Legendary Children [All of Them Queer] current

LGBTQIA+ Pride in the UK celebrated its 50th birthday in 2022. How did it all begin, and where is Pride heading? Due for release late 2023/2024.

Directed and produced by Rob Falconer, and titled by kind permission of Holly Johnson after his anthemic song, the Pride 50 inspired documentary explores the extraordinary 1972 arrival of the Pride movement on European soil and the behemoth it would become. From the 1970s and the arrival of the Gay Liberation Front, groundbreaking rights pioneers of that time recall a very different and hostile landscape in Britain. By the 1990s Pride grew to the mega parades and huge park festivals, succesively bankrupting themselves. Pride in London, the present day incarnation, sees huge numbers in central London but also provokes powerful controversy in the community over its depoliticised parade promoting corporate sponsors. Features prominent human rights campaigners, LGBTQI+ activists and artists who have shaped the course of LGBTQI+ life over the years, including Peter Tatchell, Angela Mason, Tom Robinson, Neil Bartlett, Ted Brown, Lanah Pillay, Stuart Milk, Andrew Lumsden, Stuart Feather, Nathaniel J Hall and more. Music by Tom Robinson and Lanah P & SRJ. Captures some spectacular footage of both Pride's official July 1st birthday and the supersize Pride in London event. Off the cuff, firmly connected to our present, and likely not what anyone's been expecting... The film premiered at the KASHISH 2023 LGBT+ film festival staged in India's movie capital Mumbai in June 2023, just as India awaits the landmark Surpreme Court ruling on equal marriage. (UK 39 mins)

27000@25: When We Were Boys (UK 2021)

25 years ago in 1996 CRUSAID released 27,000 red balloons at the huge LGBTQIA+ Pride Festival on Clapham Common. Why? With music by Erasure and Jimmy Somerville

Directed and produced by Rob Falconer 27000@25: When We Were Boys turns back the clock to Pride on Clapham Common, 1996, the last but one of the public park mega Prides that would ultimately overwhelm the festival in its historical form. CRUSAID's historic 27,000 balloon release marked the number of people who had died from or were living with HIV and AIDS at that time. The original film "27000" was produced and directed by Rob Falconer, and shown on the Pride main stage on the Common to over 160,000 before the balloon release, with Jimmy Somerville and Holly Johnson performing its musical soundtrack. The film controversially explored the impact of an HIV positive diagnosis on an alarmingly young gay man - based very profoundly on real-life experience. 25 years later, 27000@25: When We Were Boys revisits 1996 with a completely new cut of the film and for the first time showing what happened on Clapham Common that day including BBC TV footage unseen since. Coming out of the grip of the devastating COVID pandemic, where were in the fight against the HIV pandemic that has claimed more than 32 million lives? Jimmy Somerville returned for the 2021 version with a new track scoring the film and was joined this time by multi-million selling masters of synth pop Erasure. New material with It's A Sin star and writer of hit play First Time Nathaniel Hall, diagnosed positive at only 16, brought the story a startling contemporary relevance. Tragically its original young star was no longer here to see again what he had the astonishing courage to do 25 years ago. Streamed worldwide in 7 language adaptations around for Rock The Ribbon World AIDS Day 2022 for 12 days only, exclusively from Erasure's powerful social media platforms, the film went on to become the fourth most viewed World AIDS Day 2022 content anywhere in the world on YouTube, reaching tens of thousands of viewers, despite YouTube's (hastily reversed) attempts to ban its viewing by under 18s. The move to shut young people out of a rare piece of material genuinely addressing youth HIV provoked a storm of protest across social media and international LGBTQI+ press, and high profile voices coming out in support of it, such as Holly Johnson, Peter Tatchell, the All Party House of Commons Parliamentary Committee, and US creator of the gamechanging "U=U Undetectable=Untransmittable" global awareness campaign Bruce Richman. What it revealed was that this highly unusual, moving film very definitely still had a voice 25 years on, and a powerful one.

#ReclaimPride (UK 2021

Read MORE about the 2021 #ReclaimPride film here. Watch trailer for the film of #ReclaimPride 2021 in London, the UK's first "People's Pride" march.

Watch the initial film of #ReclaimPride here on the Peter Tatchell Foundation YouTube channel. The full version also streamed on the DIVA Magazine YouTube Channel here, alongside feature coverage in the September 2021 issue. 2022 UPDATE: Sections of the #ReclaimPride film were acquired by BBC Studios for inclusion in the major Stephen Daldry/Joe Robertson produced Freedom: 50 Years of Pride feature documentary shown in the UK on Channel 4 TV July 2022 and on VOD on the All4 platform.

Battersea Power Station showreel

Editor and showreel producer of promo reel showcasing the Power Station’s history as a movie and event location.

One of a wide variety of videos I was commissioned to make during a fascinating three years working with iconic London landmark Battersea Power Station, a perenially in-demand film and stills location. I was also its house photographer. For those three years it also become a very successful and busy red carpet event venue, courtesy of the innovative Boiler House Venue, prior to it current major reconstruction.

Legacy work includes

Gay Man's Guide To Safer Sex '97

Director, producer, writer. Sequel to the groundbreaking 1992 Gay Man's Guide To Safer Sex and one of the first films to examine the unexpected and lifesaving changes brought by just emerging triple combination therapy in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The film challenged the representation of gay sexuality on screen and remains a watershed event in the British Board of Film Classification's history of what was considered permissible, changing the landscape for what would follow on afterwards. Gay Man's Guide To Safer Sex '97 premiered on London's South Bank at the National Film Theatre, and was screened in the US, across Europe and Australia with extensive commercial release in UK and USA (still in distribution in the USA). Virgin Retail Number One. Read more on the history of the two GMG films.

(UK 72mins)

Cast included Dr Mike Youle, Aiden Shaw. Made in association with CRUSAID/Terrence Higgins Trust, Star Foundation.

Legacy work includes

Speaking in Riddles

Producer LGBT+ mid 90s London clubland comedy Speaking In Riddles. The film made its debut at the then London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (now BFI Flare) at the National Film Theatre, South Bank, London, going on to screen at Frameline in San Francisco and the Turin Lovers Film Festival, before touring the national Netherlands art house circuit and its eventual UK retail releease.

(UK 30mins)

Cast included Leah Seresin, Richard Auckland, Rob Falconer, Ruth Enfield, Winston (House of Handbag), Peter K Ward and many faces from influential London club night Kinky Gerlinky. Written and directed by Mark C. O'Flaherty.

Radio Series: Gilded Vectors of Disease

Editor and radio producer of successful radio series The Gilded Vectors of Disease.

First heard on Resonance RM and iTunes Radio, the eight-part series traversed the world (and literally, through the streaming reach audience it went on to reach) in eight perennial purveyors of disease with THE LONDON SCHOOL OF HYGIENE & TROPICAL MEDICINE. An eclectic mixture of discussion, accessible science from internationally respected experts in thier fields, stimulating soundscapes and surprising creative writing from guest writers amd poets ruminating on uncomfortably fascinating pests. The series was also released to retail on CD. “An interesting new series with an interesting name…that’s got to be insect of the year.” – Miranda Sawyer, THE OBSERVER.

Out Of This Game (Live) Michal Atkins

Live acoustic video at Dalston Old Boys’ Club.

I’ve worked with singer-songwriter Michal Atkins on several projects, including designing and production managing the CD for his debut album Life In Numbers, and designing his website and branding. I shot 3 promos for him. For this, he wanted to perform a live acoustic arrangement of the album’s first single, and bravely with no cuts or overdubs. So I worked with a multi-camera and dolly track set-up to shoot this video.

(All audio materials, literary works and performances on this page strictly copyright control. Creative Commons usage does not apply.)