Film-making
He is the author of The Biko Inquest, a play based on the inquest in South Africa into the death in prison of the black leader, Steve Biko. The play, originally written for television, and then later adapted for the Royal Shakespeare Company, pioneered the use of drama in current affairs. Blair directed the play Off Broadway in New York, starring Fritz Weaver and Philip Bosco, where it received considerable critical acclaim and ran for four months. After successful productions around the world it was produced on the London stage, and also for television, starring Albert Finney. A version of the play with an all black cast was staged in Nigeria in 1979 directed by and starring writer, poet and playwright, the Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka.
As a Producer/Director on Tonight, This Week and TV Eye, Blair covered domestic and foreign political and economic stories including the first programme about the 1976 Soweto uprising for British television, There Is No Crisis!, and coverage of wars in the Middle East, Cambodia and Angola. As a war correspondent/feature writer he has contributed to The Times, The Sunday Times, The Observer, The Economist and The New York Times. He has also been a book reviewer for the Los Angeles Times.
Having created one of the first independent production companies in England with Spitting Image Productions, Blair set up his own company, Jon Blair Films, in 1987. The company's first production was a feature documentary co-produced with BBC1 which Jon produced, directed and wrote, Do You Mean There Are Still Real Cowboys?. It tells the story of a year in the life of the small cow town in Wyoming where the actress Glenn Close's parents now live. The feature length version was narrated by Robert Redford who, before agreeing to work on the film, told Close and Blair that he thought it was “one of the best films about the American West” he had ever seen.
Blair then wrote and produced a drama documentary for Channel Four, The Kimberley Carlile Inquiry based on Louis Blom-Cooper’s inquiry into the circumstances surrounding that infamous case of child abuse. The production starred Julie Covington, Brian Cox, Kenneth Cranham, Daniel Day Lewis, Trevor Eve, Alan Howard, Anna Massey, Diana Quick, Zoe Wanamaker and others. His follow-up documentary on child protection in Coventry was later used extensively in training service providers. Another of Blair's documentaries on medical/social issues, made for ITV on the misuse of the drug Haloperidol in prisons and police stations, has been cited as a good example of how to approach complex medical issues in popular television.
Other productions included an early example of a formatted documentary, Thighs, Lies & Beauty, an investigation of the myths and reality surrounding the beauty business for BBC1; The Art of Tripping, a 2 hour dramatised documentary for Channel Four on drug taking and the arts starring Bernard Hill; a Frontline (Channel Four) current affairs film featuring the story of South African Jann Turner whose father was assassinated in front of her when she was 13, and as an adult returns to South Africa to look at the arguments for revenge versus reconciliation in the new South Africa; Steven Spielberg on "Schindler's List" and Tom Hanks & The World According to Gump, both for the BBC; and Wagner vs Wagner, for Channel Four, featuring Richard Wagner's great grandson on the composer's political and cultural legacy of anti-semitism and race hatred.
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