Sam Firth is a filmmaker based in the Highlands scotland. Her work explores the relationship between content and form, personal narrative and visual culture and pushes the boundaries between science and art, documentary and fiction, personal experience and wider cultural context.
Her films have been described as warm, poetic and hand knitted and she has been credited with the ability of making the every day cinematic.
Sam grew up in Walthamstow, East London and originally studied literature at Kent University where she won an award for one of her papers on Shakespeare as part of her BA. Sam worked in the film industry for several years as a script reader, script editor and producer where she continued to explore ideas of narrative construction and eventually went on to study an MA in Screenwriting at the Northern Film School.
Sam’s first short film I.D. won awards around the world including DepicT at Encounters film festival and the Human Competition at Chicago Film Festival.
I.D. documents Sam’s own attempts to explore identity as a teenager through images using 1980’s photo-booths and has become part of triptych of films exploring different forms of personal story telling. Her second film The Worm Inside attempts to capture the immediacy of the present by using video diary to document illness and Sam’s desire to turn what could be tragic news into a heroic adventure.
Last year Sam won a special commendation prize in the Wellcome Trust screenwriting competition for a feature film project currently in development with Stray Bear Films about memory and the construction of personal narrative within the family context. Please look out for more details on this project!
Sam also teaches filmmaking to young people and has won awards for her work with primary school children. To see an example of her most recent work with primary children click here.
Stay the Same 