The Stage

Greengrass leads new screen directors group

Published Wednesday 11 June 2008 at 14:45 by Matthew Hemley

UK film and television directors this week unveiled a single trade group to campaign and collect royalties on their behalf.

Directors UK will combine the roles previously played by collection body the Directors’ and Producers’ Rights Society and the Directors Guild of Great Britain.

The guild, which deregistered as a union last year, passed responsibility for industrial matters concerning its theatre members to Equity and for film and TV members to the DPRS. But the DPRS opted to rebrand itself as Directors UK before assuming its new responsibility.

It will represent more than 3,500 members, working closely with the guild and broadcasting union Bectu to improve the conditions and terms under which directors are employed.

Andrew Lukas, chief executive of the guild, explained: “Our members were influential in setting up the DPRS and we have always worked in parallel. The future has to be to give the DPRS, now Directors UK, the muscle and for us to continue as the public voice to promote the status and work of directors.”

The new organisation’s board, under the presidency of United 93’s Paul Greengrass and chairman Charles Sturridge, writer and director of Shackleton, includes Bend it Like Beckham’s Gurinder Chadha, Matt Lipsey, who has worked on TV shows including Jekyll and Little Britain, and Peter Kosminsky, who was behind Channel 4’s Britz.

Directors UK chief executive Suzan Dormer said: “Over the next three years, Directors UK aims to achieve radical improvements in UK directors’ status, rights, fees, working and creative conditions. The organisation will soon become a recognised advocate of excellence for the craft of direction within the industry.”

Sturridge added that the industry was going through a “revolutionary change” and stressed it was crucial directors were strongly represented.

“Over the past few years, we have seen a decline in both the creative and economic rights of the director and we believe that this threatens the quality and efficiency of programme-making. Directors UK is not a union.

“We are legally rights holders in the films we make and we intend to articulate and defend those rights,” he said.