Tamara Tracz

I was born in 1970, in London.

In 1986, aged 16, I went to work for Kenneth Branagh’s recently formed Renaissance Theatre Company on Romeo and Juliet at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, and then in 1987 on Public Enemy, also at the Lyric, and John Session’s Life of Napoleon at Riverside Studios. I made my directorial debut that year at the Riverside in a Renaissance produced festival of new work with the play Yours Ever Fair Star which then played at Keats’s House in Hampstead and went on a tour of schools.

On leaving school in 1988 I worked for Theatre de Complicite as an assistant director during their season at the Almeida Theatre, working on the original production of The Visit directed by Simon MacBurney and Annabel Arden and The Phantom Violin directed by Jos Houben. This led to a year at the Lecoq School in Paris in 1989-1990.

Before Lecoq I spent six months in Tel Aviv working as an assistant director and videographer with the writer and director Hanoch Levin on the cabaret Ha Gigolo mi Congo (The Gigolo from the Congo).

I left Lecoq lost and confused. In response to those feelings, I spent 1991 in Brazil and on my return to London started making short films.

Between 1994 and 1998 I was a camera assistant in film and television, while continuing to make my own films.

In 1998 I studied film at The California Institute of the Arts with James Benning, Thom Andersen and Betzy Bromberg, graduating in 2002.

My films have won prizes and shown all over the world in festivals including Cannes, where I was part of a showcase of new directors presented by Kodak, as well as Vienna, Rotterdam, Ann Arbor, Sao Paulo, London, South x Southwest in Texas, Taiwan and Nashville. My film Bitter was part of the gallery show Lucky 7 in London in 2003.

My writing is published in the magazine Senses of Cinema– www.sensesofcinema.com.

My children were born in 2006, 2008 and 2010. Their presence has had a profound effect on my work- on how I am able to work and the work itself.

In 2012 I completed Three Books a series of three hand made books, dealing with issues of loss, family, history and time.