Sophie Fiennes

Sophie Fiennes (born 12 February 1967) is a filmmaker best known for her films Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (2017) and Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow (2010), as well as for her collaborations with philosopher Slavoj Žižek: The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006), and The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2013).

Fiennes’ formally inventive approach often combines observational documentary with performance film.

They sold the company in 1976, which now trades as Insight Cards Limited.

Fiennes’ father, Mark Fiennes, taught his daughter photography – both how to take photographs and how to print in black and white – while Jini Fiennes took her daughter to attend life drawing classes aged 11, at St Edmund’s Art Centre, Salisbury.

Sophie Fiennes attributes this early immersion in observation and the creation of the image as a foundational experience.

Sophie Fiennes attended Chelsea School of Art Foundation Course in 1984.

She worked as photographic assistant to Perry Ogden in 1985, and between 1986 - 1991 held a variety of production roles working closely with director Peter Greenaway on feature films including ‘Drowning by Numbers (1988), The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) and ‘Prospero's Books (1991).

Fiennes met dancer and choreographer Michael Clark who performed the role of Caliban in ‘Prospero’s Books’ and subsequently teamed up with Clark, to re-launch The Michael Clark Company, and produce the award winning stage work Michael Clark’s ‘Modern Masterpiece’, (Mmm…) (1992)

In the mid 90’s Fiennes began to make her own work and turned to documentary; with the advent of digital video cameras it was now possible to make films with a relatively independent and ambitious creative approach.

Fiennes shoots her own observational material and explores ideas of cinematic staging and film grammar within non-fiction cinema.

When shooting on 16mm or 35 mm, she often works with cinematographer Remko Schnoor, and in 2022 worked with Mike Eley BSC on Four Quartets.

The film premiered at Sundance in 1998.

The Late Michael Clark (1999) combines intimate observational documentary with dance sequences carefully restaged for the camera and shot on 16 mm film.

“Somewhere between the relative relaxation of Clarke in front of the camera, "writes the art critic Danny Leigh, “and the film’s Digital-Video derived sense of verité, the results are absorbing, inventive and, more unexpectedly, entirely approachable.”

Sophie Fiennes was awarded a NESTA fellowship in 2001 to support her innovative approach to filmmaking and she won the Arte France Cinema award at Rotterdam’s Cinemart in 2007.

Sophie Fiennes teaches at University College London, where she is Senior Tutor on the Creative Documentary by Practice MFA, and Mentor for the Ethnographic and Documentary Film (Practical) MA. She has also taught at the IDFA summer school.

Sophie Fiennes was born in Ipswich, England, and is the daughter of photographer Mark Fiennes and novelist and painter, Jennifer Lash (Jini Fiennes.) She is the sister of Ralph Fiennes, Martha Fiennes, Magnus Fiennes, Jacob Fiennes and Joseph Fiennes.

The family moved house throughout Fiennes’ childhood, living at various times in Suffolk, Wiltshire, London, and notably in West Cork and Kilkenny, Ireland,  where Mark Fiennes designed and built the family’s house, and developed a practice as a photographer.

In 2001, London based arts organization Artangel commissioned Fiennes to document Because I Sing, a choral project involving 19 amateur choirs staged by composer Orlando Gough and Belgian theatre maker Alain Platel.

Fiennes forged relationships with these amateur choral groups, capturing their diverse worlds.

Described by one critic as “one of the most unusual documentaries about London its inhabitants are likely to see”, Because I Sing was first broadcast on Channel 4 on 27 May 2001.

Although best known for his architectural studies, “photographer of extraordinary versatility, whose work - featured in 2003 in a major retrospective at the Menier Gallery in London - reflected his sensitivity to places and people, his perennial sense of humour and, not least, an ingrained dislike of pomposity and hierarchy that gave many of his pictures a cutting edge of social comment.”

Jini Fiennes, described by the writer Dodie Smith as “almost too interesting to be true”, home schooled the children, inspired by the Scottish educationalist A.S.Neill.

Along with her siblings, Fiennes assisted her parents with running their postcard company Insight Cards, black and white photographs of Ireland taken by both Mark and Jini Fiennes.

Since 2006 Fiennes has edited her films, (sometimes under the pseudonym Ethel Shepherd).

Perceiving film editing as a form of writing, Fiennes’ films are shaped from her directly observed material.

Bryan Appleyard, writing in The Sunday Times says, “She believes in the autonomous power of the image, its ability to change meanings as you watch.” Fiennes herself describes this approach as an invitation.

“What I’m doing is allowing viewers to engage purely with the visual world, to make it their own.”

Fiennes has been described as a “sharp and sensitive observer” who makes ““bold, beautiful but demanding” work.

She is a director, “who isn’t afraid to risk alienating audiences with her nonlinear storytelling” and works in close collaboration with her subject matter, “her camera responds creatively to what it sees, it modifies and transforms the spectacle.”

Film critic Danny Leigh identified this in her early work: “Almost uniquely, Fiennes remains adamant she wants [Michael] Clark – or whoever she happens to be dealing with – to be understood through their work rather than the other way round; not for her the hackneyed game of small-screen head shrinking.” Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw says her 2010 film Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, “could be described as a ‘participatory documentary’ in the sense that the film-maker gets alongside her subject and in some way contributes to the art being created.”

Fiennes’ work has screened internationally in festivals including Cannes, Toronto, Rotterdam, IDFA and Sundance, distributed theatrically and broadcast.

Her work has shown in museums including MOMA New York; Hammer Museum Los Angeles; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art Denmark; Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Japan; Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid.

Tate are acquiring the installation current/SEE, which comprises a 13-minute extract of her film, The Late Michael Clark, originally commissioned by the BBC.

The installation was produced on the occasion of the Barbican exhibition, Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer, in 2020.

In a 2020 interview she describes documentary as a practice that can take many forms and which has preceded the moving image; life captured in songs and oral traditions, painting and the written word.

Documentation is for her “a remainder, a moment witnessed and lost – except for the document.

There is something pathetic and exceptional in this.

And a work will also change in time.”

In Fiennes’ first  short film, Lars from 1 - 10, Danish director Lars Von Trier discusses his Dogme ’95 manifesto and reflects on his creative process.