I researched, shot and edited this short documentary about Loria, who runs a hotel for cats in Enfield.
Being very shy, Loria did not want her face to appear on camera. I ensured this by focusing on the cats themselves and Loria’s point of view.
It was great fun filming these beautiful animals and I enjoyed taking visual cues from cat food adverts to convey a feline perspective.
Keith arrived in London from Barbados in the 1960s. In this film he sits in his favourite spot in the park, sharing his reflections on life.
I shot the film for the 1000 Londoners season Windrush Generations, which focused on Londoners who have come to Britain from the Caribbean.
I kept the camera trained on Keith for most of the filming to capture his expressive delivery and give him space to speak on his own terms.
I researched, filmed and edited this film about Averil Mansfield, who was the first British women to become a professor of surgery.
In the film, Averil reflects on her career as a vascular surgeon and discusses her burgeoning enthusiasm for playing the cello.
During filming I lit Averil from above to gently evoke the lighting of an operating theatre and took extreme close-ups to convey the intricacy of surgery.
The French African Welfare Association is one of many groups funded by the NHS to promote health lifestyles in West London. This film documents a session held by FAWA, featuring interviews from representatives of KCSC, West London CCG and the beneficiaries themselves with the aim of securing funding for similar programmes.
I edited the film to place an emphasis on the beneficiaries’ emotional experience of the group, structuring the narrative in response to this. Where possible, I made use of motion shots to evoke the sense of release provided by the sessions, cutting to interview footage to draw attention to the sincerity of the beneficiaries’ testimony.
I edited a compilation film about groups including FAWA that can be seen here.
Following the Grenfell Tower fire of June 2017, I travelled to the area around the tower to interview individuals who had been effected by the disaster.
There I met Nadia, who was helping survivors of the fire. With close friends still missing, she discussed the impact on her community and the UK at large.
During the edit, I aimed for objectivity by keeping stylistic techniques to a minimum and letting the images and testimony speak for themselves.
In 2018, one hundred years since women gained the right to vote, Jacksons Lane initiated an exciting and ground-breaking theatre and education project celebrating the suffragette movement and the role of women in democracy and politics.
Chocolate Films were commissioned to create a documentary about the project, a shorter cut of this documentary and three films that would be played during the performances. I directed the majority of the filming and edited all 5 films.
With over 20 hours of footage to cut down, I had to be especially selective of the shots that made it into the finished film. A tightly structured narrative allowed me to show the broad scope of the project while maintaining focus on its ambitions and outcomes.
You can watch the 10 minute cut of the documentary here.
