Cine-magician Haggerty's assault on Hollywood was a slow-burn fuse.

Cine-magician Haggerty's assault on Hollywood was a slow-burn fuse. First, he had to run away from school and family in Glasgow and end up on the Left Bank of Paris - aged 14. Second, he had to enrol as the youngest ever student of drawing at the esteemed Glasgow School of Art - aged 16. Third he had to teach art at some of the toughest sink-schools in Scotland. Then the UK's National Film School opened and he jumped a ride with its Class of 1972, the pioneer generation, and he made his graduation film in Hollywood. Hamburger Hamlet starred Stacey Keach and it could only have been made by a maverick. Based on a Jorge Luis Borges short story, its magpie condensation of high and low art marks it out as one of the most experimental short films made in the tedious seventies. The stylish eighties brought Haggerty a mixed bag of Los Angeles blessings. His friends were outsiders, people like Charles Bukowski, Victor Mature and Sirius Trixon. He worked as personal chef to movie mogul Jack Warner - he claims he helped poison him. It was Mall Time that launched this project and it still amazes viewers with its sheer cheek in not recognising boundaries of taste and presentation. Its wit is withering yet its tone is strangely triumphant and that's one of the paradoxes of the Haggerty canon. Movie trivia buffs should look out for a short vox pop with a teenage Drew Barrymore. Robotopia uses the same blend of magic realism and poetic journalism to unpick contemporary Japanese culture. Post-war Japan is viewed as a vortex that sucks in imagery, ideas and applications from all over the world and somehow translates them into diverting artefacts. For a country that never had an industrial revolution, Japan has a unique relationship to robots. Haggerty's investigation of the how and why of this phenomenon bravely slides us up and down the interface between humans behaving like robots and machine robots behaving like humans.

Cast & Crew

Director: George Haggerty

Producer: Mike Wallington

Additional Details

Label: Screen Edge

Genre: Documentary

Language: English

Run Time: 130 mins

Region: 0

Release Date: 12/12/17

UPC: 718472999684