The Blasphemers' Banquet

The Blasphemers' Banquet
Directed byPeter Symes[1]
Written byTony Harrison
Screenplay byTony Harrison
Produced byBBC[1]
Release date
  • 31 July 1989 (1989-07-31)
Running time
40 minutes[2]
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

The Blasphemers' Banquet is a film-poem created in 1989 by English poet and playwright Tony Harrison which examines censorship arising from religious issues.[3] It was created in part as a response to the Salman Rushdie controversy surrounding his publication of The Satanic Verses.[4][5] It was aired by the BBC 1's programme Byline on 31 July 1989.[6][7][8][9][10][11]

The verse-film is set at the Omar Khayyám restaurant in Bradford where Harrison is holding a banquet with invited guests such as Omar Khayyám, Salman Rushdie, Voltaire, Molière and Byron.[8][12][13][14][15][16]

The film at the time of its airing created a controversy in Britain when then Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie advised the BBC to postpone the showing of the film and the BBC writing a reply to him defending the airing of the broadcast.[2][17]

  1. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference BFI was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ a b "BBC TELEVISION PROGRAM DEFENDS RUSHDIE DESPITE CHURCH OBJECTION". Associated Press News. 31 July 1989.
  3. ^ "Tony Harrison". University of Leeds.
  4. ^ Educational Britannica Educational (2010). English Literature from the 19th Century Through Today. The Rosen Publishing Group. p. 257. ISBN 978-1-61530-232-1. Retrieved 6 June 2013.
  5. ^ "English literature SECTION: Poetry". Encyclopædia Britannica. The Blasphemers' Banquet [1989], a verse film partly written in reaction to the fatwa on Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference Naismith was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Ed. Mohit K. Ray (1 September 2007). The Atlantic Companion to Literature in English. Atlantic Publishers & Dist. p. 233. ISBN 978-81-269-0832-5. Retrieved 5 June 2013.
  8. ^ a b John Gabriel (12 November 2012). Racism, Culture, Markets. Routledge. p. 35. ISBN 978-1-134-86775-2. Retrieved 5 June 2013.
  9. ^ Alan Parker; Mark Willhardt (13 May 2013). Who's Who in Twentieth Century World Poetry. Taylor & Francis. p. 135. ISBN 978-1-134-71376-9. Retrieved 5 June 2013.
  10. ^ C. C. Barfoot (1994). In Black and Gold: Contiguous Traditions in Post-war British and Irish Poetry. Rodopi. p. 64. ISBN 978-90-5183-660-8. Retrieved 5 June 2013.
  11. ^ Dominic Head (26 January 2006). The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Cambridge University Press. pp. 488–. ISBN 978-0-521-83179-6. Retrieved 5 June 2013.
  12. ^ Cite error: The named reference Mason1994 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  13. ^ Cite error: The named reference Harrison2007 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  14. ^ Cite error: The named reference Byrne1997 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  15. ^ Cite error: The named reference Gray1994 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  16. ^ Cite error: The named reference Rowland2001 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  17. ^ "Runcie's error on BBC banquet". Catholic Herald. 4 August 1989.