Tutors
Mick Csáky – documentary film
writer, producer and director
Since leaving the Film & Television School of The Royal College of Art in 1972 Mick Csáky has directed more than 100 documentary films and produced a further 600 productions – all for broadcast television, with some for cinema and DVD release - mostly in the areas of human stories, history, current affairs, biography, music and arts.
His productions have won many international awards, including a US National Emmy and an International Emmy. In 1998 he was awarded a Fellowship by the Royal Television Society “in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the furtherance of television.”
He is Chief Executive and Creative Director of his own independent production company Antelope South Limited. To visit his company website and see his CV: www.antelope.co.uk
He is a trustee of One World Media: www.oneworldmedia.org.uk
To view three of Mick Csáky's past documentary film productions click on the following links:
- “THE GODMOTHER OF ROCK & ROLL:
Sister Rosetta Tharpe” (2011) A one-hour documentary about the
influential music of African-American gospel singer Sister Rosetta
Tharpe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyk5mvZH40Q - “GEIKO GIRL” (2000) A one-hour documentary about a
geisha girl working within the Gion district of Kyoto, Japan:
http://vimeo.com/47315749 - “CARAVANS OF GOLD” (1983) Episode 3 of the 8 x one-hour
documentary series AFRICA presented by the historian Basil Davidson:
http://vimeo.com/47520464
James
Dawson is an award-winning freelance factual and documentary filmmaker. He made
the first Secret Millionaire broadcast which won the Rose D’or. He also worked
on the BAFTA and Grierson winning documentary series The Trust. Recently James directed Making Faces about the work of the Maxiofacial Lab at QE Hospital
in Birmingham and before that a BBC documentary Up In Flames: Mr Reeves and the Riots following eighty-year-old Maurice Reeves, owner
of Croydon's Reeves Furniture store, who had to watch his 144-year-old family
business go up in flames in the 2011 riots. The film follows him in the
aftermath of that night. Time Out said: “Against
all odds, a genuinely uplifting tale.”
James devised and taught on London Metropolitan University’s MA modules in documentary film-making; he’s also taught at UCL on the introduction to documentary short courses and tutored on DV Talent’s two day camera intro workshops.
Mark Le Fanu (Senior Tutor in Film History) film history at the National Film and Television School
and, for a number of years, at the European Film College in Denmark .
Latterly
(along with stints as an English and History tutor) he was on the media
faculty at Aarhus University. He is a long-term contributor to Sight & Sound and to the French monthly Positif. Research
interests, besides documentary, include Russian,
French and Japanese cinema, and the cinema of the silent epoch. He is
the author of the first English-language study of Tarkovsky (BFI Books
1987). A book on Kenji Mizoguchi (Mizoguchi and Japan, BFI Books, 2005) was nominated for the Krazsna-Krausz
Moving Image Book of the Year. He is currently engaged in writing a short, essayistic study about cinema and religion.
Vikram Jayanti, Senior Tutor in documentary is
filmmaker with a host of high profile documentary films to his credit, and
countless awards. Two of his films, for which he has producer credits, have
received Academy Awards for Best Feature Documentary; the 1997 blockbuster When
We Were Kings and 2005's Born Into Brothels. As a director, his feature
documentaries include: The Agony and The Ecstasy of Phil Spector (winner, Royal
Television Society, Best Arts Documentary, 2009), James Ellroy’s Feast of Death
(winner, RTS, 2001), Game Over: Kasparov & the Machine, The Darkness of
Abraham Lincoln, and Snowblind. As producer, his feature docs include: The Man
Who Bought Mustique, Innocents Abroad and In Her Own Time. While many of his
films have theatrical release (with 5 premiering at the Toronto International
Film Festival, and 5 at the Sundance Film Festival), most are initially
commissioned for television broadcast in the UK & US, including Sick Jokes,
The Christmas Truce, Golden Globes: Hollywood’s Dirty Little Secret, Britney
Spears Saved My Life, Rolf Harris Paints His Dream, and the first three series
of The Hairy Bikers Cookbook. Having worked for 8 years in the 1980s at the
Center for Visual Anthropology at the University of Southern California, Jayanti’s
films are all informed by anthropological and ethnographic values, but he is
best known for "his gonzo choice of subjects" and “high-profile
documentaries with his signature combination of eccentricity and
amazement."
Lasse
Johansson, is a self-shooting documentary director
and media trainer with a background in fine art and sociology. Apart from
making his own independent films Lasse works as a freelance cameraman and
editor making films and online content for a variety of charities, non-profit
and educational organisations. He also works internationally as a media trainer
on projects aiming to empower local voices and media organisations. Over the past 4 years Lasse’s work has
explored issues around urban regeneration in Hackney, the part of London where he
also lives. This work has produced a large-scale public art installation, a
publication and a number of short films documenting the lives of local people. Lasse’s interest in film also include how
the process of filmmaking in itself can be used as an educational tool to help
marginalised groups unlock, discuss and express issues that impact on their
lives. For this purpose Lasse is currently exploring different ways of using
film when working with groups of young people not in full-time training or
work.
Olly Lambert graduated in English Literature from Durham University, and worked his way up as a researcher and Assistant Producer of documentaries before making his first film for Channel 4 in the UK in 1999. "Four Weeks to Find a Girlfriend” was a candid account of his own search for love as a London 20-something, and was nominated for a Grierson Awards for Best Newcomer, as well as a BAFTA for Best New Director. Since then, he has filmed, produced and directed over 25 documentaries for broadcasters the BBC, Channel 4 and Sky1, specialising in intimate films about ordinary people caught in extraordinary situations, often in areas of conflict. His films include “The Tea Boy of Gaza” (BBC, UK), a moving portrayal of a young boy who dodges bullets to support his family among the patients and staff at the biggest hospital in the Gaza strip: “Battle Hospital” (Channel 4, UK), for which he was embedded at a British military field hospital during the invasion of Iraq in 2003; and most recently, "Syria Across the Lines", a shocking account of life on both sides of a sectarian front line in rural Syria. He has won a number of international awards, including the Foreign Press Association award of “Journalist of the Year”.
Havana
Marking, a
British journalist and filmmaker, Havana Marking’s latest feature doc Smash & Grab: the Story of the Pink Panthers,
has its festival premier in Nov 2012 and will be released in cinemas in 2013.
Funded by the BFI and BBC Storyville this part animated film reveals the world
of a Balkan diamond thieving mafia.
Her first feature documentary, Afghan Star, won both the Directing and Audience awards in Sundance 2009, The Grierson award for ‘best doc on a contemporary issue’ and the Prix Italia. She has subsequently made films for HBO (Silencing the Song), and More4 (Vote Afghanistan!) and Channel 4 (Michael Johnson: Survival of the fastest). She was recently voted a “Reel Screen Doc Hot shot 2012’: representing the future of feature-length non-fiction.
An Executive Producer on numerous films, notably To Hell and Back Again (dir Danfung Dennis), which was nominated for an Academy Award 2012. Marking is one director of the British independent film company Roast Beef Productions, whose ‘business plan’ was only to: “Get a studio, fill it with talented people and see what happens”… Finally her articles and photographs have been published in the Guardian, The Observer and the Telegraph.
Chris Martin began filmmaking
by shooting and editing skateboard videos, before heading out to
Central and South America to work as a photojournalist, contributing to
a number of UK publications. On his return he studied anthropology at
UCL and started working for television production companies. In a bid
to learn as much as possible he alternatively worked in the editorial,
production and technical sides of the industry.
He became a producer and director of photography, producing and
shooting documentary films for Channel 4 and the Discovery Channel from
Guatemala to Turkey. This work included: Location Producer - The Search
[Guatemala and Peru] (Channel 4, 2006), Shooting
Producer - Worlds Greenest Homes (National Geographic Channel, 2007)
and Director of Photography - The Woman Who Talks To Animals (Discovery
Channel, 2008). In 2008, after receiving funding from the Channel 4
young directors programme, Chris decided to set
up his own company and embark on a project to re-live George Orwell’s
1928 study of urban poverty: Down and out in Paris and London. This
phenomenological approach led to him working in hotel kitchens in Paris
and living for six months on the streets of London,
all the time documenting his experiences. The experiential technique
led to an interest in applied anthropology and filmmaking. Chris
continues to make documentaries, music videos, short films and work as a
cinematographer.
Ben Pollard, the
additional course tutor, has worked as a professional editor and
cameraman in
TV for the past seven years. He has shot and directed his own creative
films.
He is experienced in a variety of different styles and genres and has
credits
with major UK broadcasters including BBC,
ITV and Channel 4. He was the main cameraman and editor for “The
Politics Show”
(Juniper Productions/BBC1) in 2007 and he was an editor on “60 Minute
Makeover”
(ITV) in 2008. Ben lived in Buenos Aires in 2009 and edited an animated
series for Fox UK and Italy. He has recently filmed documentaries for
screening on Channel4 and BBC3.
Dr. Michael Yorke (Senior Tutor), is an
anthropologist who specialised in South Asian tribal people at SOAS. In
mid-career he joined the BBC Ethnographic Film Unit. With a mission to empower
the indigenous voice, he made a number of award-winning films for the BBC2
‘Under The Sun’ series in the 80s and 90s. His “Dossers” film was selected for
a BAFTA nomination. “Dust and Ashes” won the National Geographic Earthwatch
Award. “The End of Eden”, about the demise of the Marsh Arabs under Saddam
Hussein, won the United Nations Environmental Award, and “Eunuchs – India’s
Third Gender” won the San Francisco Golden Gate Award and was broadcast
worldwide. After becoming a freelancer, he masterminded Channel 4’s big series
“Kumbh Mela – The Greatest Show on Earth” in 2001, which received 6
international awards. It was broadcast daily ‘as-if-live’ for three weeks. Made
with a team of 67, it heralded a new format of event-driven ethnographic film
on primetime television. He has also directed documentaries for National
Geographic, Discovery Channel, Arte, Canal+, Carlton and NHK. With the
increasing commercialisation of television, Michael now provides masterclasses
for the new generation of concerned filmmakers. He continues to make his own
personally motivated single operator observational films for the narrowcast
market.
