Northern Film School / Leeds Beckett University (NFS/LBU)

Following the success of his first film, the award winning My Macondo in 1990, Dan co-founded and co-owned the independent production company Tall Stories, producing critically acclaimed films by emerging, first time writer/directors. Films produced included: Andrew Kottings award winning Gallivant, Jasmin- Dizdar’s Cannes winner Beautiful People and Ntshaveni Wa Luruli’s, Silver Bear at Berlin film The Wooden Camera.

As a writer/director Dan has written a number of commissioned and spec screenplays for Stephen Frears, Amblin Pictures, Channel Four Films, Working Title and Academy Awards winner Chris Menges; and has made a short film or two, including Maisie’s Catch for Channel Four and the Arts Council.

In 2008, he wrote and produced Nicolas Roeg’s last film Puffball starring Kelly Reilly, Miranda Richardson and Donald Sutherland.

Currently Dan is writing At Sunset a WW1 fantasy feature for Amerique Film in Montreal, and studying for a PhD (exploring a radical, new platform for telling stories); he is editing a documentary poem All About Everything: The State of Things in Five Uneasy Chapters and is about to re-release his first film My Macondo on DVD.

Dan has been nominated three times by his students for a teaching award.

Anna worked as a freelance editor on documentaries for Channel Four before joining Leeds-based media facilities and production company Hall Place Studios in 1988.

In 1999, she helped develop Frigid Films with Bekki Wray Rogers making short films. In 1999 she further developed her skills as a writer while working as a centre director for the Arvon Foundation at Lumb Bank in West Yorkshire. She later worked at the University of Bolton before joining the Northern Film School at Leeds Beckett University in 2014.

Anna is currently studying for a PhD in transmedia production and the form’s ability to explore narratives relating to the complexities of the Northern Irish experience.

Her current interests are writing for transmedia and multi-platform production. She has worked with Bellyfeel Productions to write and produce Bolton Storyworld, a transmedia prototype made with students from the University of Bolton which won the Learning on Screen Award in 2016.

Her academic interests include screenwriting, transmedia narratives, Northern Irish cinema and filmmaking practice.

She has been recently published in the Journal of Media Practice, World Cinema and the Visual Arts, and the Journal of Screenwriting and she regularly presents papers at Conferences including in 2015 MIX03 (Bath Spa) Screenwriting Research Network (London) and in 2014 at CEMP (Prague), The New Voices (Galway), and TFTV: Exploring Conceptual and Creative Practices in Theatre, Film and Television (York). Anna’s recent plays and scripts include Red Branch Heroes and Bolton Storyworld, and she also co-wrote The Aviator. Mini-Cab, a feature film script, and Amazo-Bra, a short animation directed by Rozi Fuller, both received support from funding agency Screen Yorkshire.

Annabelle Pangborn trained as a musician and composer at the London College of Music, and as a filmmaker at the Royal College of Art. She has worked extensively in film and television as a composer and sound designer on award winning drama, documentary, dance film and experimental animation. Collaborations include work with Penny Woolcock (The Death of Klinghoffer) Sarah Turner (Cut, London Birds Can’t Fly), Beeban Kidron (Alice Through The Looking Glass; Murder) Simon Pummell (Secret Joy; Temptation of Sainthood; Butcher’s Hook;) and Ilya Khrzhanovskiy (DAU). She is also a writer and has produced films through her own production company and released through Columbia Tri Star (Stung, dir. S. Williams) and the BFI (Once Seen, dir. S. Williams).

Annabelle’s research focuses on the theatre of haptics and performative narratives alongside a developing study of ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) and the textural power of the human voice.

She has been a guest speaker and consultant for the School of Sound in London, Europe and Asia. She was formerly Head of Editing, Sound and Music progressing and Head of Full Time Curriculum at the National Film and Television School, UK. She has taught throughout Europe and America including ifs International Filmschule, Cologne; ECITV, Cuba; Binger FilmLab, Amsterdam; Porto Digital, Brazil; La Femis, Paris; NRK, Oslo; KASK University of the Arts, Ghent; and Med Film Factory, Jordan. She was appointed Director of the Northern Film School in 2017.

Lewis joined the Northern Film School in 2000. He led the development of the BA programme within the school alongside the established MA programme and teaches Experimental Film and Critical Practice within the BA and MA programmes.

His recent Doctoral research was completed in 2014 when he was awarded a Professional Doctorate in Fine Art from the University of East London. Lewis produces films, photographic work and sculptural objects that consider a broad historical relationship between class (working men), family and forms of representation. His work has been exhibited in the UK and internationally.

Lewis is interested in the ways we gather, reflect on, develop and tell stories, create narrative intersections and illusions and treasure material objects and their images as contributors to social and subjective memory. He has an active interest in the history of male clothing, costume as narrative, sartorial codes, conventions and social groupings. His skills encompass directing, editing and compositing, camera, sound recording, tailoring and sewing.

Lewis is also a qualified aeronautical engineer. Selected examples of his exhibitions, commissions and symposiums include:

One Way or Another II, Aberdeen, Scotland (2013);
Directional Forces, Artoll, Germany (2012);
Concretum Dilston Grove, London (2011);
Sensory Urbanism Conference, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow (2007);
Open 24hours, DNerve lab, Museum Night, Amsterdam (2003);
European media art festival (film work) Osnabruck, Germany selected program (2000);
Millennial Minutes miniature film and video (film work) touring show, UK (2000);
Documentary Evidence (we are not your audience) Babel digital arts project, commissioned by Lighthouse Brighton and Southeast Art, 35mm film portraits, screened before main features on four screens at the Odeon in Hastings from July to August 2002.

Following a Fine Art degree in painting and sculpture, Malcolm went on to study at the National Film & Television School.

A renowned director of feature films and television film dramas, both here and in the US. His credits as director and screenwriter include: multi-BAFTA award winning A Private Function, The Revengers’ Comedies with Helena Bonham Carter, Sam Neill and Kristin Scott Thomas, Out Cold, with John Lithgow, Teri Garr, Randy Quaid and Bruce McGill.

Most recently, the film ‘Meeting Spencer’ featuring Jeffrey Tambor and Melinda McGraw won an award at the Milano International Film Festival. Malcolm’s TV films include; ‘Monsignor Renard’, ‘The Virgin in the Ice’ and ‘Days at the Beach’. A long-standing member of the Directors Guild of America, BAFTA, Directors UK, Malcolm was also founding chair of the UK’s DGGB Director’s Awards.

Malcolm has a strong commitment to education in film, challenging and supporting young and emerging film makers. He has taught at the following institutions; the National Film & Television School, the LA Film School, the Royal College of Arts, the University of Creative Arts, the Actor’s Centre and Escuela Internacional de Cine y Television (EICTV) in Cuba. In addition he has worked at the University of Westminster where he devised and founded a master’s degree program for direction in film and TV. He also devised and led on the multi pathway MA Film Production course at Arts University Bournemouth.

Current directing projects include; ‘La Nuit De La Bête Noires’, an improvised film, ‘BHINDI’, a film set in India in the 30’s that tells the story of a child of the Empire, and ‘IRENE’, a further film with his long time producing partner George Braunstein, to be based on the experiences, and recollections in Irene Gut Opdyke’s biography `In My Hands’.

Philip Robertson is an internationally renowned Cinematographer. He trained at the Russian State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow (VIGIK) and is a graduate of the Northern Film School.

Philip has an impressive International body of work ranging from feature films, TV dramas, commercials to documentaries. The drama strand of his film and television career covers most genres and budgets, from gritty Northern comedy such as Ideal (Jonny Vegas, Best Comedy at the Royal Television Society Awards), costume dramas such as Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Gemma Arterton, Eddie Redmayne) and Larkrise to Candleford, through to single dramas such as BAFTA winning Zig Zag Love director by Gillies McKinnon and a range of mainstream Hollywood productions.

As a cinematographer, Philip has won numerous national and international awards for his work, which include two prestigious Kodak Vision awards for cinematography; one for his first feature film Beyond the Ocean (2000) and the other for the critically acclaimed and BAFTA winning Frozen (2005).

Other notably projects Philip has worked on include You and I (2011) directed by Roland Joffé and Rokland (2011) directed by Martin Thorsson. Rokland received four Eddas awards nominations, Iceland’s version of the Oscars, including one for best cinematography.

Most recently a film which Phillip was Cinematographer on titled Shok received an Oscar nomination for Best Live Action Short Film (2016).

Mark began his visual career as a widely-published reportage photographer before studying Cinematography at the National Film and Television School in the early 1990s. He joined the Northern Film School in 2012. His cinematography has taken him all over the world working on a variety of genres, including dramas, commercials, documentaries, music videos and viral videos. Many of his projects have been critically acclaimed and award winning; BAFTA, Royal Television Society, Broadcast, Promax and Grierson awards among others.

Mark continues to shoot regularly, with recent projects including two period dramas for artist Jasmina Cibic’s Pavilion Of Slovenia at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Additional cinematography on; Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi’s documentary The 50 Year Argument which premiered in 2014 at the Sheffield Doc/Fest; Alex Gibney’s Finding Fela, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013; and on We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, which was nominated for a BAFTA in 2014.

Other credits include the documentaries Saying It For The Girls (BAFTA finalist), and China Power: The Great Chinese Art Revolution (C4 True Stories, HDFEST winner), the dramas Life for Daniel and Cash in Hand and many commercials and music clips.

As a Cinematographer, Mark has a strong interest in the emerging role of the Director of Imaging. Since arriving at the Northern Film School, he has brought students on a number of his shoots and overseen a major camera and lighting re-equipment programme. He has gained the PGCHE University Lecturers post-graduate qualification, been awarded Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and has been nominated for three teaching awards by his students.

Starting out in 2D drawn animation, Sarah worked on both commercial and independent productions. After completing her postgraduate studies at the National Film & Television School, she worked as a promo director, combining live-action with digital and traditional animation. Her clients included the BBC, HTV, Palm Pictures, Parlophone and EMI Records.

As writer and director of award-winning personal films, her work has been screened at all the main international animation festivals and broadcast in the UK and Europe. With an interest in expanded cinema, Sarah also curates and exhibits in gallery spaces and non-conventional settings that have recently included a willow globe in Powys, an abandoned furniture factory in Berlin and on the back of an old sheet in a wood .

Sarah joined The Northern Film School in 2007.

After training in stills photography, the kind that requires you to use a darkroom and enlarger, Tunji commenced work as a documentary photographer shooting projects in India, Cuba and Spain, at the same time studying at the University of Westminster and gaining a degree in contemporary media practice

From there, he attended the Northern Film School earning a Masters in Film Production (cinematography). His freelance career as a cinematographer and lighting cameraman in the UK included documentaries, short films, corporates and promos – some of which have been broadcast on HBO, BBC, and ITV.

Tunji has a total of 12 years lecturing in cinematography at the Northern Film School, plus an additional three years on the MA Film Drama course at Salford University.

In 2013 he moved to Nigeria to work in “Nollywood” as a freelance cinematographer and lighting cameraman shooting documentaries and corporates for clients including MTV, Bloomberg, The Africa Channel and Edelman’s.

Tunji has acquired vast experience filming in Africa including Ghana, Benin, Togo, Uganda, Senegal as well as Nigeria.

In addition he has shot three features films in Nigeria as DoP, one of which was the award winning “Ojuju” voted by the BBC Arts Show as one of the best horror movies to come out of Africa in 2015, and a six part African fairytale based on Cinderella. Other work includes being a Location Fixer working for BBC3’s “Survivors” series and for ITV corporate.

Gabrielle Russell is a writer and director of award winning short films. She is a graduate of the National Film & Television School UK, currently developing a slate of features.

David is a senior lecturer specialising in editing, colour grading and VFX. Before entering film education, David worked around the world as an editor, colourist and VFX artist. During his career, he has worked with all the major broadcasters, including the BBC, ITV, Channel Four and Sky, doing feature editing as well as working on documentaries, promotions, title sequences and on-air graphics.

He has also worked on a wide variety of commercials, feature films and pop promos as a colourist and digital film consultant.

Alongside his specialist teaching in post-production, David supervises film production in the BA (Hons) Filmmaking programme during the final year and consults on MA films during the post-production stage.

David still works as a colourist and consultant in the film and television industry.

Robert Shail has been in academia for more than twenty years. Following completion of his doctorate with Exeter University, on masculinity in 1960s British cinema, he joined the University of Wales as a lecturer in film studies. He subsequently became head of department at Lampeter and then senior lecturer at Trinity St David.

As well as extensive experience of teaching in film, media and popular culture, Robert has published widely on post-war British cinema, comic books and more recently children’s media. His publications include a study of director Tony Richardson for Manchester University Press and his earlier book on Welsh actor/producer Stanley Baker was supported by an AHRC award. He was also awarded a Leverhulme Fellowship to research the history of the Children’s Film Foundation. The book resulting from this will be published in 2015 by Palgrave-Macmillan/British Film Institute.

Robert heads up research development within the Northern Film School and the School of Film, Music and Performing Arts. He is always pleased to hear from prospective research students and established researchers interested in collaborative projects.

Samantha trained in theatre design and has worked at a number of theatres, including Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre, Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre and Greenwich Theatre and The Kings Head, in London, creating scenery and props.

More recently she has worked for Cosgrove Hall Films and Hot Animation in Manchester, designing for stop-motion animation, including Pingu, Bob The Builder and Rotten Ralph. As well as designing for children’s productions, Samantha was also responsible for the original set-design concept and visualisation for Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World, an American-Canadian stop-motion sitcom.

Sam particularly enjoys working collaboratively with students on the practical aspects of production design, whether building or dressing a set, making props or sourcing locations and costumes.