The Lonely Arts Club

Series 2, Episode 8: Beadie Finzi

June 09, 2020 Beadie Finzi Season 2 Episode 8
The Lonely Arts Club
Series 2, Episode 8: Beadie Finzi
Show Notes

This week on The Lonely Arts Club, Martin McQuillan is joined by Beadie Finzi.

Beadie is a filmmaker and one of the founders of The Doc Society (previously known as BRITDOC). Having worked in documentary for the past 20 years, Beadie is in heaven in her role at Doc Society – whose mission is to befriend independent filmmakers, fund great films, broker new partnerships, build new business models, share knowledge and develop audiences globally.

On this week's episode, we hear how Beadie's journey began running amok on a Portuguese farm as her nomadic parents tried to find somewhere to settle. We move through Beadie's journey as she reflects on the miracles that were making it through college and getting into Oxford to study. As she discovered her passion for filmmaking, Beadie tells us all about how her career started and where the dream of The Doc Society first began.

"We'd just take whatever was offered and then go away and please ourselves and inevitably our stuff would be literally going out at 3 in the morning because it was of absolutely no commercial value but we were so happy. At the end of that period we stumble into our first feature doc and that's where the die is cast and the story of Doc Society begins. So, I feel so proud and pleased that I was trained inside British television. With a capital 'T' that all that means because I learnt so much from that system and from peers within that system and there was just a point at which I wanted to start making - and I didn't even have a language for it - but actually it was independent documentary film. I was drifting away, trying to find my people that form that language, those partners, those funders and I found that first of all, in an amazing creative partnership with Rupert and then that would lead directly into the forging of Doc Society."



As the arts landscape changes, in addition to funding films directly, Doc Society’s priority is helping connect great films to new partners who can use them with global programmes.

We speak to Beadie about some of her own film achievements. Her last film, Only When I Dance (2009) had its world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival and was theatrically released in the UK & US. Beadie also produced Unknown White Male in 2005, about a young amnesiac rediscovering his life which played at Sundance Film Festival and was Oscar shortlisted.

This podcast is brought to you by the Institute for Creative Enterprise at Edge Hill University.

Making connections through culture.

The podcast is edited by Roz DiCaprio who is the producer alongside Karen Appleton and Carl Hunter.

Audio production is by Sam Auguste of Onomatopoeia Studios in Liverpool.

Music is by Joseph McDade.

For more information on the work of the Institute for Creative Enterprise and courses at Edge Hill University, visit edgehill.ac.uk/ice

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