Jenny Morgan is a documentary film-maker and writer who grew up in apartheid South Africa and lives in London.
I’ve made many films for British television, and for NGOs, charities and trade unions.
Some titles for the BBC: The Heart of Soweto (made in the fragile days of the transition to democracy); Algeria: Dreaming of Democracy (with the transition going the other way); The Devil’s Gateway (about menstrual taboos); A World without Rules (filmed with the International Committee of the Red Cross, partly in Colombia with armed group the ELN); South Africa 2000 (a series for BBC Schools in the first few years of democracy in South Africa — when everyone was still hopeful…).
Some titles for Channel 4: A Night at the Turkish Opera (about the last performance of The Flying Dutchman at the Istanbul opera house, sabotaged by circumstances no-one could have foreseen); Three Thin Ladies (about women who suffered eating disorders before the term was understood); The Disorderly House of Windsor; A Woman’s Fight to Choose; The Real Charlotte Grays; Burnt to Death (about dowry murders in India).
Some films that have won prizes: Three Thin Ladies; After Jenin (shot immediately after the Israeli army bulldozed part of Jenin refugee camp in 2002); Angola é a Nossa Terra (my blog On the Road in Angola tells some of the stories of this shoot); Intifada, Road to Freedom.
NGOs and trade unions I’ve made films for: Save the Children; Marie Stopes; the International Planned Parenthood Federation; Unison; the TUC; the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA).
In 2020, in full lockdown, editor David Potter and I put together this short film for IANSA to mobilise for 16 Days of Activism against Gender Based Violence.
In the past few years I had the good fortune to direct a lot of 15-minute arts films for Rear Window, Tariq Ali’s show for TeleSUR, sadly now deceased. The presenter was Julian Stallabrass of the Courtauld; in series of 13- and 15-minute films, we produced little gems about the avant-garde, surrealism, abstract expressionism. But this was a one-off, about Cuban surrealist Wifredo Lam..
Jenny Morgan 