Sorry about the corny headline, but it does seem appropriate as tomorrow I fly to Casablanca, where the British Council in Morocco will be hosting a private screening of “Bastards”. Charities, human rights organisations, think tanks, academics and lawyers have been invited, to discuss the issues raised by the film. It’s a personal story, of […]
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Thrilling to read a 29 October report about the United Nations Population Fund hosting an event in Morocco, to talk about the taboo of sex outside marriage, exactly the subject of my film “Bastards”. The women in the photo are wearing masks to hide their identities, but in my film all but one of the […]
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TV is a rough and tumble business where there are more great ideas than slots to be filled, and development hell really does exist if your great ideas don’t fit in with what the commissioners are looking for. When you get lucky and you get that hard-won commission (at least in the BBC documentary world […]
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Just back from shooting a film about the Berber Marriage Festival in Morocco’s High Atlas. A wonderful privilege to spend a week with Mohamed and Fatema, who met three months ago for one hour and decided to marry. They invited us to join them as they met for only the third time, to tie the […]
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I never imagined that I would ever be involved in presenting awards to graduating students, but here I am, a Governor of the University of South Wales presiding over the Caerleon campus graduation ceremony with the Vice Chancellor, Julie Lydon, on 6 September 2013. As it happens, this was the first occasion on which both […]
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I am so sad to hear that Seamus Heaney has died aged 74. His powerful precise poems have been inspirational to me since I was a student. In Elegy he wrote a great truth: “The way we are living, timorous or bold, will have been our life.” He wrote with such humanity, about farmers and […]
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I’m about to start applying to film festivals now “Bastards” is almost ready to show to the world, starting in early 2014. Elliott Grove who started the Raindance Festival in London in 1993 has some excellent advice to offer indie film makers about festivals. Watch him here…. http://www.raindance.org/the-elliot-grove-interview-at-pinewood-studios-toronto
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Those of us who work in British television read “Broadcast” magazine, and this week it reports that many commissioners treat indie producers discourteously by cancelling meetings at the last minute. This has been going on for years for both indies and in-house producers too – when I was Head of Network Development at BBC Wales […]
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I’ve been on the Board of Governors of Newport University for two years. It’s been a time of massive upheavals for everyone involved in Higher Education with tuition fee increases and a change in the way universities are funded, making students responsible for paying more of the cost of their education. In Wales, we’ve had […]
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If you like the idea of singing in an iconic musical venue and raising money for a great cause at the same time, then why not come to Mega Messiah? You get to sing Handel’s masterpiece in a chorus with hundreds of other people, sitting in the stalls of the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff, […]
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