Introducing Between the Lines: The Story of Stories

Back in 2019, I published my book, The New Fire. It was one of the most valuable experiences of my working life. I had underestimated the incredible amount of work it takes to write a 270-page book. I was also taken by how many people asked the obvious question: you’ve written a book on the power of film, why, err… didn’t you make a film?

Over the last couple of years, I have wanted to produce the follow up, but this time taking the more obvious path - producing a documentary series, this time on the nature and power of stories.

The book looked at the power and significance of storytelling for the way humans see the world. With our upcoming documentary series, Between the Lines, we have sought to understand why stories are so fundamental to the human experience. What is it that makes us, as Dr. Walter Fisher called us, Homo Narrans?

The answer, we found, is more fundamental than you could possibly imagine. Through the series we meet a breadth of characters with incredible stories and insights to share from all over the world. People who have lived and studied the full reaches of human experience - each with their own part in the story of stories.

Today we’re launching the trailer for the series, but over the coming weeks and months, we are going to be sharing films on stories’ role in our perception of reality, of the past, of our own and our shared identities.

It’s been a fabulous series to work on, and we still have a lot more to do, but - like writing the book - it has already taught us so much more than we hoped for when we set out.

We continue to have a lot of fun making it. We all hope you enjoy it.

Thank you to the amazing crew Tarryn Paul, Sybilla Harvey, Callum Ward, Jake Joynson, Rob Howells, Derek Knowles, Piers Queree, Dan Hankinson, Will Gillespie, Will Hammond, Katie Chen, Chris Dudley, and Daniel Piña.

Massive thanks to our current contributors: Brad Smallwood, Murray Siple, Avital Hahamy and Indre Viskontas.