Spotlight on Women Directors: Amanda Blue
As part of a regular series with Free The Bid Australia, Campaign Brief shines the spotlight on top female commercials directors in Australia and New Zealand…
Amanda Blue is a critically acclaimed filmmaker who’s been directing documentaries and comedies for the past 18 years and has been nominated for and won numerous awards both in the UK and internationally.
Blue is represented by Plaza Films in Australia.
Three best spots:
1. Volkswagen ‘Barry’s Beetle‘
2. Dove ‘A Mother’s Body‘
3. Fairy ‘Head Shoulders‘
Most recently she has been directing award-winning commercials and is currently moving into directing and writing fiction. She started her career working for Oscar nominated film director, Mike Figgis and later produced his documentary arts films.
Early in her career Amanda directed the multi award-winning documentary series for Channel 4, Young Black Farmers, about a group of inner city black teenagers going to live and work on a Devonshire farm, winning a Banff Award for Best Unscripted Series.
She was Bafta nominated as Best Director for her award winning, Prescott: The Class System and Me, about the former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, his inimitable wife Pauline and their journey through the British class system.
Amanda then directed seminal series The Big School Lottery for the BBC about the experiences of British children going from primary to secondary school, garnering many award nominations.
She then went on to direct Twincredibles another critically acclaimed film for the BBC about growing up mixed race in Britain, Tom Sutcliffe wrote in The Independent, “Blue’s film, full of grace notes and emotion, was a lovely rebuke to the most familiar prejudices surrounding race, but it forced you to think about some cherished liberal prejudices too”, the film was nominated for Best Documentary at Prix Europa Festival.
Her next film The Town That Caught Tourettes pulled in huge ratings for Channel 4 and vast international sales.
The Times had this to say about The Greatest Shows on Earth, Amanda’s comedy documentary series with her long-time collaborator the comedy writer and actress Daisy Donovan…”As in all really memorable television something had happened that nobody could have predicted…”
Blue is now directing commercials and has quickly gone on to win critical acclaim and various awards for her work, picking up a Bronze Lion at Cannes, Kinsale sharks, LIA awards and New York Festival awards. Dave Reviews in the UK says this about Blue’s commercials work, “Amanda marries beautiful photography with multi-layered story-telling and is able to deal with the complexities of modern life, revealing the human experience in surprising ways”.
Amanda wrote and directed the feature length drama documentary After The Wave about the aftermath of the Boxing Day tsunami in Thailand. An international co-production funded by Screen Australia, SBS, Film Victora, The Wellcome Trust and Discovery Europe it has sold across the world and received widespread critical acclaim, “haunting and beautiful”, said the Sydney Morning Herald.
Most recently Blue has written and directed the feature length drama documentary Deep Water for Screen Australia and SBS. “It’s up there with the best crime documentaries of the recent past…. leaving audiences with a sense that justice still needs to be done…”, The Telegraph. This film has been nominated for 14 awards to date, including a Best Director and Best Feature Documentary at the AACTA awards, a Logie and Best Director at the Australian Director’s Guild.
Most recently Amanda was joint winner with Jane Campion (Top of The Lake) for her Screenwriting on Deep Water at the NSW Premier Literary Awards.
Amanda is currently focusing on directing and writing fiction.
Says Blue: “I am a storyteller through and through! I am interested in work whether it’s short form or long form that tells us something insightful, meaningful, and surprising about our humanity, our relationships and the world we move through. I like hearing normally ‘unheard’ voices, to give them air and turn those voices into engaging and utterly compelling cinematic narratives. I want to be moved; to laugh, to cry, and to do both simultaneously is the holy grail!! Therefore I am a director who wants to impact in those ways, to make people feel something authentic whether that takes 30 seconds, 2 minutes or 90 minutes. Sometimes I want an audience to think something new about who we are and sometimes I simply want them to connect to a familiar reflection of our collective humanity. I hate being pigeon holed. Stories are limitless and people who tell stories shouldn’t be limited either.”
Since launching a year ago, Free The Bid has 200 Australian Women Directors on its searchable database. Free The Bid now has over 20 major agencies that use the database to find the right director for each of their projects and have committed to putting one female director in the mix for every job.