Kolton Lee

Last updated

Kolton Lee is a British film director, crime novelist, and former journalist and Editor of The Voice .

Contents

Life and career

His parents came from the Caribbean island of Montserrat. They met in London in the 1950s. When the couple split, their two children were sent to a Surrey-based children's home, Reedham School. Lee was seven when he arrived there and remained there until he was 16. At Reedham, Lee discovered a talent for basketball. He went on to represent his county and his country at levels under-17 and U-19 and became a full, senior international player when he turned 20. He combined his playing with attending Borough Road College, part of London University, to study English Literature.

A serious knee injury cut his basketball career short. He started working as a journalist freelancing for a variety of sports publications, he found a full-time job as a sports journalist for The Voice and later became the magazines editor. [1]

From there he left to join the News on Sunday , the radical, left-wing Sunday tabloid. In joining the news team as its News Editor, Kolton became the first black British to be made the News Editor of a national newspaper. After six months the newspaper went bankrupt and Lee joined the BBC as a documentary researcher.

He later attended National Film and Television School. Upon graduating he working as a writer and/or director on a number of television programs, including a stint at Crucial Films, the production company owned by Lenny Henry. [1]

In 1998 he moved to New York City, where he lived for four years. While there he made his first independent short drama, American Mod. While living in New York, Lee wrote and performed his first play, An Evening with Michael Jordan, at the National Black Theatre of Harlem.

He arrived back in London in 2002 and promptly founded the film and television production company Prophet Pictures. Through Prophet Pictures, Lee wrote, directed and produced his first feature film Cherps, winner of a Screen Nation Independent Spirit Film Award. [1] His short film Blood was bought by MTV North America. Kolton's second feature film, Freestyle, [2] was a youth romance with a basketball back drop. [3] [4]

Kolton's first novel, the contemporary crime thriller The Last Card, received positive reviews in The Guardian [5] and The Observer , he is currently preparing a follow-up for his publisher. Lee's second novel is about a sports psychologist who gets embroiled in dodgy dealings in a tennis camp for young stars. [6]

Films

Novels

See also

Related Research Articles

Chris Morris (satirist) English comedian

Christopher J Morris is an English comedian, radio presenter, actor, and filmmaker. Known for his deadpan, dark humour, surrealism, and controversial subject matter, he has been praised by the British Film Institute for his "uncompromising, moralistic drive".

Tim Westwood British DJ and television host (born 1957)

Timothy Westwood is a British DJ and presenter. He is often referred to by other DJs and artists appearing on his shows simply as Westwood. He was described by The Guardian in 2022 as "a veteran of the hip-hop scene whose opinions have been able to make or break upcoming artists for more than 30 years". He hosted the Radio 1 rap show and presented the MTV UK show Pimp My Ride UK. In 2013, he left Radio 1 and 1Xtra after nearly twenty years and returned to Capital Radio. Investigations by the BBC and The Guardian into Westwood's sexual conduct found seven women who accused Westwood of sexual violence, as described in the BBC Three documentary Tim Westwood: Abuse of Power.

<i>The Independent</i> British online daily newspaper

The Independent is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the Indy, it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was published on Saturday 26 March 2016, leaving only the online edition.

Jonathan Ross English television and radio presenter

Jonathan Stephen Ross is an English broadcaster, film critic, comedian, actor, writer, and producer. He presented the BBC One chat show Friday Night with Jonathan Ross during the 2000s, hosted his own radio show on BBC Radio 2 from 1999 to 2010, and served as film critic and presenter of the Film programme. After leaving the BBC in 2010, Ross began hosting his comedy chat show The Jonathan Ross Show on ITV. Other regular roles have included being a panellist on the comedy sports quiz They Think It's All Over (1999–2005), being a presenter of the British Comedy Awards, and being a judge on the musical competition show The Masked Singer (2020–present) and its spin-off series The Masked Dancer (2021–present).

Stewart Lee British stand-up comedian, screenwriter and television director

Stewart Graham Lee is an English comedian, screenwriter, and television director. His stand-up routine is characterised by repetition, callbacks, deadpan delivery, deconstruction, and consistent breaking of the fourth wall.

<i>News of the World</i> 1843–2011 British tabloid newspaper

The News of the World was a weekly national red top tabloid newspaper published every Sunday in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the world's highest-selling English-language newspaper, and at closure still had one of the highest English-language circulations. It was originally established as a broadsheet by John Browne Bell, who identified crime, sensation and vice as the themes that would sell most copies. The Bells sold to Henry Lascelles Carr in 1891; in 1969 it was bought from the Carrs by Rupert Murdoch's media firm News Limited. Reorganised into News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation, the newspaper was transformed into a tabloid in 1984 and became the Sunday sister paper of The Sun.

Sir Trevor McDonald is a Trinidadian-British newsreader and journalist, best known for his career as a news presenter with ITN.

<i>Channel 4 News</i> Channel 4s flagship news programme

Channel 4 News is the main news programme on British television broadcaster Channel 4. It is produced by ITN, and has been in operation since Channel 4's launch in November 1982.

Roderick E. Liddle is an English journalist and an associate editor of The Spectator. He was an editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme. His published works include Too Beautiful for You (2003), Love Will Destroy Everything (2007), The Best of Liddle Britain and the semi-autobiographical Selfish Whining Monkeys (2014). He has presented television programmes, including The New Fundamentalists, The Trouble with Atheism, and Immigration Is A Time Bomb.

Stephen Leather British author

Stephen Leather is a British thriller author whose works are published by Hodder & Stoughton. He has written for television shows such as London's Burning, The Knock, and the BBC's Murder in Mind series. He is one of the top selling Amazon Kindle authors, the second bestselling UK author worldwide on Kindle in 2011.

The Voice, founded in 1982, is the only British national African-Caribbean weekly newspaper operating in the United Kingdom. The paper is based in London and is published every Thursday.

Farrukh Dhondy

Farrukh Dhondy is an Indian-born British writer, playwright, screenwriter and left-wing activist who resides in the United Kingdom.

John La Rose was a political and cultural activist, poet, writer, publisher, founder in 1966 of New Beacon Books, the first specialist Caribbean publishing company in Britain, and subsequently Chairman of the George Padmore Institute. He was originally from Trinidad and Tobago but was involved in the struggle for political independence and cultural and social change in the Caribbean in the 1940s and 1950s and later in Britain, the rest of Europe and the Third World.

The Department of Journalism at City, University of London, is a journalism school in London. It is regarded as one of the best universities in the United Kingdom for the study of journalism. as well as the nation's largest centre for journalism education. It was described by Michael Hann of The Guardian, along with Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, as the "Oxbridge of journalism".

<i>The Guardian</i> British national daily newspaper

The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian; it changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers The Observer and The Guardian Weekly, The Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of The Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of The Guardian free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for The Guardian the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK.

Neil John Wallis is a British former newspaper editor. He is currently a media consultant and media commentator.

Graham Johnson is an author and investigative journalist who has written several books and contributed to a variety of publications. His works focus largely on organised crime. Johnson has also made multiple documentary films and appeared on television as a crime pundit.

Jordan Jarrett-Bryan from Dulwich in South London, is a Channel 4 News sports reporter, DJ, and journalist.

David Bergman is a British Jewish investigative journalist, blogger, and political commentator on Bangladesh. Bergman is a prominent critic of the regime of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League party. He is also the husband of Bangladeshi lawyer Sara Hossain, whose father Kamal Hossain fell out with Sheikh Hasina and is currently in alliance with the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party led by Khaleda Zia.

Ron Onions

Ronald Edward Derek Onions OBE was an English broadcast journalist who in the 1970s pioneered a new style of radio news on the emerging local independent stations in Britain. Inspired by US radio stations heard while he was working in New York, Onions established significant change in news presentation with regular hourly bulletins which were brisk, vivid and immediate. His populist, almost tabloid, presentation was in contrast to the cautious, traditional and less frequent bulletins of the national broadcaster. The style quickly became established throughout the United Kingdom.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Kolton Lee, award-winning writer-director". itzcaribbean. February 27, 2010. Retrieved October 12, 2017.
  2. ↑ "Screen Talk: Drawing in talent – Features, Films". The Independent. London. 2009-01-30. Retrieved 2011-05-18.
  3. ↑ Philip French (2010-02-28). "Freestyle". The Observer . London. Retrieved 2011-05-18.
  4. ↑ Steve Rose (2010-02-27). "This week's new cinema reviews | Film". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2011-05-18.
  5. ↑ Laura Wilson (2007-08-17). "Crime: Aug 18 | Books". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2011-05-18.
  6. ↑ "Kolton Lee". The Susijn Agency Ltd. Retrieved 2011-05-18.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.