Simon Hartog

When the film was scheduled for its first public screening in Brazil in March 1994 at the Río de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art, Rede Globo went to court, obtaining an order for the posters and copy of the film to be confiscated by the military police. The company continued to try to prevent the film's screening in Brazil, where it was never broadcast on TV. But, universities and political groups obtained copies and showed it unofficially (and, after a court case in 1995), officially through the 1990s. With the internet boom of the early 21st century, the film was distributed digitally, including being put on sharing networks. It has been seen more than 600,000 times, according to counts just on YouTube and Google.

During its development, Hartog had made signed agreements with various cultural and political groups in Brazil to give them the non-TV rights, in order to provide for wide distribution in the country. In addition, his company sold copies of the film in the UK at cost, and members of the Brazilian community bought copies to send to associates in Brazil. Hartog died during the final editing of the film, which Ellis completed, and before the programme was broadcast in 1993 in the UK.

Hartog's commitment to cinema included a passionate interest in the Third Cinema of Africa and Latin America. Whilst working at London's principal Third Cinema distributors, The Other Cinema, he was offered the post as consultant to the Frelimo Party government in Mozambique, which became independent in 1975. They wanted him to set up a state film industry. The principal result was an effective regular newsreel company, Kucha Kanema.

Long interested in the Third Cinema of African and Latin American nations, Hartog at one time worked for The Other Cinema, a distribution company in the UK, to gain such films wider audiences. In the 1970s, he served as a consultant to help the newly independent Mozambique set up a film industry.

His first taste of film-making in Britain was acting in Peter Watkins' The War Game (he had the role of the jumpy GI who triggers the nuclear strike). He worked for a time as a producer/director for BBC Panorama, making programmes on Ronald Reagan, then governor of California; the May 1968 events in Paris, and censorship. But the programme's editors proved unreceptive to some of his other proposals, and Hartog soon left the BBC to work freelance.

After having grown up from age eight in the United States, he returned to England and Italy in the 1960s for graduate work and settled in the UK.

Hartog was born in England but lived in Chicago, Illinois from the age of eight with his mother, after his parents divorced. He attended local schools until college. He always retained what the British perceived as an American accent, but, after many years in England as an adult, he no longer sounded entirely American to people from the United States. In the 1960s, trying to avoid being drafted for the unpopular Vietnam War, which he opposed, he returned to England for graduate work after college.

Hartog was a founder-member of the London Film-Makers' Co-op, the key organisation in the development during the 1960s of an independent British avant-garde. During this time, he took a wide range of jobs, from researching a report on the possible nationalisation of the film industry for the industry union ACTT, to helping Tony Rayns edit the short-lived film magazine Cinema Rising.

Just before his death, Hartog completed Beyond Citizen Kane, his film on the development of TV in Brazil, concentrating on the role of Rede Globo, the largest media conglomerate in the country. The documentary is critical of the company's ties to the military dictatorship and likened the conglomerate's leader, Roberto Marinho, to the Citizen Kane figure of the 1941 American film for manipulation of news.

Simon Hartog (8 February 1940 – 18 August 1992) was a British filmmaker who worked as both director and producer. He helped develop an independent film industry in the United Kingdom (UK), founding London Film-Makers' Co-op in the 1960s, key to the avant-garde; working on independent documentaries, and founding the production company, www.largedoorltd.com Large Door Ltd. Through the Independent Filmmakers' Association, he campaigned for an independent Channel 4. Through his company, Hartog produced a series on world cinema, Visions, that ran on the channel for three years.