Caroline Spry has worked in film and television since the mid 1970s. She started her career studying Photography, Film and Television at the London College of Printing where she combined her passion for film & TV with her activities in feminist politics. She became involved in the emerging feminist film movement, working on the London Women’s Film Co-op production Rapunzel and subsequently joined a fledgling group, Cinesisters, set up by women working in the industry to provide a space for discussion and support. Caroline and other members of the group went on to found the UK’s first feminist film and video distibution collective, Cinema of Women, in 1979.
Whilst studying at LCP and then completing a postgraduate degree in Film & TV at the Royal College of Art, Caroline worked as a camera assistant on films and programmes for the BBC and cinema release. She was one a handful of women working in the camera department in the 1970s in the UK.
After finishing her studies Caroline continued working as a camerawoman and subsequently as director, producer and commissioner. She joined Channel Four Television in 1985 and for ten years commissioned programmes and series from producers, in the UK and internationally, as part of the Independent Film and Video Department (IFVD). Working alongside Alan Fountain and Rod Stoneman she brought distinctive and often unheard voices to our screens across a range of genres – documentary and current affairs, magazine series, experimental films and cinema features.
Caroline’s was responsible for commissioning the majority of Channel 4’s groundbreaking lesbian and gay programming during the 1980s and early 1990s. Among these was the world’s first nationally networked gay and lesbian series, Out on Tuesday, from 1989 to 1994. She also commissioned feminist programmes including a popular women’s magazine programme First Sex. Other commissions from IFVD included 11th Hour, People to People, Critical Eye, The Media Show and South.
Caroline’s commissions gained numerous awards including Emmy for Celluloid Closet and Prix Italia for Silverlake Life: A View from Here.
In 1995 Caroline left Channel Four and qualified as a solicitor at leading London firm Bindmans LLP. She returned full-time to film and television production in 2004. As a producer and executive producer she has been responsible for numerous documentary singles and series, many of these were produced with Faction Films. Credits include Derek Jarman: Life as Art; a look at women on Death Row in the US, Perverted Justice (Channel 4); an investigation of the policing of rave culture, Exodus from Babylon (Channel 4); a series Channel Four News Special Reports from Iraq; Chevolution, a cinema documentary on the famous Che Guevara “t-shirt” photograph; Hip Hop Hijabis (Al Jazeera); and feature documentary Gary Numan: Android in LaLa Land (BBC).
Caroline continues to develop projects and act as a consultant on productions. She is also working with Channel 4 colleague, Rod Stoneman, to develop an online database of the work of C4’s Independent Film & Video Department from 1982 to 1995.