Name May Thomas Role Film director | Spouse Owen Miles Thomas Movies One Life Stand, Solid Air | |
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Born January 1959 Glasgow, Scotland Occupation Filmmaker, film director, screenwriter Awards Festroia Festival Internacional de Cinema, Portugal 2004, Best Director and Best Cinematography, Solid Air Website | ||
May Miles Thomas
May Miles Thomas is a Scottish film director, screenwriter and artist. In 2000 she made the UK's first end-to-end full-length digital film One Life Stand which became a paradigm for future UK low budget filmmaking.
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"One Life Stand"
The full-length film One Life Stand was shot on miniDV in black and white on a small budget. It was written, directed and edited by May Miles Thomas and was favourably reviewed.
It won awards for Best Film, Best Director, Best Writer, and Best Performance at the BAFTA New Talent Awards and won Best Achievement in Production at the British Independent Film Awards in 2000.
May Miles Thomas won the prestigious Scottish Screen Outstanding Achievement Award for the film.
She was also one of the first recipients of a NESTA Fellowship for the contribution the film made to the artistic and technical development of digital cinema. In 2003 Queen Elizabeth II honoured her as a Pioneer to the Life of the Nation for her services to British Cinema.
Biographical details
Born in Glasgow and a graduate of Glasgow School of Art where she studied design and photography, May Miles Thomas worked as production designer, writer, editor, director of photography, producer and director. Her career as a filmmaker began in the mid-1980s at BBC Television, where she made the transition from production design to directing music and arts documentaries and music videos. She then moved on to writing and directing feature films. She was awarded funding for the first series of Scottish Television and British Screen's short film scheme Prime Cuts. In 1995 she formed the company Elemental Films with her husband Owen Thomas. The short film, "The Beauty of the Common Tool" won Best Film at the Palm Springs International Short film Festival in 1997. She wrote the initial screenplay for "One Life Stand" during a film scholarship at the Nipkow Programm, Berlin in 1997.
She followed up One Life Stand with a second feature film Solid Air which premièred at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2003, starring Maurice Roëves and Brian McCardie. The film won Best Director and Best Cinematography at the Festroia International Film Festival, Portugal in 2004.
She won the Creative Scotland Award in 2007 to create The Devil's Plantation aninteractive website and multi-media project which explores the secret geometry and ancient paths of Glasgow. The project won the Best Interactive category at the BAFTA New Talent Awards in 2010. In 2013 the project was re-worked as a feature-length film and was selected for the Glasgow Film Festival. It was nominated for the 2013 BAFTA Scotland Cineworld Audience Award.
Films
Feature films
Shorts & documentaries
Awards
Palm Springs International Short Film Festival, 1997
The Beauty of the Common Tool shortlisted for an Academy Award nomination in the Short Live Action Category.
awarded by Nipkow Programm, Berlin, 1997
BAFTA New Talent Awards, 2000
for One Life Stand
Scottish Screen, 2000
for One Life Stand
British Independent Film Awards, 2000
for One Life Stand
Sundance Institute/NHK International Filmmakers Awards, 2001
for the feature screenplay Ringing the True
Festroia Festival Internacional de Cinema, Portugal, 2003
for Solid Air
awarded by National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, 2000–02
May Miles Thomas honoured for her services to British Cinema
by H.M. Queen Elizabeth II, 2003
Scottish Arts Council, 2007
BAFTA New Talent Awards, 2010
BAFTA Scotland Film and Television Awards, 2013