Kim Longinotto

Kim Longinotto
Born 1952
London, England
Occupation Director, producer, cinematographer

Kim Longinotto (born 1952)[1] is a British documentary film maker,[2] well known for making films that highlight the plight of female victims of oppression or discrimination.[3] Longinotto studied camera and directing at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, England, where she now tutors occasionally.

Biography

Longinotto was born to an Italian father and a Welsh mother in 1952; her father was a photographer who later went bankrupt. At the age of 10 she was sent to a draconian all-girls boarding school, where she found it hard to make friends due to the mistress forbidding anyone to talk to her for a term after she became lost during a school trip. After a period of homelessness Longinotto went on to Essex University to study English and European literature and later followed friend and future filmmaker Nick Broomfield to the National Film and Television School.[4] While studying, she made a documentary about her boarding school that was shown at the London Film Festival,[5] since when she has continued to be a prolific documentary film maker.

Longinotto is an observational filmmaker. Observational cinema, also known as direct cinema, free cinema or cinema verite, usually excludes certain documentary techniques such as advanced planning, scripting, staging, narration, lighting, re-enactment and interviewing.[6] Longinotto's unobtrusiveness, which is an important part of observational documentary, gives the women on camera a certain voice and presence that might not have emerged with another documentary genre.[7]

Filmography

Awards

References

  1. ↑ Lacey, Liam (6 May 2010). "Kim Longinotto: capturing women in movies". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 29 August 2010.
  2. ↑ Jason Wood (2006). Talking movies: contemporary world filmmakers in interview. Wallflower Press. p. 156. ISBN 978-1-904764-90-8. Retrieved 30 November 2010.
  3. ↑ Gwendolyn Audrey Foster (1995). Women film directors: an international bio-critical dictionary. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 196. ISBN 978-0-313-28972-9. Retrieved 30 November 2010.
  4. ↑ Corinn Columpar; Sophie Mayer (2009). There She Goes: feminist filmmaking and beyond. Wayne State University Press. p. 107. ISBN 978-0-8143-3390-7.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Kira Cochrane (12 February 2010). "Kim Longinotto: 'Film-making saved my life'". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 June 2011.
  6. ↑ Aufderheide, Patricia (2007). Documentary Film A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press Inc. p. 44.
  7. ↑ White, Patricia (3 March 2011). "Cinema Solidarity: The Documentary Practice of Kim Longinotto". Cinema Journal 46 (1): 122. doi:10.1353/cj.2007.0008. Retrieved 28 November 2011.

External links