Jeanie Finlay

Director

Stockton-on-Tees, Teesside, England, UK

Biography

Jeanie Finlay is one of Britain’s most distinctive documentary makers. Her acclaimed films tell small and intimate stories to international audiences, whether inviting them behind the scenes of Teesside’s last record shop (SOUND IT OUT), to share the extraordinary journey of a British transgender man, pregnant with his child (Seahorse) or onto the set of the world’s biggest television show (Game of Thrones: The Last Watch). Her films, although varied in subject matter, share an empathetic appro…

Filmography

7.0

Game of Thrones: The Last Watch

For a year, acclaimed British filmmaker Jeanie Finlay was embedded on the set of the hit HBO series “Game of Thrones,” chronicling the creation of the show’s most ambitious and complicated season. Debuting one week after the series 8 finale, GAME OF THRONES: THE LAST WATCH delves deep into the mud and blood to reveal the tears and triumphs involved in the challenge of bringing the fantasy world of Westeros to life in the very real studios, fields and car-parks of Northern Ireland. Made with unprecedented access, GAME OF THRONES: THE LAST WATCH is an up-close and personal portrait from the trenches of production, following the crew and the cast as they contend with extreme weather, punishing deadlines and an ever-excited fandom hungry for spoilers. Much more than a “making of” documentary, this is a funny, heartbreaking story, told with wit and intimacy, about the bittersweet pleasures of what it means to create a world – and then have to say goodbye to it.

10.0

All Rivers Spill Their Stories to the Sea

When a tidemark of poisoned crabs & lobsters devastate a small North East fishing town, veteran fisherman Stan Rennie becomes the unlikeliest of activists. A wry David and Goliath story, told with gallows humour and a broad Teesside accent, about the grief of navigating a world which has suddenly, inexplicably changed forever.

6.2

Sound It Out

A portrait of the last surviving vinyl record shop in Teesside, North East England, at a time when independent record shops were closing in the UK at a rate of one every three days. A distinctive, funny and intimate film about men, the North and the irreplaceable role music plays in our lives. High Fidelity with a Northern Accent.

6.7

Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth

Director Jeanie Finlay charts a transgender man's path to parenthood after he decides to carry his child himself. The pregnancy prompts an unexpected and profound reckoning with conventions of masculinity, self-definition and biology.

6.2

Goth Cruise

A look at the growing allure of Goth culture in England and the USA...on a boat.

6.3

The Great Hip Hop Hoax

GET RICH OR TRY LYING Foul-mouthed Californian hip hop duo Silibil n' Brains were going to be massive. But no-one knew the pair were really amiable Scotsmen, with fake American accents and made up identities. This documentary tells the audacious tale of how two lads from Dundee duped the record industry and nearly destroyed themselves. When their promising Scottish rap act was branded 'the rapping Proclaimers' by a scornful record industry, friends Billy Boyd and Gavin Bain reinvented themselves as Los Angeles homeboys. The lie was their golden ticket to a record deal and a dream celebrity life. A stranger-than-fiction true account of fractured friendship, the pressure of living with lies and the legacy of faking everything in the desperate pursuit of fame. Truth, lies and the legacy of faking everything in the desperate pursuit of fame.

7.8

Your Fat Friend

Charting Aubrey Gordon's journey from anonymous blogger to NY Times bestselling author and podcast host, and the complexities of making change. It’s a film about fatness, family and the deep, messy feelings all of us hold about our bodies.

N/A

A Life at the Mill

A video portrait of eleven mill workers, past and present, living in and around the Derwent Valley, Derbyshire. The film details the important role that work played in their lives, how it felt; to clean a mill, to work all your life, to face retirement, to shut a mill down and make hundreds unemployed and the hole that was left behind.

N/A

Panto!

Heartfelt and heartbreaking documentary following a cast of Nottingham amateur actors staging a production of Puss in Boots.

N/A

Love Takes

Love Takes charts the places that love takes us and leaves us as we fall in and out of love over a lifetime. The film combines documentary footage with digital design to explore what we talk about when we talk about love.

N/A

Teenland

Documentary in which artist Jeanie Finlay goes behind the closed bedroom doors of four British adolescents on the brink of adulthood and explores their passions, obsessions and their hopes for the future.

7.0

Orion: The Man Who Would Be King

August 16, 1977. All of America was stunned by the news of Elvis Presley's untimely passing. Some went so far as to believe that it couldn't be true. Somehow he had faked his death. For the executives at Sun Records that fantasy became an opportunity in the form of Orion, a mysterious masked performer with the voice of The King. First appearing in 1979, Orion recorded 11 albums and performed live to packed houses and rapturous fans around the nation. But who was the man behind the mask? In this stranger-than-fiction true story, Jeanie Finlay exposes the incredible life of an unknown singer plucked from obscurity and thrust into the spotlight with the complicity of a manipulative music industry and a public fan base unwilling to let The King go. Resonant in its themes of identity, fate, and the double-edged nature of fame, Orion is a stylish mystery story that finally gives a name and a face to a gifted artist who had been unjustly deprived of both.

6.0

Indietracks

In 2007 an indiepop music festival was born in the unlikeliest of settings - a heritage steam train site, Butterley Derbyshire. Bringing together passionate characters from two very distinct worlds this affectionate portrait is told from the point of view of the retired volunteers that run the locos who have "steam in their blood" and don't really know very much about "this indiepop music".

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