Honorary Graduates 2012 no.1 – Rex Bloomstein

Acclaimed film maker Rex Bloomstein has built up a solid relationship with the University since becoming an Honorary Visiting Fellow at our Department of Criminology. Last year, the director of Lifers and Strangeways gave a fascinating guest lecture about his experience of making Holocaust documentaries for the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

This year, he is back to collect an Honorary Degree.

Born in Devon in 1942, Bloomstein cut his teeth with the BBC in 1970 with cinema verité All In A Day studies of British life. He has exposed realities of prison life and addressed aspects of the British penal system previously closed to public scrutiny.

Since then, he has produced and directed a number of acclaimed historical studies for television, including Traitors to Hitler, Martin Luther King – The Legacy, Auschwitz and the Allies, The Gathering and Attack on the Liberty.

He has produced several other films exploring the Holocaust, including Liberation, The Longest Hatred and KZ, which has been described as ‘the first post-modern Holocaust documentary’.