James Lingwood
Lingwood Productions Producer/Director
Australia
James’s real passion is storytelling and visualizing, and he brings his deep knowledge and genre-spanning expertise into the making of films that resonate emotionally, with audiences across cultures, from Shanghai to Zanzibar.
James’s vast experience in the Film & TV industry, having directed actors such as Geoffrey Rush (Best Actor, Academy Awards 2007) and Jackie Chan, enables him to engage with the best talent in the industry, and to initiate, develop and produce high-quality films that are both, artistically and commercially successful.
Over the past 25 years, James has produced and directed over 200 hours of international film and television programs such as the Australian children’s television series, “The Curiosity Show”, awarded the Gold Medal for the Best Children’s Program at the Prix Jeunesse International in Munich, and the highly acclaimed television series,
“The Voyage of the Great Southern Ark”, both broadcast by PBS and Discovery across the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand.
In 1994, James undertook a six-week shoot through China covering seventy stories for the PBS series “Yan Can Cook”. The series has been screened worldwide regularly, has won the prestigious James Beard Trophy for the Best Cooking Television Program in the USA, and has been voted the 4th Best Cooking Show of all time. Recently, James also completed the anthology series, “Yan Can Cook – Best of Thailand & Best of Hong Kong”.
In the unique documentary “From the Dragon’s Mouth”, screened by BBC World, James relates the story of the 1997 Handover of Hong Kong from Great Britain to China, through a sequence of spontaneous images and interviews with prominent and popular celebrities as well as ordinary people on the street. These same people were interviewed
again in 2002 and 2007, bringing a ten-year retrospective to this significant moment in history.
Recently James finished filming a sequence for a TV campaign, “One More Voice” for CNN on the 50th Anniversary of Amnesty International, with 15 IQ directors from around the world; Meryl Streep is the narrator, Hans Zimmer composed the soundtrack. Along with 30 IQ directors in as many countries, James has also completed another innovative film, “Exquisite Corpse”, recently screened at international film festivals.
Two films, “Father Joe and the Bangkok Slaughterhouse”, chosen as a MeetMarket 2009 project at the Australian International Documentary Conference, and “Little Gods of Mercy”, are currently in development and production. Both these films highlight the horrors of poverty and disease and yet show how even the most desperate of situations
can be changed for the better.
James has filmed in countries throughout the world from Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Myanmar to Australia and India, as well as in locations in the Bahamas, Central America, the Middle East, the United Kingdom, and Continental Europe.
James Lingwood is a member of
• International Quorum of Motion Picture Producers, USA
• National Documentary Film Academy of China
• Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts
• The Australian Directors’ Guild