Richard Parry
Director/Producer
+44(0)7973 303681
rich@richardparry.com

I started making films at 13 years old. Super 8mm shorts - Horrors, sc-fi’s, documentaries. I built camera cranes from waste soil piping and a borrowed supermarket trolleys for tracking. Molded life size 3-D heads from plasticine for my horror flicks and constructed sets from spare plasterboard from my father’s house renovations. And the whole family was forced into casting for the various dramas.

After leaving school I sidestepped college and decided to have a go at a longer film on my own. I begged, borrowed and ‘blagged’ stock, cameras and people to make a 60-minute drama: A shoestring affair that made it to the ICA Good Video Guide and Edinburgh Fringe Film Festival. Then, working in a film workshop, I taught myself to use old Bolex 16mm’s, Ari BL’s and Steinbeck decks. I made short films, pop-promos, documentaries and community films.

In 1992, the war kicked off in Yugoslavia and I borrowed cash for a small, domestic video camera, packed my bags and caught a plane to the nearest working airport. I spent the best part of the next few years in war-torn Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. Working as a freelancer with an agency called ‘Frontline News’, who sold my stories of massacres to ITN, Newsnight and many foreign stations. Through lack of funds we were forced to live as locals did - No expensive hotels or armored vehicles, sleeping on cellar floors, catching what remained of the local transport and dodging the bullets along with beleaguered citizens. We defied the major news stations and uncovered corruption in the United Nations, an unattractive story to journalists who were significant consumers of these black market goods. The only way to make a living in these circumstances was to get pictures no one else had. On one occasion my colleague Vaughan Smith, and co-producer of Blood Trail, and I dressed as Croat soldiers and were smuggled to the front-line, lead tiptoe through the minefields and into a Muslim enclave.

It had its harrowing moments too such as traveling into recaptured territory with anxious civilians looking for relatives. Forty-nine elderly Croats had been hacked to death by the retreating Serb forces and I was literally picking up the pieces with hysterical family members. Another time we were stuck on a half-mile stretch of road, between front lines, when AK47 bullets started tearing through the car. A close shave that left my nerves in tatters and my camera too. I covered wars in Nagorno Karabach and Chechenya, and spent five years traveling the world’s tragic hot spots: Zaire, Albania and the former Soviet Union among them.

The agency’s exploits were later heralded in the book ‘Frontline: The True Story of the British Mavericks who Changed the Face of War Reporting’, by David Loyn. 20 years after its inception, ‘Frontline’ is now a Club, restaurant and forum dedicated to the nine members who died reporting wars and the concepts of freelance journalism that they aspired to.

In 1992 I also shot and directed my first documentary. A zero budget effort where I blagged camera kit and followed a bunch of London based born again Christians as they exorcised the ‘evils’ of the capital. After it was bought and screened by Channel 4 in 93, I started directing TV documentaries, including two for CH4 about life on the front-line and another zero-budget effort, a dark and wry look at war journalism.

By 97 I’d had enough of the high anxiety and ducking under tables every time a car backfired and wanted to turn my attention to my own country. Also probably as a reaction to the heaviness of the last few years I threw myself into dance and drug culture. I directed and shot ‘Generation E’ for channel 5, looking at how ecstasy and has affected British culture. The program flag-shipped the launch of the new Channel 5. Following on from that I made ‘Full Moon Party’ for Channel 5, about backpackers in Thailand then Channel 4’s ‘City Stories’, a 5-part series on the world of finance.

South West Nine (released in UK cinemas in 2001) was my first full-length feature film, as Director and Writer. It was a culmination of my own experiences and insecurities, from drug excesses at home to adrenaline binges in wars - And an attempt to explain a culture on the verge of enormous change. Nominated for a BAFTA and 5 BIFA’s, amongst others - the film also picked up ‘best soundtrack’ and ‘best new director’ on the festival circuit.

Since 2003 I have shot documentaries in Iraq and Afghanistan for CNN, Discovery and American A&E - and Directed/Produced a three-hour BBC series on Irish Gypsies in the UK and their conflict over land.

‘Blood Trail’ started in 1993 with Vaughan and myself wanting to make a documentary, which truly reflected the underbelly of war reporting. We followed the photographer Robert King over 15 years from his 1st to his 10th war. Self-financing and unable to attract industry support we struggled on with the belief that a great story lay at the heart of the film: One that reflects the complexities, drives and fears of characters so often stereotyped and mythicised by the industry.

Now in 2008 the film is provisionally scheduled for cinematic release on UK screens in 2009.