D i r e c t o r

Margaret Williams has made many award winning arts 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, creativity always being at the heart of her films.

Most recently, DANCE4FILM presented by Jonzi D, was broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK and on ABC in Australia. This popular TV Special directed by Margaret contains 5 new film commissions and a collection of the best dance films from around the world, curated by Margaret.

Margaret has just completed the film VETERANS, her 5th collaboration with choreographer Victoria Marks. Performed and co-created with 5 US Veterans from the West Los Angeles VA combat rehab/PTSD clinic and shot on location in Los Angeles; VETERANS has just won first prize, the PREMI INTERNACIONAL VIDEODANSA in Barcelona plus an award of €4,000.

In 2007 The WAPPING PROJECT held a retrospective of Margaret’s dance films from 1988 until 2007, at Wapping Hydraulic Pumping Station, London. In a multi-screen installation, the retrospective ran over three and four screens, on loops, throughout the gallery opening hours. It allowed the viewer to dip in and out at will and to shift between documentary, dance film, the improvisational and the multi-camera work. The critics were unanimous: 'Awesome' - Time Out; 'Must-see show' - The Times; 'Dazzling... a strange and lovely eye for dance' - The Guardian.

Margaret has also collaborated many times with composer Judith Weir. ARMIDA, their fourth collaboration and Margaret's third drama for Jan Younghusband at Channel 4, was filmed on location in Morocco and shown on Christmas Day. Margaret’s 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 other prizes. 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; YOU CUBA, a dance film shot in Havana, choreographed by Cathy Marston and performed by Danza Contemporeana de Cuba. And, having made the films MIDDAY and IN STONE, with choreographer-performer Maria Muñoz of company MAL PELO, their fruitful collaboration still continues.

Margaret has adapted stage works for the screen such as the as 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 is currently developing two feature film scripts THE BIG ASK (working title) with writer Stef Penney and A PIECE OF ME (working title), adapted by Ricardo Adolfo from his own novel.