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John Boorman, one of Britain’s great visionaries, turned 90 in January. “All movies are bad; mine are often acutely embarrassing,” he once said. Still, how many directors have shown his range? Starting out in the early 1960s with state-of-the-nation social documentaries for the BBC, he moved on to beady-eyed pop romances (Catch Us If You Can), spiritual quests (Excalibur), charming Second World War dramas (Hope and Glory) and hard-boiled gangster films (The General). Sceptical both of nationalism and social realism, he has made features in Burma, South Africa and Brazil. In the 1980s, he helped to galvanise the Irish film industry by directing funds towards Neil Jordan’s debut, Angel. The following decade, he helped set up the sorely missed film journal Projections.