The challenges of trying to combine motherhood with a creative career hit home for me a couple of years ago when my older daughter, then four, was doing a project in nursery about summer holidays. She informed me that all her [...]
A deeper dialogue needs to happen between employers and employees of what the day-to-day responsibilities carers undertake alongside their film or television work actually entail. Only then will we start to see a little empathy begin to bloom. In a world [...]
Shakyra Dowling founded her own successful theatre production company in the 1990s, and then went on to work for a well known producer, assisting in the casting of several West End shows, before moving to the film and TV industry as [...]
Making a film is hard. Making a film and having a baby is a lot harder! Back in 2006, I was a busy freelancer working on popular factual shows for broadcasters like the BBC, Channel 4 and Discovery, travelling the world and [...]
Men and women are different. Whether because of our genes or conditioning. We experience, at home and on the street, playground or onscreen, different qualities prized in females and males. Big cinema stories internationally exported most obviously in the superhero franchises, [...]
Beeban Kidron, Baroness Kidron, OBE, is a filmmaker, activist and campaigner. Her early films, Carry Greenham Home and Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, are key texts of British and feminist cinema. She subsequently moved to Hollywood, making films including Used People, To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, [...]
Deborah Sathe is Head of Talent Development and Production at Film London. She oversees groundbreaking domestic and international projects which champion new talent and audiences. Last year she relaunched the award-winning feature film fund Film London Microwave, and through its initial round has [...]
The first time I ever noticed sexism in the workplace is when I was on set as a production co-ordinator in reality television – real sexism and racism and homophobia, I’d never seen anything like it, but that’s not to say [...]
I wrote mainly for TV and radio drama when I had my kids. I took a few months’ maternity leave with my first son, and had to turn down a couple of cool work opportunities because I just didn’t think I [...]
I have wanted to be a Writer (capital W, always) my entire life. I remember forming stories in my head as a child and dictating them to my grandmother because I couldn’t write yet. I started with fiction as a kid, [...]
It's always assumed that the writer is the one with the most flexibility because they can write when they want, around family commitments. Not true. There are never ANY concessions that you might have family commitments when you get notes Friday [...]
I work in television arts documentaries as a producer-director. I worked my way into this position before I had children by working for several years as a researcher and assistant producer. I got pregnant while I was editing my first ever [...]