Document 9 Selection Panel

Jan Nimmo

Jan Nimmo is a Scottish artist and filmmaker who trained at Glasgow School of Art and has worked as a freelance artist and designer since 1986. She has travelled and worked extensively in Latin America, where her interests include popular culture, labour rights and the politics of commercial tropical fruit production. In 2000 she initiated a long term collaborative art project, Green Gold, working with Latin American banana workers to tell their stories though portrait, testimony and film. Her award winning documentaries from the project, Bonita: Ugly Bananas (Ecuador) and Pura Vida (Costa Rica) have been screened and broadcast internationally. Her most recent documentary, The Road to Drumleman: Memories of the Argyll Colliery, is a tribute to workers closer to home. She is currently researching slow food and sustainable agriculture in the Sierra de Huelva, Spain and has just completed a field visit to Cameroon, filming banana workers’ testimonies in their homes and on the plantations.

Chris Bowman

Chris Bowman is a filmmaker, writer and sound designer who also works as a freelance editor and lecturer/tutor. His work has been shown widely at assorted European and British film festivals. In 2002/2003 he was EMARE resident at the Werkleitz Gesellschaft Media Lab in Germany. His film afterlife (2002) toured the world as part of the Best of Berlin Transmediale.03, screening across four continents. A copy of his film Our Eye (2000)- a family history using digital techniques to re-interpret 8mm archive footage – was accepted for the permanent collection of the Scottish Screen Archive.

Darren Hercher

Darren Hercher studied documentary photography at Newport School of Art in Wales, graduating in 1999. He spent several years in London working as a freelance camera-man before going onto direct his own award-winning films. Darren’s first film ‘Send Me Somewhere Special’ won him ‘Best Newcomer’ at the 2005 Grierson Awards. He was also the winner of ‘Best Documentary’ at the Britspotting Awards of 2006 while his next film ‘The Downhill Racer’ earned him ‘Best Documentary Feature’ at the 2007 Celtic Media awards. The following year Darren moved to Glasgow to make his film ‘Sighthill Stories,’ which was awarded the Scottish BAFTA for ‘Best Factual Programme’ in 2009. His latest film project is ‘The Winner Loser.’

Karen O’Hare

Karen O’Hare is currently working at Screen Academy Scotland, a Skillset Film & Media Academy, where she develops, delivers and manages both a training programme for post graduate film students and short training courses for film & TV professionals in Scotland. She is also a filmmaker and is currently editing a documentary on climate change activists and trying to write her first feature film. She has volunteered for numerous film festivals since 1999 in lots of different roles from technical manager to projectionist, from runner to sitting on award juries. Festivals include: West Belfast Film Festival, Belfast Film Festival, Cinemagic Children’s Film Festival, Belfast, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Glasgow Film Festival, European Media Art Festival, Osnabruck, Germany and of course Document in Glasgow.

interpret 8mm archive footage – was accepted for the permanent collection of the Scottish Screen Archive.

Mona Rai

Born and based in Glasgow, Mona has a degree in Fine Art Photography from The Glasgow School of Art and has exhibited her work in numerous spaces. Having worked as a documentary photographer for The European Roma Rights Center and The Roma Press Center Budapest, documenting human rights abuses of the Roma communities in Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Croatia, she returned to work with the Gypsy/Traveller communities in Scotland and the Asylum / Refugee communities in Glasgow. These experiences highlighted the need for an organisation which would promote human rights and combat media misrepresentation of minorities and Asylum Seekers in Scotland, and with Paula Larkin in 2003 she co-founded The Document International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival.

Alona Tarka

Alona Tarka fell in love with movie-making during her early twenties while still living in St Petersburg during Russia’s Perestroika era. Before she knew it Alona had enrolled in film school and immediately started working with independent film productions in her home city. After moving to Scotland, Alona embraced every aspect of the film-making process – working with all departments from Costumes to Locations, as well as directing her own short films.

In recent years her focus has turned to post-production, her fascination with telling stories through connected images – leading her to discover more about the unlimited possibilities of the film-making craft. She went onto to earn a BA (Hons) in Digital Film and TV Production from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Her graduate film ‘Uncle Fergus’ won the Royal Television Society Award for Best Student Film in Scotland 2009. Alona currently works as a freelance junior editor for several renowned Scottish production companies and facilities including the BBC, 422.TV,STV, IWC, Mentor, Tern and Match light.