After Screen, Nick was founding editor of Moving Pictures. He has worked for the European Film Market and the European Film Awards, freelanced as a journalist and runs consultancy firm Split Screen, advising for various film festivals and national film bodies.
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Biggest Cannes drama?
Every day was a drama: we were doing 200-page dailies in an age before computers and mobile phones.
Favourite Cannes moment?
The sound of a dozen typewriters pounding away in a small hotel room on deadline.
Proudest editorial achievement during your time at Screen International?
Taking the dailies to other festivals and markets: the AFM, MIFED (RIP) and, above all, Moscow when it was still in the USSR. We were apparently the first non-samizdat newspaper to be independently printed in Russia since the Revolution.
Biggest change in the international film industry that occurred while you were Editor?
The rise and collapse of junk bonds and other forms of dodgy financing. There were literally billions sloshing around and available to anyone with a half-convincing project and a skillful accountant. Never were so many films in the pipeline. Most of them stayed there.
Biggest challenge facing the industry today?
Finding a financially sound and effective way of distributing films in the digital era, replacing the present steampunk set-up which tries to graft a 21st-century compromise onto an outdated, 100-year-old business model
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