On March 8th Media Parents will be celebrating International Women’s Day by supporting a festival of short films made by local women at the Kino-Teatr in St. Leonard’s on Sea, Sussex. Click here for the IWD Media Parents Event Film Programme, and see below for biogs. Click here for tickets.

Lisa Harmer

Lisa has curated the films for Sunday’s event. She has worked as an actor since her late teens, having trained at The Anna Scher Theatre and Actors Centre, London.  She has appeared in various continual dramas such as EastEnders, Casualty, The Bill and can also be seen on All4’s repeat showing of the iconic drama Metrosexuality, playing Peggy.

Her film Lady What Does, co-written and directed by Sara Jordan, is a dark-comedy short exploring the great bond of two Women in their 50s who, despite their differences, share a dark secret and share the load when things get messy. Lisa continues to write and act and is currently developing Lady What Does as a TV series.  https://www.lisaharmer.com/

Aisling O’Connor

Aisling is Commissioner for all BBC England-funded non-news TV which includes regional current affairs, and a slate of network and online content for the four BBC channels. Aisling has been a BBC Daytime Commissioner, a Music and Arts Commissioning Executive for BBC Two and BBC Four. She Executive Produced the BBC’s flagship investigative current affairs programme Panorama, and was a Senior News and Current Affairs Adviser in BBC Editorial Policy. She lives in Hastings.

Amy Walker

Amy champions diverse creative talent, and set up Media Parents to facilitate that. She is a factual TV Series Producer and Talent Exec and has just completed a 2-year EMBA sponsored by Channel 4. Her most recent series for Channel 4 was BAFTA-nominated. She lives in Hastings. https://www.mediaparents.co.uk/

Bindu de Stoppani

Bindu wrote and directed her first short film in 2000, THINGS I NOTICE, THINGS YOU SEE starring Michael Fassbender, followed by three other shorts including GESUNDHEIT!, THREE, and THE KISS. In 2012 she wrote and directed her first feature film JUMP (Hugofilm/Manmade Films/RSI) which won five BIFFs at the 2012 festival including Best Director and Best Feature Film. Bindu’s second feature FINDING CAMILLE premiered at the Rome Film Festival in 2017 to great acclaim and she is in now in the early stages of development on her next feature 40 AND CLIMBING (Hugofilm) which is set to shoot in 2020. http://www.bindudestoppani.com/

Calypso Cragg

Calypso is a fifteen-year-old actress, director, writer and clothing designer.  She is home educated, and lives in the South East of England. Calypso has recently released a short film called What I Saw, which she wrote, directed, edited and performed in. It has received a highly commended laurel by the Black Country Horror Shorts Film Festival and has been selected for the Lift-Off Sessions Festival.

Cheryl White

Cheryl White is a multi-award winning Writer/Director whose films have screened around the world. Her most recent film, A Lighthouse in Breaking Waves is a part-animated short which won the Fan Award 2018 at the White Whale festival (USA), and Best Sussex Short 2017 at the Crossing the Screen festival (UK).

Cheryl was a recipient of Arts Council funding for her full length play Highly Inflammable which ran as part of the Hastings Fringe Festival 2017. She is currently co-directing a feature documentary about a 92 year-old rebel and his coffin.

Claudia Kappenberg

Claudia is a performance and media artist with a background in dance, and Principal Lecturer at the University of Brighton, UK. Her work has been shown internationally across Europe, the US and the Middle East in the form of screen-based work, participatory events and site-specific performance. At the heart of her practice is an interrogation into that which makes us human. Her film Honey Hat features in the IWD Making Moving Images collection.

Recent writing has been published in Performing Process: Sharing Dance and Choreographic Practice (2018), Syncope in Performing and Visual Arts (2017), The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies (2016), and Art in Motion: Current Research in Screendance (2015).

Helen Jacey

Helen is a screenwriter, author and story consultant and the Founder and Creative Director of Shedunnit Productions, which develops female gaze content across film, TV and fiction. Shedunnit also sponsors the Women Over Fifty Film Festival Best Script Award.

Helen has worked extensively as a story consultant, working on projects with leading talent including Julia Roberts, Ben Elton, and Emma Watson. Among her many writing projects, Helen’s BBC Radio 4 Play for Today Miracle Postponed about Jean Rhys was nominated for a Mental Health in the Media Award.

Helen is the creator of Elvira Slate Investigations, featuring the first feminist 1940s detective. Jailbird Detective (which features in the Making Moving Images collection) and Chipped Pearls have been recently published by Shedunnit, and Helen is currently adapting the series for TV. www.shedunnit.com

www.shedunnit.com

Jody Sabral

Jody is an international best-selling author (I Never Lie, June 2018), award-winning crime writer (CWA Debut Dagger, 2014) and recently turned film director with her short film The Wrong Car (Oct 2018) featuring Sinead Matthews (Black Mirror, Jellyfish, The Crown) and Bill Fellows (Broadchurch, Alan Partridge, Vera).

The Wrong Car picked up second prize at the Los Angeles Television, Script and Film Festival this June 2019 and was also selected and screened at Pinewood Studios as part of LIFT OFF festival (March 2019). Jody has since written and directed her second short Helpline (June 2019). Jody is also a BBC News Editor.

Kate Grey

Writer & Director Kate Grey graduated from the London College of Printing with a BA (Hons) in Film & Video and from Goldsmiths University College with an MA in Feature Film.

Whistle…I’ll come to You is the first film in a series of short films shot in East Sussex that will form a portmanteau feature film; When Kate adapted the story for Whistle…, Kate changed all the characters to female, who, in the original short story by MR James, were men. She is currently in pre-production for the second film in this series Charlie Mawkins shooting in July 2020.

Lisa Clifford

Lisa Clifford is a British journalist and documentary filmmaker. Her film Militia Man about a Congolese warlord and his flawed trial at the International Criminal Court has screened around the world. Lisa’s latest documentary, Dad’s Coffin, is a joyful look at one unique man’s joyful stroll towards the inevitable.

https://www.facebook.com/militiamanfilm/

Nadene Ghouri

Nadene is a screenwriter, award-winning journalist and author, with two New York Times bestsellers under her belt.

When Sky Was Sea won a total of 12 festival awards including two for best drama. Https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8523740/?ref_=ttawd_awd_tt

Olga Mamonova

Olga is the creative director of Kino-Teatr and has lived in St. Leonard’s for over twenty years. She set up the cinema in 2015 with artist husband Russell Baker, and their twin daughters Dounya and Antonia are now also involved in Kino-Teatr work. A former 1913 cinema, it is now a local cultural hub.

As Kino-Teatr’s Artistic Director Olga programmes films, Documentary Festivals, Irish Film weeks, classical concerts and live theatre. A published author, Olga is also a documentary maker, and made the first documentary on the work of Russian/British artist Oleg Prokofiev, son of composer Sergei Prokofiev.

Sara Jordan

Sara has now returned to her love of the arts and is concentrating on writing and directing as well as acting after giving up a career as an actress to have a family and get a proper job.Sara co-wrote and directed Lady What Does with Lisa Harmer, and they are currently developing this film into a TV series.

Her films Pic N Mix, Planning The Funeral and The Tea Break have won awards at festivals including Best Short at the Welsh International Film Festival. The latest, Jitters, covering a woman’s struggle with anxiety, is about to hit the festivals.

https://www.flintsparkproductions.com/

In celebration of International Women’s Day (IWD), Media Parents is sponsoring a celebration of women’s filmmaking on Sunday March 8th, and we’d love you to join us. As part of the event, Media Parents Director Amy Walker will be interviewing BBC England’s Head of TV Commissioning, Aisling O’Connor.

Aisling is Commissioner for all BBC England-funded non-news TV which includes regional current affairs, and a slate of network and online content for the four BBC channels (see biog below). Aisling will be discussing both her BBC England brief, and, as it’s IWD, we’ll cover flexible working and the impact of motherhood on career.

The event, which features 10 shorts by regional women directors, has been curated by Writer / Actor Lisa Harmer. To download the full programme click here IWD Media Parents Event Film Programme, click here for tickets.

If you would like to join us for lunch at Kino-Teatr in St. Leonard’s on Sea before the film programme, please email events@mediaparents.com. Please purchase your tickets for the cinema event separately.

Aisling O’Connor

Head of TV Commissioning, BBC England

Aisling O’Connor is the recently appointed Head of TV Commissioning for a newly re-structured BBC England, with a brief to re-invent the TV offer for the BBC England audience. She is based in Birmingham but works across England.

Aisling oversees BBC England’s non-news TV portfolio including long-running current affairs programme Inside Out. She will also develop opportunities to commission more TV and online content for English audiences by working with other parts of the BBC.

BBC England includes all the BBC’s regional and local services in the English regions such as local radio and regional TV.

The Head of TV Commissioning role for BBC England was created to develop a new approach to content commissioning for TV and online and to deliver content across other genres. Currently the BBC only broadcasts current affairs or light factual programmes aimed specifically at audiences in the English regions.

Aisling O’Connor, who began her career at LWT, has worked at every level of TV production including a stint as a presenter of consumer affairs programme Watchdog.

Aisling says: “I’m looking forward to working across England, delivering content which reflects the lives and stories of our diverse audience, from Hull to Hastings, Newcastle to Newquay.”

Helen Thomas, Director of BBC England, says: “We’ve created this role to work within the BBC to find opportunities to create more content for people in England across a broader range of genres.

“With her huge network of contacts, and excellent relationships with senior people across the industry, Aisling brings a wealth of experience, enthusiasm and innovation that will help deliver content that appeals to English audiences and reflects communities right across the country.”

Aisling started her career in television 25 years ago at London Weekend Television and has worked at all levels of production. She has been a BBC Daytime Commissioner, a Music and Arts Commissioning Executive for BBC Two and BBC Four, an Executive Producer on the BBC’s flagship investigative current affairs programme Panorama and a Senior News and Current Affairs Adviser in BBC Editorial Policy.

While a BBC Daytime Commissioner, Aisling looked after 17 series concurrently including The Housing Enforcers, Great British Menu, Wanted Down Under, Heir Hunters and Bargain Hunt. As a Music and Arts Commissioning Executive she looked after programmes as diverse as The Secret of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony for BBC Two and The Quizeum with Griff Rhys Jones for BBC Four.

The two highlights of her career to date were executive producing U2 Innocence and Experience Live in Paris and flying to Chile (economy) to make a speech about public service broadcasting. Aisling is from Dublin and lives in Hastings.

click here for tickets

I’m a director who is about to embark on my first feature documentary, writes Sherice Griffiths, and I’m looking for advice and/or collaborators via Media Parents.

I’ve got a wonderful story about a female MMA fighter (Mixed Martial Arts AKA Cage Fighting) who is now 3 months pregnant and plans to continue her martial arts training throughout her pregnancy. I’m planning on following her journey to see what impact the training has on her physical and mental wellbeing and whether or not it can be sustained.

Sofie plans to gradually reduce the amount of sparring she does month to month but wants to stay active until the very last moment. She’s agreed on exclusive access to myself and a small crew, and we’re also able to film at the places she trains. I’m keen to film with her family, training partners, coaches and doctors to get their view on whether they think such an extreme sport should be continued through pregnancy.

I filmed a sizzle with Sofie about a year ago when we made a short video about the relationship between sports and mental health and she’s great on camera. If anyone wants to get involved or find out more drop me a message as I think it’s going to be a really exciting project, and we start filming on 23rd February 2020.

Here’s a link to the 2-minute doc we made with Sofie,  https://vimeo.com/322195307/d6ed0b3346