Maggie Mackay has worked as a freelance programmer and writer, script reader, Hollywood Assistant, on-set Production Coordinator, and Senior Coordinator of the Sundance Documentary Fund. She joined Film Independent in 2003, where she is Director of Nominations for the Film Independent [...]
Good example… It is 5am or thereabouts. I am typing this article one-handed, whilst feeding my 6 month old baby girl Melody some pureed parsnips that I cooked myself earlier this morning (not organic, but give me some credit, I did [...]
I'm Rob Speranza, married and father of one lovely little boy. As a production manager, line producer and producer, sometimes you need to go where the work is, like any other member of the crew. Sometimes, though, you need to be [...]
I am a producer and a mum of two. I could share so many stories of personal and professional hilarity/woe/embarrassment/pride that have resulted from my desire to “have it all”. In fact, once I get started on this subject I tend [...]
I couldn’t have made the movies I made without having kids. Academy Award-winning filmmaker Susanne Bier spoke to us from the shoot of The Night Manager (2016) in Morocco. A member of the Dogme 95 group, Bier is the model of a transnational [...]
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, [...]
Having my daughter, Nikita, is the best thing that has happened to me, personally and professionally. It is often assumed that having children halts careers but she made my career. Alex Kalymnios is a film and and TV drama director whose recent credits include the Lifetime/Sony TV movie [...]
When I was 9, my cousin Laura and I were brought onto the set of my mother Susanne Bier’s film The One and Only (1999) as extras. It was for the film’s last sequence, a wedding, and while I don’t remember [...]
It's six in the morning in a basement apartment in Cannes. Birds are singing in the garden and in the room next to me a baby is gurgling. My producer Rachel Robey and I are here to announce our feature film [...]
Being a freelance worker has a multitude of benefits, but working from home while my partner was on maternity leave was one I hadn’t really thought about until it happened. Working with my sleeping newborns slung across my chest, playing with [...]
I had my children in the 90s and I was working as a freelance film editor at the time. I found it very challenging to work the long hours required and care for small children. When they were very small it [...]
So – I don’t have kids myself, but as an independent producer I have to hire people who do. I also have A CREATIVE MUM who worked throughout my childhood (and adulthood – she hasn’t stopped) of whom I’m impossibly proud. [...]
I am a director, and father of two sons, currently aged 5 and 3. I was always determined not to let my insane choice of a career stop me from starting a family. I knew a few people who were constantly [...]
I have the perfect baby, with a freshly-baked biscuity smell, radiating joy and All That Is Good. When my arms become her cradle she sparks endorphins that buoy me beyond ecstasy. She is the most blessed of blessings, most miraculous of [...]
Don’t Look East My first feature as a screenwriter starts with a woman describing a sex act on the back of a motorcycle. My eight year old son accepts that he won’t be able to attend my screenings but whenever I [...]
I wish I'd known I wanted to be a filmmaker years ago. You know, like one of those kids who taught themselves to edit on hooked-up VCRs and has been thinking in terms of shots all their lives. Who wrote their first screenplay [...]
I'm fairly new to this malarkey. Round about one year in and counting. This whole writer-mother scenario. The latest no-budget action movie coming to a cinema very near you if we can get the distribution sorted. In some ways nothing has [...]
As a screenwriter, obviously it is a lot easier to combine work and childcare than if you are working in production as you spend much of your time working at home BUT what is difficult and frustrating is the increasing amount [...]
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 [...]