Beacons Webinar: Crafting Non-fiction Shorts

We’ll be looking at ways to develop cinematic and authentic non-fiction ideas and find your team. 

We will be sharing guidance on the Beacons Short Film Fund and Made of Truth: BFI Doc Society Fund (opening in May), as well as hearing from the Wales Documentary Support Network on resources and friends to connect with to help you on your way. 

Walking us through their own creative journeys will be alumni filmmakers:

• Frontier Town directors Tom & Theo Tennant and producer Alice Hughes (Made of Truth)
• Forest Coal Pit director Sion Marshall-Waters and exec producer Alice Lusher (Beacons).

This event is free and open to anyone born or based in Wales who is developing creative doc work. 

The session will run for 90 minutes with a short break in the middle, and you will have a chance to ask questions. Live captioning and BSL interpretation is provided, however if you have any questions or access requirements, please contact Tracy Spottiswoode on tracy@ffilmcymruwales.com or call 07902 492109 to discuss in confidence.

Sion Marshall-Waters

Siôn Marshall-Waters is a Welsh filmmaker currently based in Bristol. With a background in visual anthropology and documentary, his work has a distinct ethnographic approach to people and place. His BFI NETWORK funded short film Forest Coal Pit was recently shortlisted for a Grierson Award and screened at festivals including BFI London Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival and Cork International Film Festival. 

Alice Lusher

With over 20 years’ experience in HETV and indie film, Alice founded ie ie productions' drama department in 2015 with support from Ffilm Cymru Wales and the BFI Vision Award. Expanding the company’s reputation for creating ground-breaking cross-platform content with an international reach, she’s built a broad slate of film and television projects working with both established and emerging talent as well as running entry level industry workshops. Inspired by creatives working across disciplines, she collaborates with writers and directors to tell stories from under-represented voices and find sustainable ways to realise their vision - whilst making commercially viable film and television for global audiences. Her award-winning shorts have screened internationally. In 2018/19 she produced S4C’s bilingual, multi-award nominated drama series Merched Parchus (Respectable Girls), which has sold throughout Europe. Most recently she has co-produced Andrew Legge’s debut feature LOLA with Irish company Cowtown Pictures and executive produced Beacons short documentary Forest Coal Pit.

Tom & Theo Tennant

Tom & Theo are filmmaking brothers from the UK. They’ve made films with the BBC and the BFI, and their films have screened at BAFTA qualifying festivals, as well as receiving nominations at the UKMVA’s and 1.4 Awards. Their film Maesteg was screened on BBC Four and featured on Short of the Week. Their fictional short film, Control was selected at festivals worldwide and has over 350,000 views online. Tom’s short film The Bechdel Test was selected at London Short Film Festival and his 8mm film Mamá was selected in Straight 8’s Best 25 of 2020. Theo also works as a cinematographer. He shot C4’s Grierson nominated show Jeremy Kyle: Death on Daytime and the docu-fiction Black Ice, which won a wood pencil at the D&ADs. While studying Fine Art at Central St Martins Theo founded Cinema & Co – an independent cinema and art space in Swansea, Wales.

Alice Hughes

Alice Hughes is an award-winning and BIFA and Grierson nominated producer, whose work has been screened in cinemas, BAFTA Qualifying festivals (including Sundance London, Edinburgh Film Festival and Doc NYC) and online on BFI Player, Amazon and Apple TV. The success of her first feature Half Way led the director, Daisy May Hudson, to be named BAFTA Breakthrough Brit in 2017. Her short, Motherland, was shortlisted for a Grierson in 2020, and nominated for a BSC cinematography award. Her short docufiction, Until The Tide Creeps In won best documentary and best of the festival at Aesthetica in 2022 and her latest film Puffling had its World Premiere at SXSW in 2023. Alice has had films twice funded by BFI Doc Society, as well as Field of Vision, Emergence Magazine and Rooftop Film Fund, and has had work featured on Nowness, Short of the Week and Vimeo Staff Pick.

Angela Clarke

Angela Clarke is a Scottish filmmaker living in Wales. For the last 19 years Angela has executive produced, directed and developed factual television. content for UK & international broadcasters. In 2019 she founded Wheesht Films, an independent production company based in Cardiff, after her first independent short documentary film, Bachelor, 38 was BAFTA nominated for Best British Short Film in 2019. In 2021, Wheesht Films launched One Stop Doc Shop, a free online platform aimed at encouraging and supporting an inclusive array or novice women and non-binary filmmakers in the documentary film world. The project was launched with the support of Screen Alliance Wales, Ffilm Cymru Wales and the BFI NETWORK with funding from the National Lottery. In 2022, Wheesht Films launched the Wales Documentary Support Network, a multi-stage project comprising online and face-to-face activities designed to identify, support, engage, elevate and educate the existing cohort of documentary filmmakers in Wales.