Who we work with
Alison Rooper
Executive Producer and Managing Director
Documentary filmmaker Alison Rooper trained on the documentaries of Roger Graef and history series of Brian Lapping at Granada TV. She directed educational films for Channel 4, produced and directed for the BBC’s Money Programme and series produced BBC flagship documentary series in science, medicine, and current affairs including First Sight (editor) Tomorrow’s World (deputy editor), Children’s Hospital (series editor) and BBC4’s Profiles. Later she directed the Emmy nominated Doping for Gold for PBS and Channel 5 and The Chemistry of Life for BBC4’s The Cell. As an independent producer she has executive produced international co-productions for the BBC, Channel 4, Al Jazeera, NHK and PBS, specialising in history, the Middle East and international stories.
Emma Webster
Director, The Firefighters' Story , Suffragette City
Writer and director, Emma Webster has been making TV documentaries on both sides of the Atlantic for the last fifteen years on a range of subjects including the arts, politics, history, science, unusual subcultures and the environment. She has worked with a variety of high-profile presenting talent including Morgan Spurlock and Penn and Teller. She has won several awards for her work and is both an Emmy and WGA nominated writer. Her particular interest is in both history and science subjects and any story that requires an irreverent sense of humour.
Nancy Schiesari
Director, Tattoed Under Fire
Nancy is an experienced director, producer and cinematographer of broadcast documentaries and award-winning independent films. She is currently working on Canine Soldiers, a 3D documentary film about Military Working Dogs and their handlers.. Her most recent project, Cactus Jack: FDR’s Reluctant Vice President will be shownt on PBS in the Autumn of 2015. Her previous documentary, Tattooed Under Fire, aired nationwide on PBS in 2009 and 2010. Hansel Mieth-Vagabond Photographer premiered on PBS’ Independent Lens in 2003, and on the Australian Broadcast Corporation in 2004. She also directed History Man, a half hour profile on Martin Scorsese for BBC 4. Nancy also comes with twenty years experience as a Director of Photography of over 30 documentaries and feature films broadcast on Channel 4, BBC, ABC, National Geographic, and PBS. She was nominated for a 2002, Television Emmy for outstanding cinematography on The Human Face, (producer John Cleese). Nancy is a professor and teaches filmmaking and cinematography at the University of Texas at Austin.
Elizabeth Jones
Director, The Headmaster and the Headscarves
Elizabeth has worked as an independent, self-shooting producer and director of current affairs documentaries for more than 20 years. Most of her experience has been in conflict zones, particularly in Africa starting with the 1994 Rwandan genocide but also in Afghanistan and Iraq and all across the Middle East and Asia. Her work has included producing, reporting and filming investigations for BBC Newsnight, directing C4’s Unreported World, and working as a P/D on long form films for major broadcasters and programmes such as BBC This World and Channel 4 Dispatches. Throughout her career, she’s been involved in finding and developing stories, directing and filming them, and seeing them through the edit, sometimes taking on the role of executive producer. More recently she’s been lecturing and teaching through the Munk Fellowship Programme for Journalists at the University of Toronto in Canada, and the Arab Research Investigative Journalism Programme in Amman, Jordan.
Esteban Uyarra
Director, War Feels Like War
Esteban Uyarra is an award-winning Documentary filmmaker best known for his editing work of Pussy Riot - A Punk Prayer (short listed for a 2014 Academy Award) and Love Hotel (directed by his dear friend Phil Cox) and also for his direction and cinematography of Saving Saddam (2006), War Feels Like War (2003) and The Runner (2002) which was his first film and has become cult film amongst bull runners all over the world.
Ed Owles
Director
Ed Owles directed our recent UNDP film and is currently in development with us on a new documentary set in Bangladesh. His first major documentary feature, The Auction House: A Tale of Two brothers, set in Kolkata is having a successful festival run around the world. He has made several short films for broadcast for Channel 4, Al-Jazeera English and Current TV and numerous others for festival release, NGOs and museums (including London Transport Museum, Science Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum). With a background in anthropology he has filmed across Northern/Central Africa and in India.
Danny Nissim
Production Manager
Danny is an experienced Line Producer/Production Manager specialising in documentaries and music and arts programmes. He has worked for many of the major Indies including September Films, Windfall, Raw and Spun Gold on programmes for all the major broadcasters. He has worked on several films with director Mike Dibb including documentaries on Astor Piazzolla, Keith Jarrett and Barbara Thompson. Recently he worked with director Jane Treays on the BBC2 series about British Country Life. For In Focus Productions he has been working on the current series Direct Talk.
Peter Gordon
Producer/Director
Peter is an award winning Producer/Director and Executive Producer with 30 years experience in TV. His many documentaries for ITV and Channel Four include Burning Down The House– the story of 4 Anti Apartheid fighters, Cold Blood: The Massacre of East Timor – an expose of Indonesian rule in East Timor (Awarded the RTS Special Project prize and the Amnesty International Media prize), Children Of The Holocaust -The Stories of 5 Jewish Children who survived the War in Europe and The Man Who Shared His Liver –the story of a living donor liver transplant. For many years he executive produced current affairs, sports and religious programmes as well as factual entertainment but is now back with his first love – making his own documentaries.
Mark Galloway
Producer/Director
Mark is an experienced Producer/Director, Executive Producer and a former Channel 4 Commissioning Editor for Education and Features where he commissioned Grand Designs and Time Team. After training as a journalist at ITN he went on to establish his reputation as a current affairs producer. He was Series Producer on Channel 4’s weekly foreign affairs strand The World This Week. He has won a number of awards for his documentaries. His First Tuesday film Katie and Eilish: Siamese Twins won more than a dozen national and international awards including RTS, Peabody and a Gold Medal in New York. He has made documentaries for ITV, Channel 4, the BBC, Discovery and A and E. His recent projects include Beyond a Dollar a Day (filmed in Peru, Mozambique and Pakistan).
Leanne Hayman
Researcher / Coordinator
Leanne is a documentary researcher with a passion for compelling human stories. She has worked on films covering issues from LGBTQ rights, to migration and global development. Her work has featured in film festivals internationally, and El Peso De La Manta — a film Leanne co-directed — was showcased by the United Nations in 2017. As well as research and coordination for Direct Talk, Leanne is currently working across several projects in development.
Daniel Meyers
Director/DOP
Daniel has been working in documentaries for over 30 years as a self-shooting director, DP, editor and producer in over 65 countries around the world primarily for the BBC, Channel 4, PBS, ARTE and French Television. In addition he launched the training programme at the Frontline Club in London, has taught documentary classes at EICAR, the international film school in Paris and trained self-shooting journalists in Europe and Africa. His work has been well received with RTS, Grierson and Emmy awards, and BAFTA and Academy Award nominations.