Synopsis

What we've done:


Malachite received Channel Four’s first-ever fully financed commission, Playing Turkey (the National Youth Jazz Orchestra on tour) and has gone on to make many factual films and series for C4, including A Painter’s Paradise, on Charleston Farmhouse, country home of the Bloomsbury Group; Design Matters [22 episodes], running on the Channel for several years and involving people such as Norman Foster, Prue Leith and Don McCullin. Looking into Paintings - in association with the Open University [6 episodes], featuring artists Gillian Ayres, Richard Hamilton, Maggi Hambling, Patrick Caulfield and Dennis Creffield. We’ve had backing from the Arts Council to make documentaries on composer Mike Westbrook and opera singer Jessye Norman - broadcast by the BBC in their Omnibus arts flagship.

We have been commissioned by and sold work to BBC1, BBC2 and BBC4,  as well as ITV1, CBC in Canada and Swiss TV, plus many corporate clients, from British Airways to the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Recent digital work has included Dressing Up for the Carnival, a portrait of Canadian novelist Carol Shields; Devil’s Bridge, jazz composer Mike Westbrook’s major commission in the Swiss Alps, and numerous artists’ profiles, including Rigby Graham’s Irish Voyage, a retrospective road movie, in which the artist, whilst painting and reminiscing, travelled from the UK mainland to tiny islands far off Ireland’s West Coast. Other profiles have featured John Piper and Frank Brangwyn - in both cases, because they were no longer with us, we used actors to portray them in imaginative ways. We’ve also made films on, for example, potters Phil Rogers and Ken Matsuzaki, stained glass maker Patrick Reyntiens and poet Aidan Dun.

We have recently completed Don’t Fence Me In, on photographer Fay Godwin, and are working on new films about Italian sculptor Fiore de Henriquez and pop artist Pauline Boty.