Neil McCartney

Neil McCartney is a UK-born journalist, consultant, producer and entrepreneur.
He has been co-founder of a number of initiatives, including the British Independent Film Awards in 1998. He is chairman of The Independent Film Trust, a UK charity set up to advance the cause of independent film-making.
Journalism
Neil McCartney has written occasionally for national newspapers, and acted as a commentator for organisations such as the BBC, Sky and The Observer during the 2000's.s. He has served as a judge on various Media and Film industry events..
Production
McCartney has produced a number of short films as well as feature films. He started with three international features which he produced or co-produced. The first of these, Season of Mists (Sezon tumanov), was a UK-Russia co-production which won a number of prizes at international festivals. The second film, the Russian feature Zone of Turbulence (Zona turbulentnosti), also won several prizes, while The Empty Home (Pustoy dom), a Kyrgyzstan-Russia-France-UK co-production, was Kyrgyzstan’s official selection for the 2013 Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film.
Next McCartney was executive producer on Finding Family, a feature documentary shot in the UK and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had its world premiere at the Sarajevo Film Festival in August 2013 and its UK premiere in November 2013 at a charity screening in Leicester Square. In March 2014 the film won two prizes at the BAFTA Scotland New Talent Awards ceremony in Glasgow. It was voted Best Factual production and Best New Work (sponsored by Channel 4). In May 2014 it won two Golden Apple awards at the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Film Festival (BHFF) in New York - the Jury Award for Best Documentary and the Audience Award for the Best Picture.
McCartney's fifth film, on which he was executive producer, was the feature documentary One Humanity, which was shot in South Africa, the UK and the USA, and which was simultaneously premiered in Pretoria and London on 27 April 2014, as part of the celebrations to mark the 20th anniversary of the first democratic elections in South Africa - the elections which brought Nelson Mandela to power just four years after he was released from prison on Robben Island.
His sixth feature, on which he was again executive producer, was the Russian-language documentary Mamayev kurgan. Pamyat pokoleniy (Mamai’s Burial Mound. Memories of Generations), about the giant Russian war monument The Motherland Calls, built in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad). His seventh was the Turkish-language documentary Sira Disi Ä°nsanlar (Extraordinary People), and his eighth, another collaboration with Evgenia Tirdatova as writer/director, was the documentary Imya Rokossovsky (The Name is Rokossovsky), about Konstantin Rokossovsky, the Polish-born officer in the Red Army who was released from Stalin's prisons to become a Soviet war hero. The ninth, again with Tirdatova, was the Russian-Turkish feature documentary, Rudolf Nureyev. Island of His Dreams. This tells the story of the frequent trips that the eponymous Russian ballet dancer made to Turkey between 1980 and 1990. It premiered on 20th May 2016 at the 4th Kayseri International Film Festival in Turkey.
McCartney consults for the Moscow International Film Festival. He also acted as a judge for the 1st Sindh International Film Festival in Karachi on 10-11 February 2014.
Charity
Neil McCartney is chairman of The Independent Film Trust, which supports ventures and initiatives that encourage an interest in film production and help emerging film-makers to develop and express
themselves. It works to raise the profile of independent films which might otherwise not be available to a particular audience. It also funds activities such as basic film courses for the
disadvantaged and the provision of training scholarships for those who have
demonstrated talent but need financial help. In October 2010 the IFT-backed short film Night Music, a 12-minute animation by Paul Jacques which was made as part of the Vision Shorts film-making initiative for people recovering from mental health problems, was premiered at the Raindance Film Festival. Courses have also been run with a series of other partners, which have been the subject of two television programmes broadcast by the Community Channel, the national television channel run by the Media Trust.
In 2014, the IFT also set up a scholarship with the National Film and Television School (NFTS) to enable a student to study on the latter’s course in Creative Business for Entrepreneurs and Executives (CBEE).

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