Emma has made a wide variety of documentaries for national and international broadcasters and most recently directed a documentary for BBC “ Black, black oil” . Prior to that she co-directed a feature documentary called “Becoming Animal” (2018) with Swiss Canadian director Peter Mettler. It has been nominated for best documentary at CPH Dox, Edinburgh Film Festival, Documenta Madrid and has played at many festivals including IDFA, Jihlava, RIDM. Previous work includes “I am Breathing”, co-directed with a fiction filmmaker, Morag MacKinnon. This film was nominated for 3 Scottish BAFTA’s, won a Scottish BAFTA for Best Director and played in over 50 countries. A background in performance theatre gave her a love of the collaborative process. For many years she ran a performance company called Clanjamfrie, which specialized in immersive large scale shows incorporating performance and film, often in unusual spaces. She also collaborated with theatre directors such as Robert LePage on “Tectonic Plates”. Emma was educated at Oxford University where she studied English literature and then studied theatre in Paris. She currently teaches at Edinburgh College of Art on the postgraduate course in documentary directing . She has advised on many films internationally and also been on juries such as IDFA, Visions du reel. She programmed documentaries for the Edinburgh Film Festival, was on the board of EDN for 4 years and taught at the European Film College in Denmark for a year. She is a member of the Academy.
