a much-publicised section of the nation's youth was proclaiming a revolution: the overthrow of the age of war, hate, and competition, and the dawn of a new age of peace and love. Happy hippies preached the gentle gospel of flower power, and sang that all they needed was love. But was love enough? How much power is there left in the flowers today?
In the first of two films, Peter France traces the 'hippies' of ten years ago to find out how they are living today: yippy leader Jerry Rubin, social deviant Mick Farren, Oz editor Felix Dennis, Dr Timothy Leary 'the messiah of LSD', Lynn Darnton, founder of the 'Tribe of the Sacred Mushroom,' and many more. Peace and love are ideals almost everybody shares; ideals preached by almost all religions; but can the ideals survive in the real world?
Ten years ago the new age of peace and love proclaimed by the hippies seemed to be around, the corner. Today, most of the 'flower children' have children of their own, and the sober 70s have brought widespread disillusion with the power of flowers. But not all the visions have faded; and not all the visionaries have gone back home to daddy. In this second of two films, Peter France traces the idealists of ten years ago who keep alive the hope of a new age, and who believe that the greater truths are on their side: teepee dweller Sid Rawle, pop star Arthur Brown, founder of Gandalf's Garden Muz Murray, founder of Release Caroline Coon, aristocratic hippy Sir Mark Palmer, and poet Allen Ginsberg.
Vanya Kewley reports from Libya with a film profile of Colonel Mo'ammar Gaddafi - one of the most contentious political leaders in the world For the first time he allowed cameras into his home, cabinet meetings and private devotions. COL GADDAFI bases his regime on the Koran, yet supports revolutionary movements all over the world. How does he justify what seems an extraordinary paradox?
The word ' Shantivanam ' means dwelling-place of peace. It's also the dwelling-place of one of the most unusual gurus in all India. His name is Bede Griffith , and he is a Benedictine monk from England who has lived more than 20 years in India. The philosophy he imparts to followers from all over the world is a unique mixture of East and West - Christianity seen through Hindu eyes.
A mother who hasn't seen her two sons for over two years - even though they live in the same town. A young girl being told: choose between abandoning your parents or never seeing your brother again. Just two of the horrifying stories unearthed by Peter France while investigating the activities of the Exclusive Brethren.
Malcolm Muggeridge and James Cameron have been friends and fellow-journalists for 30 years. Both men have faced the reality of empty phrases like ' moral issues', witnessing the explosion of the atom bomb and seeing at first hand death and deprivation, politics and power in most parts of the world. From their experiences they have developed idiosyncratic but radically differing views on the world and the struggles of man to stay in it. Tonight they meet on television for the first time.
Each year at Easter a most unusual Passion Play is staged in Bulawayo in the heart of Rhodesia. Based on the traditional African music of the Shona people, it carries a special political as well as a religious meaning for those taking part, who see the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus as the story of their own oppression and liberation.
In a world that no longer speaks of death and resurrection, the great Victorian hymns are the warehouses of forbidden emotions: hunger for comfort, dread of dying, hope of eternity.
Change and decay in all around I see,
0 Thou who changest not, abide with me.
This film shares the moods of a hymn that can still take us to the heart of religious emotion: images of the real world bathed in the glow of ' Heaven's morning convictions that have not lost their power,
This year 83,000 people flocked to Olympia for the second Festival for Mind and Body. Why? What is the attraction of this annual spiritual supermarket where health food stalls vie with do-it-yourself Yoga, and Tibetan Buddhists are wired to bio-feedback machines? Are these more than the fads and fashions of a gullible post-Christian age?
This Everyman film looks at the Festival through the eyes of Sir George Trevelyan , once a teacher at Gordonstoun, now the leading prophet of the New Age: ' It's not a religious revolution with any dogma you've got to believe in - it's a spiritual awakening.'
Some 35 years have passed since the Nazi attempt to exterminate European Jewry, the so-called 'Final Solution of the Jewish Problem'. Countless books, plays and films have attempted to describe and understand this crime. But how far can we understand it? Can we in any way learn what it felt like to live through it? This film concentrates on one kibbutz in Israel, founded by survivors of the Nazi genocide. On their kibbutz they have built the largest independent museum in Israel about the Holocaust. Every year, on Memorial Day, 20,000 people come to visit it What do they learn?
We hear tine 'night voices' - those who lived through the events - and the 'day voices' - those who did not, the visitors to the museum, and the survivors' own children.
In this Everyman profile the singer talks to Steve Turner about what lies behind the public image, and the religious experience which produced his best-selling single
'Why Me Lord?! Through his songs, Kris Kristofferson traces his struggle to forge a faith in the midst of a career that has at times brought him to the brink of self-destruction.
He's a walking contradiction Partly truth and partly fiction Taking every wrong direction
On his lonely way back home.
To some they are romantic Kings of the Road; to others they are parasites who Utter the laybys.
To Fr Daly they are his parish: 15,000 Irish gypsies whose Roman Catholic faith survives antagonism from local residents and indifference from local authorities. For 12 years FR DALY has chosen to work amongst them, responding to a call unwittingly begun by a fortune-teller.
Rhodesia is in a state of war: as in many other wars there are Christians supporting both sides. Is the Christian message political - or above politics? In Rhodesia the Christian mission has been one of the major influences on the present crisis: until recently 94 per cent of primary education consisted of mission schools.
Almost every Black leader has had a Christian education. ' I'm a product of the Catholics ... the racial character of our society is un-Christian, it's inhuman.' (ROBERT MUGABE , president of ZANU)
Today missionaries are dying in a war that both sides claim is inspired by Christian ideals.
Everyman looks at the tragic impact of the war on the missionaries and their families and asks: What are they dying for?
'I tell you plainly: if I was not a committed, born-again child of God, I doubt I could have survived the conditions that we found in this country.'
Black Christians from the West Indies have been living in Britain for nearly 30 years.
How has their Christianity affected their response to conditions here? Everyman filmed with members of the Bethel Apostolic Church and their pastors, Ken and David Douglas, from Jamaica. For these Pentacostal Christians, it isn't enough just to pray: 'Unless we begin to work together for equal rights and equal opportunities, then our prayers won't help.'
Everyman with Billy Graham in Poland
Into a nation run by a Communist Government, yet claiming an intense patriotic Catholicism, steps BILLY GRAHAM : Southern Baptist. world evangelist and friend of Richard Nixon - 'I believe my visit to Poland is a symbol of new directions and new hopes among Christians.'
But does this - his second visit to a Communist country - mean a new direction towards human rights and political detente, or is his aim purely to spread a gospel of salvation through Christ? And has the State approved his tour because his brand of religion is a useful distraction from the food queues? Peter France was with him on his crusade.
One hundred years ago the Rhondda Valleys were the most famous coal-producing area in the world. The people were suspended between two forces - the chapels and the mines. Their work was dangerous, often lethal. Their religion was fervent. Their attitudes were shaped by struggle and expressed in bitter strikes and religious revivals.
This film tells the story, in the words of the time, of the rise of a way of life, and goes to the Rhondda to see what remains of it today.
The world of the choir boys of St Paul's Cathedral may have its roots in the Middle Ages-like their nickname ' Paul's Children ' -but in 1978 it still means a life of dedication and very hard work for 38 boys from the age of eight. Everyman explores this little-known world from audition day to special performances before the Queen Mother, through a typical day starting at seven in the morning to the glories of Christmas carols in the Cathedral.
Master of the Choristers
The world of the choir boys of St Paul's Cathedral may have its roots in the Middle Ages-like their nickname ' Paul's Children ' -but in 1978 it still means a life of dedication and very hard work for 38 boys from the age of eight. Everyman explores this little-known world from audition day to special performances before the Queen Mother, through a typical day starting at seven in the morning to the glories of Christmas carols in the Cathedral.
Master of the Choristers
