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D i r e c t o r Margaret Williams trained as a painter and started her film career as one of the many hands animating cartoons such as The Flintstones and Scooby Doo for Hanna Barbera in Hollywood. She returned to London and after two years at the BBC, started her own production company and has been directing and producing ever since. Margaret has made many dance and music drama films for television as well as the cinema short GOING GOING for BFI/Film Four. Her respected and internationally successful films have always taken a new and original approach. Margaret worked with composer Judith Weir on ARMIDA, her third drama for Jan Younghusband at Channel 4. ARMIDA was filmed entirely on location in Morocco and was shown on Christmas Day. Her film version of OWEN WINGRAVE by Benjamin Britten, also for Channel 4, was received with great critical acclaim. Writing in The Telegraph, Tom Rosenthal described it as 'the best opera film ever made' . The dance film OUTSIDE IN, choreographed by Victoria Marks, described as 'A Midsummer Night's Dream for the nineties', is among the BBC's most awarded music and arts films having won the Prague d'Or, Film Board of Canada Creativity Award, IMZ Dance Screen and many more. Margaret's award-winning collaboration with Victoria Marks continued with two more films: MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS for Channel 4 and MEN for the BBC. MEN was a dance film for seven men in their seventies shot on location in Canada's Rocky Mountains. ‘The most impressive and uplifting twenty minutes of television to have come along in years' ', according to Time Out. MEN also won major awards at IMZ and at Moving Pictures in Toronto. Other dance films made specially for television include: CROSS CHANNEL, choreographed by Lea Anderson, described as 'one of the best television dance programmes I have ever seen', by the Financial Times . WATERMARK, a collaboration with choreographer Jiri Kylian performed by NDT3 and YOU CUBA, four short films shot in Havana choreographed by Cathy Marston and performed by Danza Contemporeana de Cuba. Margaret has adapted stage works for the screen such as the Thomas Adès's opera POWDER HER FACE and Judith Weir's BLOND ECKBERT, both for Channel 4. Her television version of David Bintley's CARMINA BURANA with Birmingham Royal Ballet for the BBC won a Welsh BAFTA. Her relationship with BRB continued in 2006 when she was invited to direct the multi-camera filming of Ballet Hoo's ROMEO AND JULIET (Diverse Productions for Channel 4). She has also made a number of well-respected documentaries. Her series for Channel 4, A LOVE DIVIDED, filmed in Belfast, Berlin, Jerusalem and Johannesburg, was consistently praised for its ' tear-jerking clarity '. Other documentary work includes films on composers: STEVE REICH and ELIZABETH MACONCHY; QUARTET, a 90-minute special about the role of four in music from classical string quartets to U2; MUSIC AND THE MIND, a series of 3 x 50-minute films; GYPSY PASSION a film about Flamenco star Joaquin Cortès; and Y FLAMENCO, a documentary about regular British people who love to dance flamenco, both for the BBC. Margaret has recently completed two short dance films IN STONE with choreographer-performer Maria Muñoz of company MAL PELO and PLAZA DE TOROS - BIRMINGHAM with Joel Aragón C . She is currently in pre-production on an international series of DANCE4FILM and developing two feature film scripts GAL PLANET (working title) with writer Stef Penney and STELLA, adapted by Ricardo Adolfo from his own novel. |
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