Trustees

ChairmanDawn Airey

As Chair and Chief Executive of public service broadcaster Five, Dawn Airey is one of the best-known figures in British television. She has worked in the industry for more than two decades, starting out as a management trainee at Central TV in 1985.

She joined Five in October 2008 from ITV where, as Managing Director, Global Content, she oversaw its UK and international production and content businesses. Previously she was BSkyB’s Managing Director, Channels & Services, with responsibilities that included the multichannel operator’s wholly-owned and joint venture channels and their distribution to other platforms.

She has also held senior posts at Channel 4 and between 2000-02 was Five’s CEO, having been the broadcaster’s Director of Programmes at launch. In addition to her executive responsibilities at Five, Dawn sits on the management board of the pan-European media group RTL, Five’s parent company. She is a member of the board of the British Library and a Trustee of The Media Trust.

VICE CHAIRMANEmma Hindley

began her television career in film editing. As a producer/director her credits include: The Lady Killers 40 Minutes, BBC Two; Dreams on Ice Short Stories, Channel 4; Living With Cancer, BBC One (RTS Award for Best Documentary Series) and Great Britons: Nelson, BBC Two. As a series producer at the BBC she was responsible for a number of archive based social history series including The Lost World of Mitchell & Kenyon and The Lost World Of Friese-Greene for BBC Two and The Secret Life Of The Motorway for BBC Four. Having recently left the BBC, she has resumed her freelance career

VICE CHAIRMANCharlotte Moore

is Commissioning Editor for Documentaries at the BBC. Since arriving at the BBC three years ago she has been responsible for a broad range of titles from Stephen Fry: HIV and Me to Tribal Wives, the Bafta winning Evicted, Terry Pratchett: Living with Alzheimers, Repossessed and Beryl's Last Year. Previously as Head of Documentaries at IWC Media, she was responsible for the BBC's Emmy award winning Stephen Fry; The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, 18 with a Bullet (BBC Three), Kidnap Ronnie Biggs (Channel 4) and The Other Side, Channel 4's new talent strand for first time directors. Her career began traveling to remote corners of the world to make films about cannibals, disappearing tribes and stolen art. As a producer/director, her credits include Lagos Airport (Channel 4) Great Britons: Churchill (BBC Two)and the RTS award winning series Living with Cancer (BBC One).

Terry Back

is Partner, head of Media and Entertainment Group for Grant Thornton and is responsible for the development of the firm's Media and Entertainment Group, with a particular operational focus on television and film. He is also a member of the oversight boards of both Grant Thornton UK and Grant Thornton International. After starting in the profession in the '70s, he took time out in 1980/81 to start up a motorcycle messenger business in Los Angeles. Soon after joining Grant Thornton in 1994 he started the Media and Entertainment Group, having specialised in advising independent television production companies. He is the author of the three Grant Thornton surveys on accounting for rights and revenues in UK film and television. He has also developed an LLP structure, raised finance for and personally invested in a UK independent feature film, giving him an invaluable insight into the film-making process from the other side of the fence.

John Battsek

conceived and produced Passion Pictures’ first feature, One Day in September, which went on to win an Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary and an Emmy in 2000. John has since accrued a slate of over twenty acclaimed documentary films including Once in a Lifetime, Black Sun, In the Shadow of the Moon, My Kid Could Paint That and Sergio. Sundance 2010 saw the premiere of two new films: Restrepo, which opened the festival and went on to win the Grand Jury Prize, along with The Tillman Story which was acquired by The Weinstein Company.

Emily Bell

Emily Bell has worked for the Observer and then the Guardian for the past eighteen years, setting up mediaguardian.co.uk in 2000 and becoming Editor-in-Chief of Guardian Unlimited in 2001. In September 2006, Emily was promoted to the new position of Director of Digital Content for Guardian News and Media. Guardian.co.uk, the Guardian and Observer's network of websites, has won multiple awards, including the prestigious Webby for Best Newspaper on the web in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009. Emily writes a regular column for the Guardian about media policy issues and also for Broadcast magazine. She has recently been appointed as a director at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, leading its new digital journalism centre.

Mandy Chang

Mandy is an experienced freelance director/producer who has won many awards for her work, including two Griersons and an Emmy. Although Mandy's special passion is arts documentaries, her work is not exclusive to the arts. She has also made documentaries for both British and international broadcasters on a diverse range of subjects: drought in Australia, child boxers in Cuba, composers in totalitarian regimes and the politics and culture of Texas. Programmes include Hello Culture, Visions of Space, The State of Texas, Sons of Cuba, Howard Goodall’s Great Dates and The Mona Lisa Curse, which recently won a Rose D’Or, Grand Jury Prize for the Best Documentary at Banff, a Grierson and an Emmy.

Peter Dale

is the founder of Rare Day, a media production company. Until August 2008 he was the Head of More4, Channel 4's digital channel which launched in October 2005. He started television life in the cutting room, both outside and later inside the BBC. After directing his first documentary for the Everyman series in 1980, he went on to make documentaries for the next 18 years. As Head of Documentaries at Channel 4 his commissions included Tina Goes Shopping, Wife Swap, The Government Inspector and Jamie's School Dinners.

Ellen Fleming

was until recently a partner at London law firm Field Fisher Waterhouse, specialising in corporate and commercial work for the media sector. Her clients included major broadcasters, independent production companies and other television and publishing industry bodies. As a lawyer she helped launch a number of UK and European television channels and online services. She now chairs The Bell Educational Trust, which provides English language training worldwide, and i-ProBono, an online network linking lawyers with the voluntary sector.

Jill Franklin

Jill Franklin is Managing Director of Franklin Rae, one of the leading PR agencies working in the media industry. From Press & PR Manager at Railtrack and PR Manager at award-winning Ikon Gallery, Jill then worked for BBC Radio, first at BBC Radio 3 and then at BBC Radio 4 to work on the station's relaunch under James Boyle. A move to BBC Television saw her look after some of the BBC's most controversial documentaries, including the iconic strand Storyville. In 2001 she went freelance to work with both PSB and commercial organisations on public-facing and corporate campaigns, becoming PR adviser to some of the UK's leading independent production companies. Her success was the catalyst for setting up Franklin Rae Communications in 2003. In 2009 Franklin Rae was awarded the PR industry's 'gold standard' – the CMS – by industry body the PRCA, an accolade held by only 5% of PR agencies in the country.

Chrisopher Hird

is the founder of the documentary company Dartmouth Films. Dartmouth focuses on films which make a difference; pioneers new ways of funding and distributing films; and encourages new and emerging talent. His recent screen credits include Cameron's Money Men for Channel 4; Lionel Mills' Inside the Saudi Kingdom for BBC Two; Mario and Nini for Sky; and Rupert Murray's theatric documentary The End of the Line, which has been distributed worldwide. From 2000 to 2004 he was the chair of the Sheffield International Documentary Festival; he is currently the chair of the Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation; and is a trustee of Index on Censorship and the Wincott Foundation.

Rick Senat

entered the film industry in 1970 working in the UK and the United States. He spent 25 years at Warner Bros. mostly as Senior Vice-President, Business and Legal Affairs, Europe. Projects with which he has been closely associated include the Harry Potter films, Greystoke, Batman, Superman and many more. He is Chair of Film Education and a visiting Professor at Lincoln University. He has served as Vice Chair of the British Film Institute and o f the European Film College. He is a board member of Bank Leumi (UK) plc. Since leaving Warner in 2002 he co-produced Claude Lelouch's film And Now Ladies and Gentlemen, with Jeremy Irons, a West End stage show with Gyles Bradreth and has been a consultant to various productions including Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban, Troy, Alfie, Sahara, Batman Begins, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Golden Compass, Inkheart and several others.

Peter Symes

is a freelance producer/director working mainly in the UK. Until 2000 he was employed by the BBC, where he had a long career as a director, producer and executive producer. From his own work he is perhaps best known for his documentaries with verse commentaries, one of which won the Prix Italia, and from his work as Editor for the series Picture This, which gave many young directors their first chance to make a full length documentary. He continues to produce and direct documentaries, and to be actively involved with the documentary-making community. In 2005 he became Head of the Discovery Campus Masterschool, based in Munich, an initiative designed to help individual filmmakers develop a specific documentary idea and raise co-production money to make it.

Murray Weston

is Chief Executive of the British Universities Film & Video Council (BUFVC), which develops large-scale initiatives to facilitate scholarly access to moving image and sound content. He is also Co-Director of the Bournemouth Skillset Screen and Media Academy. He has been script editor of films for Tokyo Cinema and for IWF Media Gottingen, and he was Executive Producer for the late Andris Slapins in the documentary department at Riga Film Studio. He is Chairman of the Film Archive Forum UK, Trustee of the Kraszna Krausz Foundation and a member of the History and Archive Committee of the Royal Television Society.