Sidney Poitier was a Bahamian and American actor, film director, and diplomat. In 1964, he was the first African American actor and first Bahamian to win the Academy Award for Best Actor. He received two competitive Golden Globe Awards, a competitive British Academy of Film and Television Arts award (BAFTA), and a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album. Poitier was one of the last major stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema.
Lenny is a 1974 American biographical drama film about the comedian Lenny Bruce, starring Dustin Hoffman and directed by Bob Fosse. The screenplay by Julian Barry is based on his play of the same name.
Daniel Francis Boyle is an English director and producer. He is known for his work on films including Shallow Grave, Trainspotting and its sequel T2 Trainspotting, The Beach, 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours, Steve Jobs and Yesterday.
Dead Poets Society is a 1989 American drama film written by Tom Schulman, directed by Peter Weir, and starring Robin Williams. Set in 1959 at the fictional elite conservative Vermont boarding school Welton Academy, it tells the story of an English teacher who inspires his students through his teaching of poetry.
Gary Leonard Oldman is an English actor and filmmaker. Known for his versatility and intense acting style, he has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and three British Academy Film Awards. His films have grossed over $11 billion worldwide, making him one of the highest-grossing actors of all time.
Kevin Adam Curtis is an English documentary filmmaker.
James Francis Ivory is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. For many years, he worked extensively with Indian-born film producer Ismail Merchant, his domestic as well as professional partner, and with screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. All three were principals in Merchant Ivory Productions, whose films have won seven Academy Awards; Ivory himself has been nominated for four Oscars, winning one.
Sir Roger Alexander Deakins is an English cinematographer, best known for his collaborations with directors the Coen brothers, Sam Mendes and Denis Villeneuve. Deakins has been admitted to both the British Society of Cinematographers and to the American Society of Cinematographers. He is the recipient of five BAFTA Awards for Best Cinematography, and two Academy Awards for Best Cinematography from fifteen nominations. His best-known works include The Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, A Beautiful Mind, Skyfall, Sicario, Blade Runner 2049, and 1917, the last two of which earned him Academy Awards.
Sophie Okonedo is a British actress and narrator. The recipient of a Tony Award, she has been nominated for an Academy Award, three BAFTA Television Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. She began her film career in the British coming-of-age drama Young Soul Rebels (1991) before appearing in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995), and Stephen Frears's Dirty Pretty Things (2002).
Chiwetel Umeadi Ejiofor is a British actor. He is the recipient of various accolades, including a BAFTA Award, a Laurence Olivier Award, an NAACP Image Award, and nominations for an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards and five Golden Globe Awards.
Craig Armstrong, is a Scottish composer of modern orchestral music, electronica and film scores. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in 1981, and has since written music for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the London Sinfonietta.
Nil by Mouth is a 1997 British drama film portraying a family of characters living in South East London. It was Gary Oldman's debut as a writer and director, and was produced by Oldman, Douglas Urbanski and Luc Besson. It stars Ray Winstone as Raymond, the abusive husband of Valerie played by Kathy Burke.
Joseph Wright is a British film director residing in Somerset, England. His motion pictures include the literary adaptations Pride & Prejudice (2005), Anna Karenina (2012), and Cyrano (2021), the romantic war drama Atonement (2007), the action thriller Hanna (2011), Peter Pan origin story Pan (2015), and Darkest Hour (2017), a political drama following Winston Churchill during World War II nominated for Best Picture.
The Day the Earth Caught Fire is a British science fiction disaster film starring Edward Judd, Leo McKern and Janet Munro. It was directed by Val Guest and released in 1961, and is one of the classic apocalyptic films of its era. The film opened at the Odeon Marble Arch in London on 23 November 1961.
Rebecca Maria Hall is an English actress and film director. She made her first onscreen appearance at age 10 in the 1992 television adaptation of The Camomile Lawn, directed by her father, Sir Peter Hall. Her professional stage debut came in her father's 2002 production of Mrs. Warren's Profession, which earned her the Ian Charleson Award.
The British Urban Film Festival (BUFF) was formed in July 2005 to showcase urban independent cinema in the absence of any such state-sponsored activity in the UK.
Bill Westenhofer is an American visual effects supervisor. He worked for Rhythm and Hues Studios until 2013.
Amma Asante is a British filmmaker, screenwriter, former actress, and Chancellor at Norwich University of the Arts, who was born in London to parents from Ghana. Her love for the film industry started when she received her first role in BBC's Grange Hill. Asante wrote and produced the 1998 BBC Two series Brothers and Sisters, starring David Oyelowo. She was a childhood friend of model Naomi Campbell, whom she met when they were seven years old.
Gary Tarn is a British filmmaker and composer.
Hugues de Montalembert, born 1943, is a French writer, painter, and documentary filmmaker, who lost his sight in a New York apartment burglary in 1978.
