Paul Atherton
Encyclopedia
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke...
billboard in Piccadilly Circus
Piccadilly Circus
Piccadilly Circus is a road junction and public space of London's West End in the City of Westminster, built in 1819 to connect Regent Street with the major shopping street of Piccadilly...
, London with his film The Ballet of Change.
Career
Paul Atherton was just three months old when he was abandoned in a tent at a disused Airport in CardiffCardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
. He was placed with a white foster family in the small village of Ystrad Mynach
Ystrad Mynach
Ystrad Mynach is a town in the County Borough of Caerphilly, previously within the ancient traditional county of Glamorgan, Wales, and is 5 miles north of Caerphilly town. It has a population of around 13,500 and stands in the Rhymney Valley . Before the Industrial Revolution and the coming of coal...
, he left home at 15 where he spent time in children's homes and completed his "O" Levels. At 16 he set up home on his own, against the wishes of Social Services. After a traumatic event at the age of 18 he became homeless and lived on the streets, but by 20 he'd recovered his life and bought his first flat.
In 1992 Atherton was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome
Chronic fatigue syndrome
Chronic fatigue syndrome is the most common name used to designate a significantly debilitating medical disorder or group of disorders generally defined by persistent fatigue accompanied by other specific symptoms for a minimum of six months, not due to ongoing exertion, not substantially...
(CFS, often called myalgic encephalomyelitis in the United Kingdom).
He attended Cardiff Business School
Cardiff Business School
Cardiff Business School is a Business school in Cardiff, Wales. Part of Cardiff University, it was created in its current form in 1987 and opened by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom....
, and obtained a BSc Honours Degree in Business Administration as a mature student in 1994.
Whilst studying he set up a mail order company specialising in silk lingerie called “A Touch of Silk”. This was the first non-blue-chip company in the UK allowed to take credit cards over the phone without a retail premises.
He moved onto a career in Public Relations with Systems Publicity, Harvard Communications and finally Propeller Marketing where he Account Directed clients CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
, media buyers OMD
Omnicom Group
Omnicom Group is a holding company whose agencies provide marketing and communications services in the disciplines of advertising, customer relationship management , strategic media planning and buying, digital and interactive marketing, direct and promotional marketing, public relations and...
(Omnicom Media Directions) and The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
.
From here, his television career began at Prospect Pictures working on their live five day-a-week cookery programme Good Food Live before setting up his production companies in 2004.
In February 2009 he worked with Wil Johnson (BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
Star of Waking the Dead
Waking the Dead (TV series)
Waking the Dead is a British television police procedural crime drama series produced by the BBC featuring a fictional Cold Case Unit comprising CID police officers, a psychological profiler and a forensic scientist. A pilot episode aired in September 2000 and there have been a total of nine series...
) and Robert Cavanah
Robert Cavanah
Robert Cavanah is a Scottish actor/writer/director/producer.Cavanah was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is a fluent Spanish speaker. He is a father of two...
(Tomb Raider
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life is a 2003 action film directed by Jan de Bont, and starring Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft. It is a sequel to the 2001 film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider...
/ Sahara) on a short film entitled Colour Blind, to bring attention to a UK audience, the dangers of seeing racism everywhere. He made-up his White lead in Golliwog (Black Face
Black Face
Black Face is the south wall of an east-west ridge in Arena Valley, south of East Beacon, in the Quartermain Mountains, Victoria Land. The feature is a prominent landmark and is formed by a dolerite dike which rises over above the floor of the valley...
) Make-up to make the point.
On Sunday 2 August 2009 Atherton started Pre-production on "A Thousand Voices for a Broken System" a new format of documentary film that will originally take place on the Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
and eventually be edited for cinema.
Prompted by his own experiences the premise of the film is to interview a 1,000 people from across the UK who have been failed by the Welfare, NHS or Social Services in the past 10 years, in order to highlight the issues of the most vulnerable people in society.
It's referred to as a patchwork film because rather than one film-maker doing all the interviews, documentary crews from around the UK have been asked to submit their own interviews with subjects of their choice, so Atherton can sew them together like a patchwork quilt.
On Monday 6 September 2010 Atherton announced that he had signed video games writer Rhianna Pratchett
Rhianna Pratchett
Rhianna Pratchett is a freelance computer games scriptwriter, narrative designer and former journalist...
to write his first feature film. Vigilia (a working title) is due to shoot in 2011
Works
- Bootleg Reg: Reginald D Hunter Live in London (2010)
- Colour Blind (2009)
- Transformation (2008)
- The Ballet of Change: London Bridge (2007)
- The Ballet of Change: Piccadilly Circus (2007)
- The Ballet of Change: Leicester Square (2007)
- The Ballet of Change: Trafalgar Square (2007)
- Cabaret Reborn (2006)
- Silent Voices (2005)Silent VoicesSilent Voices is a docudrama about domestic violence in the United Kingdom written for the Community Channel by Barbara Gorna, directed by Charles Harris and produced by Paul Atherton.It was first screened on April 25, 2005 at 21:00....