Staff
Nicola Gibson
Senior Lecturer
Nicola worked at the BBC as a Documentary Producer/Director on many primetime series and strands in BBC Arts, Specialist Factual and Documentaries and as successful Development Producer. Her work was nominated for a Grierson Documentary Award, a Royal Television Award and ‘My Life As A Child’, won at five International Input Documentary Festivals.
Her approach in all her work comes from her belief that documentary is ‘life shared on film’ and after leaving the BBC she worked in the independent sector for independents,including Ridley Scott Associates and The Garden.
She is also an experienced and qualified documentary lecturer in Higher Education and a Fellow of the Higher Education Authority. She worked as a Visiting Lecturer for many years at City University, University of London Goldsmiths and Birkbeck, before joining London Film School.
Peter Hollywood
Head of Department, Editing
Peter Hollywood is an award-winning editor, who has been editing for over twenty years. As well as collaborating with well-known directors, such as Ridley Scott, Mike Newell and Terry Gilliam, he has been contributing to almost every genre imaginable, ranging from no-budget shorts and independent documentaries to network television and multi-million dollar features.
Rafael Kapelinski
Module 1 Leader and Term 1 Tutor
Rafael is a London-based, award-winning writer/director, media lecturer, screenplay development and new media technology consultant. A graduate of the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, London Film School and the EKRAN programme at the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing in Warsaw, he has created some of the most distinctive short and feature films that have won over 25 international awards at top-tier festivals such as Cannes, Oberhausen, Austin, New Horizons and Brest. His feature debut Butterfly Kisses (BBC Films/Film London/Microwave/Blue Shadows Films) won the Crystal Bear at the 2017 Berlin International Film Festival and consequently Rafael was long-listed for the British Independent Film Award for Directing. His feature project Up on the Roof won Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious Cinefondation Residence Award. His short To Bury The Horse was a finalist in the 2011 Bosch Stiftung Competition. He also worked as script supervisor on Nina Gantz’s BAFTA-winning short animation Edmond (over 50 other international awards). He has most recently completed a neo-noir psychological drama titled A Woman At Night produced by Blue Shadows Films (UK) and Haven of Peace (USA) and is currently in pre-production with Budapest Diaries (Polish Film Institute/DominoFilms/Filmfabriq). He has lectured in fiction development and audio-visual storytelling at the London Film School, Central Film School, London Film Academy and The American Film Institute (AFI) in Los Angeles.
Social links: Twitter
Richard Kwietniowski
Module 3 Leader and Term 6 Tutor
Writer-director, born in London to Anglo-Polish parents. After studying literature then film at University of Kent at Canterbury, became Visiting Research Scholar in Film at University of California at Berkeley before returning to the UK to work in the independent film sector and higher education. Short films including Alfalfa and Flames of Passion were distributed internationally. Work as a director for British TV received Royal Television Society and D&AD (Gold and Best of Year) awards and a Prix Italia nomination. Feature-films Love and Death on Long Island (John Hurt and Jason Priestley), and Owning Mahowny (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Minnie Driver) both made Best of Year critics’ lists. Awards include prizes from Cannes Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, New York Film Critics Circle, US National Board of Review, and BAFTA. He teaches directing, screenwriting and acting-to-camera at a range of institutions in the UK and beyond, and has contributed to many European initiatives in feature film development. His LFS directing workshop for film students and actors has just celebrated its 300th edition. His name is easier to pronounce than it looks: Kfee-etnee- ov-skee.
Richard Leeder
Head of Projection & Audio Visual Support
Richard is an Ex-Westend Chief Projectionist, Obsessed with film from a young age (particularly the horror genre). Richard landed his dream job as a cinema projectionist over 25 years ago and has worked for Odeon, Empire and Picturehouse Cinemas, and has worked on numerous film festivals, including LFF and Sundance. He has seen the changeover from film prints to digital media, which has made the industry a lot more inclusive although he still thinks 70mm film is the best.
Roberto Oggiano
Film Festivals Administrator
Roberto is also a film critic and film programmer. He holds a MA in Film Programming and Curation at Birkbeck College and his collaborations include Cineuropa (EN, FR, ITA, SP), Scenari (IT) and journal Cinelapsus (IT), Cinè-Lumière at the French Institute in London and Noods Radio (Bristol, UK).
Sabrina Semidei
Programme Coordinator - MA Screenwriting, MA International Film Business
French-Italian London Film School graduate in Screenwriting and winner of the LFS Final Draft award for Outstanding Screenwriting Student (2021). Before that, she graduated from King's College London with a BA in Film Studies. She has been living in London for the past five years, working on her own original screenplays and occasional short film shoots. She is currently also working on a novel adaptation and her first novel.
Sophia Wellington
Course Leader MA Screenwriting, Head of Screenwriting and Staff Governor
Sophia Wellington began her film career on the floor – literally: placing marks for Richard Gere as a camera assistant. After years in the camera department, working on a number of Anglo-American features, Sophia moved into the cutting room where she is, to her knowledge, the only (living) assistant editor to get an apology out of Harvey Weinstein.
Sophia moved into script development in 2003 when she joined World Productions to develop a feature slate for their production deal with Sony Columbia. During this time, she worked with a variety of writers and directors on films including Layer Cake and Becoming Jane.
Another move, this time to Singapore where Sophia taught screenwriting for the Graduate Film and Dramatic Writing programmes of NYU Tisch School of the Arts Asia. Returning to London in 2015, Sophia combines teaching with writing and script development whilst maintaining her links with the South East Asian film industry. She runs feature workshops for the Cinemalaya Institute in Manila and recent script consultancy credits include Remittance (2016) a low budget feature exploring the life of migrant workers in Singapore and the upcoming Polis Evo 2, (2018) a high octane, Malaysian action movie.
Steve Gray
Senior Lecturer, Cinematography
Steve Gray is a very experienced Lighting Cameraman/Camera Operator and working DOP. He studied at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield after doing a degree in photography at Napier University in his native Scotland. He has shot dramas/documentaries/commercials and pop videos, on all formats. He has been nominated for an Emmy twice. Steve has worked in over 120 countries, from filming documentaries in the wilds of Antarctica to being a camera operator on Kate Winslet’s latest HBO drama series, The Regime. He is a strong believer in film education, having benefited immensely from his own film education, and is keen to inspire new film makers on their filmmaking journey.
Sue Austen
MA Filmmaking Deputy Course Leader & Module 3 Leader, Term 6 Tutor
Sue has worked in independent film and television production since 1982. Her career began at the now legendary Goldcrest Films, where she worked for four years on programmes produced for the new Channel 4. After Goldcrest’s collapse Sue spent a short time as a freelance script editor, before joining Granada Films as Head of Development. Whilst there she worked on a number of feature films including David Hare’s STRAPLESS and Aisling Walsh’s first feature, JOYRIDERS. Sue left Granada to co-produce the medical thriller, PAPER MASK, co-funded by Film 4 and British Screen, released in over 70 territories and selected as the closing film in Director’s Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990.
Sue then spent 5 years working at the European Script Fund, part of the MEDIA (Creative Europe) organisation and returned to production in 1997 with her first television film, VICIOUS CIRCLE, developed and produced for BBC Films and Irish Screen. This was followed by the BAFTA nominated comedy drama DONOVAN QUICK starring Colin Firth. Over the next twelve years she produced more than 50 hours of primetime television drama for BBC1, BBC2 and ITV and received a second BAFTA nomination.
She continues to develop new productions as well as tutoring and lecturing part time at the London Film School, Goldsmiths University, Serial Eyes and Regents University.
