Naturally Creative
1986-87 Channel 4/DD 90’
“Naturally Creative”, was a speculative feature length documentary for Channel 4 about the origins of human creativity, developed in collaboration with the late writer and art critic Peter Fuller.
Filmed both in the UK and in the USA, the documentary began with a sequence examining the very early and startlingly beautiful man-made images and objects, as displayed in the “Dark Caves, Bright Visions” exhibition of Ice Age Art in New York’s Museum of Natural History. Subsequent sequences ranged from an analysis of the universally similar first drawings we all make as children to reflections on the origins of human language and music, as well as to - most intriguingly - an exploration of the various ‘creative’ and ‘proto-aesthetic’ elements, from social play to tool use and bird song, which are found within the animal world in species that pre-exist our own.
Distinguished contributors to this film (a few of whom have alas since died) included:
Benoit B Mandelbrot, author of “The Fractal Geometry of Nature”.
Desmond Morris, on his experiments with chimpanzee paintings.
Mary Midgley, philosopher and author of “Beast and Man”.
John Blacking, ethnomusicologist, author of “How Musical is Man?”
Howard Gardner, author of “Artful Scribbles”, “Frames of Mind”.
Peter Marler, author of “Nature’s Music - the science of Birdsong”.
Peter Atkins, physical chemist, author of “Creation revisited”.
Peter Fuller, author of “The Naked Artist - Art and Biology”.
David Hockney, artist.
The giraffes roam through an intriguing film called Naturally Creative, to which Channel 4 devotes one and a half hours on Sunday night. Made by one of the most adventurous independent producers, Mike Dibb, it explores the origins of creativity in Man…Man is distinguished from even the most beauty-loving giraffe by many things. By laughter, by a sense of the future, but above all by imagination. Mike Dibb’s camera-work shows the shells of the seashore, the petals of a flower. But to create a rose-window of stained glass is something else…Naturally Creative should be seen. Art films on TV are usually a celebration of some famous person…They rarely conduct an argument. Mike Dibb and Peter Fuller help establish how far we have come from the Modernist obsession with structure- the world in which a house was ‘a machine for living.’ The art is in the surface.
Paul Barker
With the critic Peter Fuller, Mike Dibb has made an outstandingly effective documentary about the very well-spring of imagination. In NATURALLY CREATIVE Dibb gathers a number of thinkers and juxtaposes their views with minimum fuss and intrusion, creating (because the thinkers are well-chosen) a rich stew of rumination…the film is provocative, generous and enthralling.
W Stephen Gilbert, The Independent, 28 November 1987
Ambitious in scope, expressive imagery and pot pourri approaches to its biology/creativity equation, Mike Dibb’s quietly audacious major documentary attempts to signpost the ‘natural’ need for art and culture. Utilising everything from prehistoric cave paintings to the importance of play and the geometric beauty of fractal computer art, Dibb, together with art critic and author Peter Fuller, imparts a galvanising intellectual freshness to the otherwise arch ‘rich tapestry of life’ cliché…triple recommended.
John Lyttle, City Limits
In the past decade, Mike Dibb has evolved a style of documentary making which derives from his conviction that the language of film is uniquely well equipped for ‘playfully juxtaposing ideas and making them live – and connecting together areas of experience normally kept separate.’ Naturally Creative…isn’t a dry and esoteric essay, though – rather a celebration of humanity-in-nature.
John Dugdale