A packed hall welcomed Mandy Chang – the new commissioning editor of the BBC’s premier international documentary strand, Storyville – to Cambridge in December.
It was the first event the relaunched RTS East Centre has held in Cambridge and was aimed at the many film-makers, both professional and student, based in the city.
Chang, who left the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to join the BBC last year, explained what made a good Storyville feature-length documentary, showing clips from Last Men in Aleppo, My Mother’s Lost Children and Weiner – Sexts, Scandals and Politics.
She explained that unlike most other documentary strands in British broadcasting, Storyville was open to pitches from first-time film-makers, provided they had a unique story, access and approach. This was of particular interest to the audience, many of whom were student film-makers or freelancers.
Mandy Chang won an Emmy and Grierson for Channel 4’s 2008 documentary feature, The Mona Lisa Curse.
The School of Art at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) hosted the event, with the support of StoryLab, an interdisciplinary research institute based at the university, which experiments with different approaches to storytelling.
The event was chaired by Dr Catherine Elliott, a distinguished film-maker as well as course leader of the MA Film and TV Production course at ARU.
If you are a film-maker or TV professional and are interested in hearing about further events in Cambridge or elsewhere in the RTS East region, please email RTSMidlands@rts.org.uk to be put on the mailing list.
