Sheila Hayman
Independent Filmmaker
Other Roles: Director, Producer, Other
Areas of Focus: Documentaries
Organization: Senseless Films
Biography
I’ve written and directed documentary films for the BBC, Channel 4, ARTE, Beijing TV and others, winning a BAFTA, Time Out Documentary Series of the Year, Arts Documentary of the Year nomination and a Robert Kennedy award.
I’ve been UK Young Journalist of the Year, the BAFTA/Fulbright Fellow in Los Angeles, a columnist for The Guardian newspaper (2016-7), a Hodder Headline Lead Title novelist, Director’s Fellow at the MIT Media Lab and Artist in Residence at PIK.
Many of my films have focused on our relationship with technology; my other main focus is music in various genres. Films and digital projects about music have included ‘The Rewrite of Spring’ with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Barbican Centre, ‘100 Million Musicians’ about Western classical music in China, and an interactive performance with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. On its release, my BBC film about my forebear Felix Mendelssohn, ‘Mendelssohn, The Nazis and Me’ was nominated for the Grierson Arts Documentary of the Year, and is still in demand. In 2023 I released ‘Fanny: The Other Mendelssohn’, the story of my 3x great grandmother, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, sister of Felix. The film has been shown at festivals around the world, was acquired for broadcast by Sky Arts, and is now widely available.
I also coordinate a creative writing and performance group at UK NGO Freedom from Torture, working to help refugees as my father was helped in the 1930s.
