Tony Blair, a short profile of the Prime Minister produced as a party political broadcast and screened on all four channels for the general election campaign in 1997. [11] American Gillian Pachter gave us The Ruth Ellis Files: A Very British Crime Story, an hour-and-a-half documentary, unaccountably crammed into three long hours on successive nights on BBC Four. She tried extremely hard not to bring her modern sensibilities to the sorry tale of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, nor crude judgmentalism to our country of 1955, when air aces and rally stars came from one class and platinum-blond hostesses from very much another, and Hampstead still had its seamy side, and prosecutors could still be called things like Christmas Humphreys, but ultimately failed. And if you create a lifestyle that means you're in a hurry, you end up in the supermarket and running around and doing all the things that you know are wrong - well, that you know are not contributing to the way of life you'd like to live."

Geri came about because she had wanted to make a film dealing with the issue of celebrity, and was invited to discuss making a documentary with the Spice Girls. "It would have been quite a not kind film," she says, "because I was so upset by the concept, by these girls projecting a very sexy image and their audience were six, and they're there in their thongs and boob tubes and high shoes. I remember crying. I must have been very hormonal."

BD: One of my first escapades into producing was in 1983, I was going to celebrate Rasta Christmas on 7th January 1984, which is Ethiopian Christmas day. That dance is on YouTube, with Sugar Minott, Don Carlos, Junior Reid. Sugar Minott told me to make my own riddims to avoid paying publishing. I didn’t know nothing about this, so he showed me what to do. He had musicians so we went to the studio and in two days we created 24 riddims. Some of them ended up on Sugar Minott’s album Herbman Hustling. But she won't - at least not until her children are a bit older. Dineen has three young children with her husband, William Sieghart, and she is aware that making a documentary requires a total immersion in the subject that leaves little time for family. However heavy the responsibility, Dineen did a great job of humanising the Blairs, with a superb moneyshot of Tony and Cherie pottering about in their Islington kitchen. And that is what Dineen does – she makes you care about the individual. As a rule, the subjects of her films are more taciturn than Tony Blair. When she gives them room to express themselves they often do so with a suppressed sort of anger. Molly Dineen is a television documentary director, cinematographer and producer. One of Britain's most acclaimed documentary filmmakers, Dineen is known for her intimate and probing portraits of British individuals and institutions. [1] [ bettersourceneeded] Her work includes The Lie of the Land (2007), examining the decline of the countryside and British farming, The Ark (1993) about London Zoo during Thatcherism, and the Lords' Tale (2002), which examined the removal of hereditary peers.

Though she accumulated much critical acclaim for her earlier work, it was the short film about Blair that brought Dineen to the attention of the general public, followed by the Geri Halliwell documentary. She looks faintly embarrassed at the subject now. "Well, that was all post-childbirth," she says with a laugh. "The good thing was cruising round Westminster discussing breast pumps with Tony Blair. And the bad thing was that it was a nightmare, it was a struggle, because of course you end up fighting for what it is you think you should do and want to do." BD: There are loads of organisations that are trying to change things, but the problem is they can only do small bits. There’s not one coordinated body that wants to solve the issue. The power that be don’t want you to clean under the carpet. That’s why you had riots, because things that were under the carpet came out. Only government can legislate for things to change. Does she find it difficult to let go of the issues she covers in her films? "I feel it hard to let go of an issue I care about deeply because it affects me and how I live my life and I don't like it," she says, after some consideration. "I won't do the supermarket thing at the moment - it's too raw. Funnily enough, I also got rather impassioned about the amalgamation of regiments. I thought, even I understand that a regiment is based on a real, tribal loyalty, like football teams used to be, and certainly supporters are - and that's another of these dysfunctional things of modern life: how can you be loyal to what is basically now a multimillion-pound business, where players are just bought in for millions, have nothing to do with where they are? What are you loyal to? It's very interesting. I'd document that like a shot." Part of what was depressing staff was that their families had very little understanding of what they were doing, and only saw the constant flow of negative headlines, which is why he turned to Dineen. He describes the film as a “mirror on the company”, and as “about as far from being a guff- and puff-filled corporate video as you can imagine”. Dineen cheerfully refers to the job as a bit of “prostitution”, and makes it clear that it isn’t a documentary. “You can’t call it a documentary; there is no spirit of inquiry. I am doing something for a particular reason – the company has self-loathing issues,” she says.Television: AA Gill: What's the recipe today, Jamie?". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460 . Retrieved 21 January 2021. Nelson Mandela in Brixton during his state visit to Britain in 1996. Photograph: Tim Graham/Getty Images Despite the current vogue for documentary at the cinema, Dineen's films have remained firmly on television. She would love to see her work on the big screen, though. "I'm always begging my agent, "Can we try?" And he says, 'No Molly, not cinema, telly.'" She laughs. "When I did my first film I watched it on Radio Rentals outside the shop. I was so excited! It was on 20 screens!" She doesn't watch much TV these days, but she grew up entirely devoted to television: "Every day after school we used to come home and have two teacakes, a crumpet and watch telly solidly until my mother dragged us out of there screaming to do our homework. I loved it so much." For non-corporate viewers, however, there are huge gaps. Although the film shows workers in Serco’s prisons and its asylum housing contracts in the UK, there is no mention of Yarl’s Wood – the immigration detention centre, where Channel 4’s undercover filming last year exposed staff members referring to residents as bitches and animals, and where the previous year 10 staff members lost their jobs after allegations of sexual assault and improper sexual conduct. There is also no mention of the controversial – and often very profitable – asylum detention centres in Australia. Nor is there any reference to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into the tagging contract. An asylum-seeker thanks Serco for a small room, saying: 'To me it is a villa' She stops and draws breath. "But the telly thing's a bit like the food thing, isn't it? Broadcasters will say that's what people want and they'll say, sorry Molly, you get 1.5 million viewers and Big Brother gets 13 million. So you don't have a leg to stand on".

Home from the Hill – 1985 BBC Two documentary about Lieutenant-Colonel Hilary Hook's return to the UK after living abroad. [2] [3] [6] Won Royal Television Society Prize. First Prize at Anthropos Documentary Festival, Los Angeles. TV Suisse Rommande Prize.

The Lord's Tale (Channel 4, 2002) – About the hereditary lords losing their seats in the Lords due to the House of Lords Act 1999. [2]

a b c d e f Malcolm, Gabrielle (28 April 2011). "The Birthplace of Reality TV Celebrities: 'The Molly Dineen Collection' ". popmatters.com . Retrieved 21 March 2018. Dineen started off studying photography before switching to film. "The film-making maybe suited me," she says. "It's a very interesting thing if you can marry your character with a job and it works somehow, and all I mean by that is that I've always been a nosy git for quite a long time." The Grenfell Tower fire last July changed everything, says Dineen, and she is currently considering her next move – mindful that she doesn’t want to make a film specifically about the tragedy, wary of how opportunistic that might seem. She hopes to make a film about the area that will tell not only the story of Grenfell, but also the wider story of the local councillors who faced the moral opprobrium of residents. “I have to work out how to take it forward,” she says. “There is the community who are fighting for its survival, but I would also like to film compassionately with Kensington councillors too, at least the ones who understand the situation.Gentleman, Amelia (25 April 2016). "Selling Serco: documentary-maker Molly Dineen on why she shot a corporate promo". The Guardian . Retrieved 26 May 2023.