A film by Academy Award® winning director Jon Blair
Official selection Silverdocs AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival
Jon Blair is the only documentary producer/director working in the United Kingdom who has won all three of the premiere awards in his field: an Oscar, an Emmy (twice) and a British Academy Award, as well as an IDA Distinguished Achievement Award, a Grammy and numerous others. His work has covered documentary, drama and comedy.
Anne Frank Remembered, written produced and directed by Jon, is the winner of an Academy Award for Documentary Feature (Oscar), as well as an International Emmy, a CableACE, the International Documentary Association Distinguished Achievement Award, the Audience Award at the Amsterdam International Documentary Festival, the Jury Award at the Hamptons International Film Festival and a Gold Plaque at the Chicago International Film Festival together with awards for editing and cinematography at the New York Film and Television Festival. It has also been featured at the Melbourne, Montreal and Toronto International Film Festivals (all non competitive).
Jon is the winner of a British Academy Award for Best Documentary for his 1983 film, Schindler, which preceded Steven Spielberg's feature by 10 years and was used extensively by Spielberg as a research resource. Schindler was narrated by Dirk Bogarde and written, produced and directed by Jon.
Jon was the Series Producer of Reporters at War, a 4 hour series, - of which he produced, wrote and directed 3 hours - being a first hand history of war reporting, featuring some of the most famous American and British war reporters through the ages. In 2004 the Series won an Emmy for Best Historical Programming. His feature length opening programme of the Series won the Broadcasting Press Guild Award for best multi-channel programme in the UK for 2003 and was nominated for the Broadcast Award for Best Multi-Channel Programme for 2003/4, as well as receiving an Honourable Mention at Banff. The Series also received a Gold Medal at the New York Festivals.
Following a programme on Bin Laden: the Early Years after September 11th 2001, in 2002 he was Series Producer, as well as director and writer of two episodes, of the four part series, The Age of Terror. The series was nominated for an International Documentary Association Award and won the Broadcast Award for Best Multi-Channel Programme for 2002. The Series was also nominated for a Banff Documentary Award.
Jon is the author of The Biko Inquest, a play based on the inquest in South Africa into the death in prison of the black leader, Steve Biko. The play, originally written for television, and then later adapted for the Royal Shakespeare Company, pioneered the use of drama in current affairs. Jon directed the play Off Broadway in New York, starring Fritz Weaver and Philip Bosco, where it received considerable critical acclaim and ran for four months. After successful productions around the world it was produced on the London stage, and also for television, starring Albert Finney.
In 1984 Jon was co-founder and co-creator of the cult comedy series, Spitting Image, acting as Producer and then Executive Producer until mid 1987. He was also Executive Producer of all Spitting Image Specials for NBC and HBO in the USA. Jon won a Grammy as Producer for Spitting Image’s music video for the Genesis song, Land of Confusion and during his time at Spitting Image as Producer or Executive Producer the programme won two Emmies, a Banff comedy award, and numerous other international awards.
In 1991 Jon produced and his company made its first feature, Monster in a Box, Spalding Gray's sequel to Swimming to Cambodia.
In 1994 Jon was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Stockton University in the United States for his contribution to human rights awareness through his film-making work.
Tom Phillips is a Rio de Janeiro-based foreign correspondent who has been covering Brazil for the UK's Guardian newspaper since 2005. He has also reported from Bolivia, Colombia, Guyana, Haiti and Paraguay and has worked extensively in the Brazilian Amazon. Tom has worked on a number of films about human rights and indigenous tribes in Brazil and, in 2007, he was runner up in the foreign correspondent of the year category of Brazil's biggest press awards.
Douglas Engle is a freelance still and video photographer based in Rio de Janeiro. His clients include The New York Times, the Guardian, Der Spiegel, Al-Jazeera English, Reuters TV and others. An American ex-patriot for 18 years, he has lived 4 years in Mexico, 3 in El Salvador and 11 Brazil – 8 of those years as photojournalist for AP. In 1994 he covered the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, and the American “intervasion” in Haiti; In 1996 covered the Japanese embassy hostage crisis in Peru; in 2003 he reported from Iraq in the aftermath of the US invasion; in 2005 worked in southern Sudan. He is fluent in Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, and his wife is Brazilian. He co-produced the film with Tom Phillips and also was the second camera unit.
Lance Gewer is a director of photography and cinematographer who has been shooting for the big screen and television for 25 years. For cinema Lance has shot Gavin Hood’s Oscar winning film Tsotsi; Beat The Drum, which won over 27 international awards; Master Harold…. And The Boys, starring Freddie Highmore and Vhing Rheimes, to be released in 2009, and STIFF, a new black comedy which is currently shooting.
For television Lance has shot and directed across genres including; documentary (Dancing with the Devil, Ochberg’s Orphans, Murder most Foul, Mapungubwe, Glow of White Women); docu-drama (for Paramount/CBS, National Geographic, Discovery, Ch 4 and BBC); drama (Noah’s Arc, Across the Line, Wild at Heart); short form (Sacrifice, Come See the Bioscope, Angel, Christmas with Granny); advertising (Nando’s, Nashua, MTN, ABSA, FNB, LoveLife), and music (Hugh Masakela, Don Larka, Arthur, Brothers of Peace) .
The cover and lead feature story of the industry’s leading magazine AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER (March 2006), as well as, KODAK’S “IN CAMERA” (April 2006), were both dedicated to Lance’s work on TSOTSI. Lance was one of only twelve cinematographers selected internationally for the CAMERIMAGE cinematography film festival, in Lodz, Poland, in 2006.
«He has a very classical eye, as well as a certain restraint that really allows the performances in the pieces he photographs to shine, and that’s very much what I needed for Tsotsi. I wanted to achieve a beautiful film that you only think about as beautiful after you’ve come out of the story.» Gavin Hood – American Cinematographer – March 2006.
Matt Briggs works on both documentary and drama films and has been editing for more than 20 years, starting out on natural history films.
He was Associate Editor on the major drama series Longitude, starring Jeremy Irons and Michael Gambon, which was nominated for a British Academy Craft Award for editing, and then the 2002 mini series Shackleton, starring Kenneth Branagh, which was nominated for both an Emmy and a BAFTA for editing.
He first worked with Jon Blair in 2002 on the acclaimed TV series Age Of Terror which won a Broadcast Award for Best Multi Channel Programme as well as being nominated for an International Documentary Association Award. Since then he has been Jon’s editor of choice, cutting among many others, the Emmy Award winning TV series Reporters at War and Ochberg’s Orphans which was short-listed for an Academy Award in the Short Documentary Category. During the shoot for Dancing with the Devil Matt edited High Defintion images on location in Rio using Avid installed on a Laptop, providing an unusually ‘embedded’ and immediate role for an editor.
One of the biggest challenges of the project was editing almost entirely in a foreign language which would have been impossible without the help of Tom Phillips and Douglas Engle. He is currently working for Blast Films on two drama-documentaries looking at the life of the Queen airing in the fall on ABC and Channel 4. After that he will be working on Jon’s next project, Is Everybody Alright?
Cristiano (Crico) Maciel is one of Brazil's most experienced sound recordists with over 30 years experience in the film industry.
Crico has worked on a number of award-winning films and TV series, among them Mika Kaurismaki's documentary Brasileirinho, and City of Men, the television spin-off of Fernando Meirelles' City of God.
In 2009 he worked on Fábio Barreto's Lula, Son of Brazil - a forthcoming feature film about the life of Brazil's first working class president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.