John Taylor

Biography

John Elston Taylor (5 October 1914 – 15 September 1992) was a British documentary filmmaker. Born in Kentish Town, London, on 5 October 1914, John Taylor had originally set his sights on a career in carpentry; however, shortly after finishing school he was offered a job by his sister's husband, documentary filmmaker John Grierson. Taylor started work as a film assistant at the Empire Marketing Board and in the years that followed he tried his hand at such jobs as camera operator, assistant director and production assistant. Along with working on Grierson's works, Taylor also had the fortune of working alongside some of his colleagues, such as Basil Wright (Song of Ceylon, 1934), Robert Flaherty (Man of Aran, 1934) and Alberto Cavalcanti on several of his travel documentaries, such as Men of the Alps (1937). By the end of the 1930s, Taylor was directing films himself, including Smoke Menace (1937) and Londoners (1939). In the 1940s, Taylor began producing films which helped to expose and improve social issues: Margaret Thomson's Clean Milk (1943) helped improve the Scottish dairy industry; Alex Strasser's Your Children's Eyes (1945) showed how a child's squint could easily be cor…

Directed

1. Wild Wings (1966) — Director
2. Holiday (1957) — Director
3. Letter from Aldershot (1940) — Director
4. The England of Elizabeth (1957) — Director
5. Lancashire Coast (1957) — Director
6. Journey Into History (1952) — Director
7. Air Outpost (1937) — Director
8. A Seaman's Story (1942) — Director
9. Farmer Moving South (1952) — Director
10. Rail Report 5 (1965) — Director
11. Rail Report 6: The Good Way to Travel (1966) — Director
12. Southampton Docks (1964) — Director
13. An Artist Looks at Churches (1959) — Director
14. The Heart Is Highland (1952) — Director
15. The Smoke Menace (1937) — Director
16. The Port of Hull (1963) — Director
17. The Frontier: Ukraine (2018) — Director
18. The Londoners (1939) — Director