MEET THE FILMMAKERS
Timothy Merrylees - Charlie's Prayer
How did you get into film making?
I got into filmmaking at the age of ten being inspired by stop motion animations made with Lego on YouTube. I wasn’t the greatest academically at school but always loved creative activities and I naturally gravitated to towards that. As I got older and as technology available to me got more advanced, it really fuelled my drive to make films.
What themes run through your work and why are they important?
A massive part of who I am is my faith as a Christian. I’ve grown up in a Christian family and all my best friends are at my church. While I don’t want to shove my faith in audience’s face in film, I feel I can’t make a film without including themes of love, hope, growth and friendship inspired by my faith.
Who or what influenced your work?
Not only does my faith inspire my films, but in terms of creativity, my main inspiration is filmmakers like Christopher Nolan, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg and Taika Waititi. These directors are true artists in my eyes. They have such a great style and are so dedicated and do a lot of the writing and production for their films as well, while at the same time they surround themselves with great people to boost their creativity. In the same way, I am inspired by a lot of musicians such as Bryan Adams, Queen, Pink Floyd, Shawn Mendes, Harry Styles and Noel Gallagher as they are amazingly artistic, dedicated, and do a lot of writing and producing themselves which inspires me to do the most I can in filmmaking.
Are you working on anything at the moment?
I am currently working on writing a full-length version of a short film I wrote and directed over the course of 2019 and early 2020. Whether this will get made in the near future remains to be seen…
What is your favourite film?
I have several films that I could give the title of my favourite film. I love Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, I love Hacksaw Ridge and Saving Private Ryan. But Minority Report is probably my go-to answer most of the time. Most of the people who know me will also know I love most of the Marvel films that have come out in the last ten or twelve years.
Simisola Akande -Ojumo Ti Mo
How did you get into film making?
I not quite sure how I got into film exactly. I remember that when I was younger, I really wanted to be an actress. Somewhere along the line I realised that people that look like me: dark skin black female, weren’t particularly celebrated in front of the camera. I think after this I shifted my and decided that I wanted to make films. This is news enough to disappoint any Nigerian parent, but my mom took it in her stride and did her best to get me any opportunity she could find. The Brit School was where I made my first ‘film’.
What themes run through your work and why are they important?
A lot of what I make seems to attempt to explore black and minority specific experiences. One of the first film I made that I felt was truly a work of mine was an experimental documentary on colourism. This piece was one of the first times I stopped trying to create work that I thought others would like, but instead I began to use film as a diary or a place to work through emotion and trauma like colourism and grief.
Who or what influenced your work?
I think what influences my work most was the absence I felt when watching TV as a child. Not seeing people that looked like myself or my family became a point of trauma as it often meant either that our stories do not matter or that we are simply not beautiful enough to be projected on cinema screens. I spend all my time trying to disprove and unlearn this.
Are you working on anything at the moment?
I am currently developing a script about a first kiss from the perspective of a closeted black lesbian. The film deals with challenges that come with possessing more than one peripheral identity and the internal splitting that takes place in a world that asks us to choose between being one or the other, to choose between being Black African or possessing a queer identity.
What is your favourite film?
It is so difficult to pick just one film as my favourite, but right now I have been looking deeper into Nigerian cinema and the film ‘Eyimofe’ has given me a new reason to love cinema.
Alec Boyd - AB by AB
How did you get into film making?
I started making films when I was younger than ten years old. These films, shot on my very first camera (footage from which is utilised in my film AB By AB) were mostly 2 man productions of Vietnam war films or gangster films, in which my friend and I would perform as the entire cast. In addition to these fictional films – from about this age I started to film everything vaguely interesting I did, editing together sort of documentary style videos showcasing the mundane life of a prepubescent midlands boy.
By secondary school I was certain that filmmaking was what I wanted to do, and I was lucky enough to be able to study film at both my secondary school and my sixth form in Sheffield. It was during my studies for A level film studies where I started to explore the documentary form, and decided to study documentary film practices at Newcastle University, from which I graduated this summer.
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What themes run through your work and why are they important?
It was during my degree studies I found my authorial voice, and discovered what sort of documentary films I wanted to make. My focus, before it even being particularly conscious, is communities of people. Observational documentary, which I tend to use as a base mode of representation for my work, I found, often is split into films that depict a ‘sense of place’ or a ‘personal profile’ of individuals. Studying and following communities however requires a blend of the two, as they are made up of individuals who’s circumstances and characters are shaped consequentially by both their surroundings and the other people around them. My films focus on the interpersonal relationships of these communities as well as the subjects links to their surroundings, currently with a focus on rural communities, the likes of which I was raised in and reside in today.
Who or what influenced your work?
I have always been influenced by my surroundings. Through moving up in education I spent more time in cities rather than the villages I was brought up in, starting in Sheffield then moving to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. It became clearer and clearer to me how lucky I had been to be raised in the Peak District, and how alien and unique rural community living is to those who have not experienced it. It was during my undergraduate studies that I discovered films such as Nicolas Philibert’s Etre Et Avoir as well Gideon Koppel’s Sleep Furiously – to which I owe an awful lot for inspiring my creative practice in exploring rural documentary cinema.
Are you working on anything at the moment?
AB by AB was my final dissertation film at university, however it was not my original proposal. Around a year ago I began production on a film with the working title of Edale a community biopic of the village at the starting point of the Pennine Way. Sadly, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the production of this film had to be put on hiatus, as our dissertation films had to be produced within lockdown and social distancing conditions. Whilst practical production on this film still hasn’t been able to continue yet, I am always working and planning for resuming shooting as soon as it is possible. In the meantime, I am working on providing for the village I love as a greengrocer in the village shop. Edale has my heart, and I intend to capture its magic on film.
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What is your favourite film?
It’s ever changing of course, in fictional terms Baumbach’s Frances Ha will forever hold a very special place in my heart, despite fiction filmmaking being something I have next to no skills in. In addition, as previously mentioned, Koppel’s Sleep Furiously has inspired my practice and brings me joy in such a way that it must be mentioned in any conversation about my favourite film.
Kenny Glenaan- Dirt Road to Lafayette
Mary Courtney and Tara Rutledge - Phoenix
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