claire leona apps

WRITER / DIRECTOR

claire leona apps was raised in hong kong and indonesia before relocating to britain, where she graduated in mathematics at imperial college before completing an MA at the london film school, graduating as a director. for a decade her work with in the industry has been fuelled by a strong narrative drive, vivid imagination, desire to challenge people’s everyday perceptions and a fascination with the moving image. she has shot as far a field as asia, directed some accomplished actors such as rebecca hall and francesca annis, and has been commissioned by a diverse range of sponsors from near gale records in belgium to arts council england. writing and directing credits include ugly girls, granted permission, over, number 88, i want to f*** tom, everyone’s a little monkeyand gweipo, starring francesca annis who was enlisted on the strength of the script alone. gweipo won ‘best short’ at tiger far east film festival (london), ‘special jury prize’ at AFIA film festival (denmark) and was screened at multiple other festivals including cinefest sudbury (canada).

in 2007, claire leona founded dog eared films and created her debut documentary aceh recovers, shot in indonesia and charting the effect of charity workers on the post tsunami region. the film has been picked up by Ouat! Media. in 2008, she was short listed for the westminster arts film bursary award and became a finalist for the commonwealth vision awards with the short film hubcaps and bathtubs. in 2009, she won, by viewers vote, filmaka entry level with the stop animation plastic love, resulting in the funding of the bowler hat. claire leona has comprehensive editing experience working on many short films, such as keeping time, and a documentation of performance artist samantha sweeting’s bestilalia (I never imagined life without you). filmed and edited by claire leona, it has had a full afterlife including boston underground film festival (USA). she edits most of dog eared films’ productions (unless specified otherwise).
 

as well as creating wondrous and unusual music videos (such as what of and forsaken joy), she recently won the 2010 moving image commission (art council england funded). the resulting film girl blue running shoe premiered at the great north museum, screened on bbc1 and featured 'the zoetrope effect' that maeve and her created involving hand cranking super 8 footage. she is in post production for a short his uterus; her lover and finalizing funding for her multi-screen interactive theater pieces (shortlisted for the oxford samuel beckett theatre trust) and her micro-budget venereal thriller feature script. with these and all works, claire leona aspires to unbox the lines of genre, format and art house vs. mainstream by floating against conventions (why not have funny horror, gratuitous nudity or jarring puppetry?) and carving a claire-shaped space in independent cinema. she presently spends her time between london (uk) and toronto (canada)

full CV available upon request.

claireleona@dogearedfilms.co.uk