I’m a Scottish-Irish filmmaker, born 3rd May 1965. The themes of my films and books are looking, the inspiring power of cinema, cities, walking, childhood, archives and recovery.
I was brought up in the North of Ireland – mostly working class Belfast and Antrim – in the 1970s and early 80s.
I was bad at sport (skinny, bullied) but surprised my teachers in maths, chemistry, physics, further maths, art, French, etc. Top marks, etc – I had an unusual brain. I made a sofa for my mum and dad when I was 15 and read physics film and architecture books like they were novels.
As the Troubles were happening, the North of Ireland wasn’t the most open of places, but TV was a lifeline – Top of the Pops, Orson Welles films, Kim Novak, Hitchcock, David Bowie in Baal, Brideshead Revisited, the arrival of the UK’s Channel 4.
My brother and I were the first in our family to go to uni. I almost did chemistry but, instead, moved to Scotland in 1983 to study film history, art history and a bit of philosophy at the University of Stirling. After Stirling I moved to Edinburgh (1987) and became a part-time security guard, gardener and furniture remover.
In 1988, in a café, I had an idea for six semi-dramatised short films, wrote the idea on a napkin, sent the napkin to Channel 4 TV and it was commissioned. I was directing. I made it and then other TV documentaries on childhood, the artist Ian Hamilton-Finlay, the Irish singer Daniel O’Donnell, Powell and Pressburger, Gulf War military training, neo-Nazism and the letters written to Mikhael Gorbachev (on which I was associate director, working for Michael Grigsby). Some of these were good, some not. The Films section here has more on this. As the subjects of these early works suggest, I was a hi-low country (and still am).
I was so hungry for ideas (look at section here on the Writers who inspired me), yet I was still a working class boy interested in popular culture (Daniel O’Donnell) and not what was cool. Some years later I asked Donald Sutherland about this subject. He quoted Joseph Brodsky: Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to the constellations.
By 1989 I was editing a short film in Sender Freies Berlin, in the West of the city. One day I went through Checkpoint Charlie and explored East Berlin – the most memorable 12 hours of my life.
I had a head full of films, so I wrote to the Edinburgh International Film Festival and – in 1992 – became their British film programmer, then their head of programming.
In 1994 I applied to be Festival director. My job application letter said that I would cancel every strand and award of the festival, and do away with red carpets, VIP areas, etc. Edinburgh Film Festival had a history of young upstarts upending things (Murray Grigor, Lynda Myles) and so they agreed. For the opening party on my first year, we hired a complete funfair in Portobello, Edinburgh. Before that job my contacts book was almost empty, after it I knew Sean Connery, Theresa Wright, Suso Cecchi D’Amico, the Coen brothers, Steve Martin, Bernardo Bertolucci – so many people.
As head of programming, in 1994 I was invited to Sarajevo to show films underground, in defiance of its siege.
In 2023, the boss of the Sarajevo Film Festival said to me “you risked your life to come here.” The Belfast boy in me hadn’t even considered that.
Then I co-edited, with Kevin Macdonald, Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary (1996, “Indispensible” - Times Literary Supplement).
My early 30, from 1996: I’d left the Edinburgh Film Festival without any new job to go to. I loved it but I’m an introvert and it involved a lot of onstage work, introducing films etc – not my natural habitat.
People at the BBC had seen me host talks in Edinburgh – I was young, passionate and knew quite a lot about movies – so asked me if it’s like to do a TV show interviewing movie stars and directors. I said yes, if it would be about actual scenes in their movies. It became Scene by Scene. Guests were Lauren Bacall, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Janet Leigh, Jack Lemmon, Jane Russell, Donald Sutherland, etc. I directed too. At the same time, on the BBC I presented the late night film programme Moviedrome, introducing cult and unconventional films.
By the end of the 1990s I was desperate to get back to directing. I’d done short TV programmes and hour long docs, but I wanted to move from one or two acts to three – feature length. My first feature documentary, The First Movie, about kids in Kurdish Iraq, won the Prix Italia. It was inspired by growing up in the Troubles in Northern Ireland and my passionate interest in the role cinema can play in kids’ lives. For the first time, I was my own cinematographer, and LOVED that: I could get up pre-dawn and film morning light on my own. No other people to worry about, only the light and the frame. When Wim Wenders said that he loved the film, I could hardly believe it.
My next feature film, What is this Film Called Love?, played in 20 countries, at the ICA in London, and was nominated for Best Director by BAFTA Scotland. PJ Harvey called it “revelatory and inspiring”. The rock band Maxïmo Park wrote a song inspired by it.
In 2001 I was commissioned to write a history of cinema, which became The Story of Film. Much to my surprise, it was published around the world. The London Times called it “by some distance the best book we have read on cinema.” Its latest edition was published in October 2024. Producer John Archer suggested that we turn it into a documentary. The result was the 930 minute film, The Story of Film: An Odyssey (“The place from which all future film revisionism should begin” - New York Times), which played in the major film festivals and cinemas, and has had an influence on film education. Michael Moore gave it the Stanley Kubrick Award, Together with TCM in America it won the Peabody Award, was BAFTA Scotland nominated, and received other prizes.
The Story of Film is probably what I’m best known for. In 2021 I added a sequel film, The Story of Film: A New Generation. It premiered as the launch film of Cannes, was called “never less than inspired…a finely tuned piece of poetry” by the Hollywood Reporter, and “the soul of the festival” by Cannes director Thierry Frémaux. Empire magazine called it “a poetic opus” and it was nominated for a Grierson award.
I’d been working full steam for 24 years at this point so, in 2012 I eased off for a bit, walked in the hills and snow. I was nominated for the London Awards for Art and Performance and the Screen International award, was guest curator at the Eye Cinematheque in Amsterdam and did a big tribute to Bengali cinema with the Edinburgh International Film Festival. The great actor Sharmila Tagore attended.
In 2013 I completed Here be Dragons, a film about the vital role of film archives, especially one in Albania. It won the main prize in the Romania Film Festival. In the same year I made A Story of Children and Film, which was in the official selection in Cannes.
In 2014 I seemed to do three years’ work in one: I directed 5 short films, curated Cinema of Childhood, a series of 17 films which toured the UK and Ireland for a year and was supported by the BFI. I made Life May Be, co-directed with Iranian filmmaker Mania Akbari, and 6 Desires, an adaptation of DH Lawrence’s book Sea and Sardinia. Life May Be was noted for its feminism and innovation and was called “transcendent and extraordinarily delicate”. It won the Don Quixote prize. 6 Desires: DH Lawrence and Sardinia, in which Jarvis Cocker plays the voice of DH Lawrence, had its world premiere at the London Film Festival and its international premiere at Sundance.
At this time I had my first retrospective at the Wroclaw film festival. Others have followed in London, Thessaloniki, Finland, Geneva and Brazil.
I was at the end of my forties. New, smaller cameras had freed me as a filmmaker – I’ve always liked to keep up with tech, especially when it liberates or democratises. My The Oar and the Winnowing Fan was a takeover of the DazedDigital website.
In 2015 I directed I am Belfast. With trepidation. I hadn’t lived in the city for more than 30 years, but it was in transition, becoming modern, and I was better at the poetics of imagery. Also I had more power in the film industry. The film was released by the BFI. Variety compared it to the great director Dziga Vertov. In the same year my BBC/BFI film Atomic, a collaboration with the band Mogwai, played in Hiroshima, near Chernobyl and Coventry Cathedral and at the Edinburgh International Festival. This was the first movie in a while that wasn’t my idea. What a relief.
Time moved on. I looked back at my childhood and saw that I hadn’t changed much. The same awe, fear, energy. What was driving me? The success of The Story of Film meant that offers came regularly. I curated a season of films for the Romanian Cultural Institute in London (in part to learn) and made the fiction film, Stockholm My Love, (starring Neneh Cherry, released by BFI). The great Christopher Doyle shot key scenes in it. As it’s a sort of musical about an architect, it combined several of my passions.
I completed Bigger than The Shining, a secret project, showable only in underground circumstances, and wrote The Story of Looking (“Like a wise man looking at the stars”, the Guardian; “Brilliant” the New York Times) for Canongate. I was 51 and had been fascinated by visual culture for more than four decades, so I couldn’t claim to be a beginner in the field. It was nominated for the Saltire Award for best non-fiction book.
My ideas for films were coming thick and fast at this stage. I tried to stay calm. The Eyes of Orson Welles had it’s world premiere in Cannes and was received very well. My 2 hour, four-screen Storm in My Heart is about Hollywood sexism and racism. Continuing on the feminist theme, my 14 hour film Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema premiered at the Venice, Toronto and Telluride film festivals, is narrated by Jane Fonda, Sharmila Tagore, Debra Winger, Adjoa Andoh, Kerry Fox, Thandiwe Newton and Tilda Swinton. It was my second survey of cinema, this time in the guise of a how to. I almost didn’t put “women” in the title, as it doesn’t try to say anything about femaleness. It just explores the work of hundreds of great directors.
The film historian Cari Beauchamp was so supportive. If you haven’t read her books, please do. The Times called Women Make Film “Exquisite, emotionally resonant and intellectually unassailable. Pure poetry.” The Hollywood Reporter called it “essential and extraordinary.” It won the European Film Academy’s inaugural Innovative Storytelling award, and has led to the restoration of a series of films directed by women.
At the start of Covid, film teachers in various countries asked if I could a digital resource so I sat at my computer and spoke to images, which became 40 Days to Learn Film (inspired by an essay I wrote in Sight & Sound magazine and a talk I did in LA). Covid was calamitous for public health almost everywhere of course, but as someone who hates airports, flying and the more “on” bit of filmmaking, to stay at home for two years was exactly what I needed.
In the 2020s I seem to have found an extra year. My The Storms of Jeremy Thomas, about the legendary film producer – premiered in Cannes 2021 and won the best documentary in Spain’s Dias De Cine. In my film The Story of Looking, I filtered the history of looking through my own eye operation. Time Out called it “A rich cinematic journey into the art of seeing and how it connects us with culture, ourselves and each other.” It won the Best Non-Fiction Film award at the Seville Film Festival. I completed My Name is Alfred Hitchcock was sort of my third Covid film. It premiered at the Telluride film festival and became my biggest film at the UK box office.
The producers of The March on Rome, came to me. I jumped at the chance. It premiered at the Venice film festival, was called “entirely arresting” by the Guardian, won the audience award for Best International Documentary in Brazil, and was nominated for a European Film Academy Award. The right wing Italian government objected to it being used in schools to teach Italian history.
In 2022, my films were the subject of a multi screen film installation, Passé Présent Futur, at the huge, modernist Plaza cinema in Geneva. I loved this building. And I had a retrospective at the Biograf film festival in Bologna.
I premiered my first art installation, Like a Huge Scotland, at the Fruitmarket gallery, Edinburgh, which the Scotsman newspaper called one of the ten best visual art pieces of 2022. In 2024 it transferred to the TANK Shanghai art gallery, hosted by Nowness. Also in 2022, along with Cate Blanchette and Sarah Polley – I was given the Silver medal at the Telluride Film Festival. This festival has been a school for me, and a celebration, so I was honoured.
Other acknowledgements have come, welcomes buoys in the film industry’s choppy seas. I got honorary doctorates from the Universities of Edinburgh and Stirling and an honorary professorship from Queens University Belfast. I’ve never spoken the language of academia – I’m more into poetry than theory – and have never thought of myself as an educator, but they see something in me (and I in them).
I guess the prizes show that some people are watching, maybe touched. I was given Portugal’s Aurelio de Paz dos Reis international award for Outstanding Contribution to Cinema and the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Outstanding Achievement Award. I received the Persistence of Vision Award from the San Francisco Film Festival, the annual Maverick award at the Dublin International Film Festival, the Outstanding Contribution to Film and Culture Award from the Ismailia Film Festival in Egypt and the Heart Of Sarajevo for outstanding contribution to film.
Over the years, in part to escape the film industry, in part to show our love of film, I’ve done various projects with Tilda Swinton. We were co-conspirators on The Scottish Cinema of Dreams in China and did The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams and A Pilgrimage (neither of the last would have happened without Matt Lloyd.) We also did The 8 ½ Foundation, a two year event which created a movie birthday for children. It was nominated for the Human Rights Award. I’ve also been chair of the Belfast Film Festival and Docs Ireland.
Coming up to date are more recent projects: Cinema Has Been My True Love (premiered in Telluride). A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things, another look at the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, won the Grand Prix Crystal Globe at the 2024 Karlovy Vary Film Festival. My sixth book Dear Orson Welles and Other Essays was published by Irish Pages in August 2024.
I have more films in prep and edit.
Where next? What is driving me? I feel like I’m just starting. The Loves, Wild and Dark sections of this website say a bit more about my life and imagination, and maybe this photo by Phoebe Grigor is a glimpse of my future too?
A pause, a lie down in a cinema, a kind of sun bathing. I love night swimming.
I’ve walked across Los Angeles, Belfast, Moscow, Beijing, London, Paris, Berlin, Dakar, Mexico City and other places, but there’s much more to explore.
I’ve got a belly now, and bald patch.
“Storms make trees seek deeper roots.” Dolly Parton
“Imagination is observation plus construction.” Gertrude Stein
My childhood
My youth
Me in the EIFF office