Caprice (1986)
A film by Joanna Hogg
My mother taught me how to use her sewing machine when I was fourteen years old.
Throughout secondary school I made clothes, by taking apart clothing and using shop bought patterns and altering them to create my own styles.
In 1986, when I was 17, I had a booth at London Fashion Week and a woman came by my booth. She introduced herself, Joanna Hogg, and told me she was at The National Film School making her graduation film, and would I make some of the costumes.
We became friends, many years later my mother, Barbara Stone, produced Joanna’s first feature - Unrelated - the film was an immediate success at The London Film Festival and made Joanna’s name as a film director.
Click the YouTube logo above to view Caprice, Joanna Hogg’s graduation film from The National Film School starring a young Tilda Swinton in one of her first film roles (21:53 minutes).
IMDb: Caprice (1986) directed by Joanna Hogg, starring Tilda Swinton
Dylan Stone Puppet (2010)
A film by Dylan Jonas Stone
This film is about the strange and possibly exaggerated thought process that happens to me during the process of painting. I experimented with large scale oil paintings, using the exact scale and compositions of Van Dycks and Holbeins, to see what it felt like, working with traditional oil painting on linen.
In the dialogue of this three-minute film, I refer to wonderful painters from the history of art and this is a testament to their perseverance and extraordinary work.
Of course many of these artists had multiple assistants who they trained to do the work in exactly their hand, so there was an amazing coherency in all the paintings coming from their studio. But to maintain this consistency needed a persistence that is clearly remarkable.
Click the YouTube logo above to view the film (3:33 minutes).
Dylan's Dear Diaries (2025)
A film by Paul Craddock and Cal Murphy Barton
Paul and Cal are filmmakers who make films in collaboration with archives and museums. They saw my exhibition at Kings College London, 200 Years of Personal Pocket Diaries and spoke to me about the idea of making a film.
Kings gave them funding to make a personal film about my collection of personal pocket diaries and when I first started collecting diaries.
© Common Films Ltd 2026
Uncovered (1994)
A film by Jim McBride
After spending five years in Barcelona doing my BA in Fine Arts at EINA School of Art and Design, I got a job on a film being directed by Jim McBride, taking place in Medieval Catalunya, and I was in the costume department. Throughout art school I continued to make clothes, I always loved using the sewing machine so I knew where all the fabric shops were in Barcelona.
I remember I was in charge of looking after Michael Gough’s costumes for the film. I found a tailor in Barcelona on the Raval side of The Ramblas who would make his costumes. The production office wanted the tailor to go to London, measure Michael Gough in the UK and then come back to create the costumes so they would be ready when he arrived on set. I spoke Spanish and understood Catalan, so I went with the tailor to London.
On the morning of the flight, I accidentally slept past my alarm. I am an early riser, and always have been so I was in a state, because the taxi had been organised for me to collect the tailor and then we would go straight to the airport. It was in the middle of Summer and the airport was packed when we arrived. We had missed our flight. I will never forget what happened, the tailor spoke in Catalan to the British Airways Manager at the counter in a seriousness I don’t think I had ever seen before in my life, told him what we were doing, and the Manager organised for us to be on the next flight. The airport was so full, I am pretty sure that he did us a great favour and enabled us to jump the queue.
Uncovered (1994) directed by Jim McBride, starring Kate Beckinsale, John Wood, Sinéad Cusack, Michael Gough.
Batman (1989)
A film by Tim Burton
My job on Batman in 1986 was in the costume department, working for Bob Ringwood and Graham Churchyard. I was a fabric source, since I was a young teenager, I had been going to all the fabric shops all over London because I was making clothes constantly.
In those years there were many fabric shops and all the department stores had immense haberdashery departments. On Berwick Street in Soho, the street was lined with fabric shops and on the surrounding streets were many haberdashery shops, selling wholesale and to private individuals.
We would meet early in the morning at a Portuguese cafe in Soho for breakfast, where Bob and Graham would make the plans for the day. The costume designer would tell me what he was looking for, and for which costume, and I’d go source it, coming back to the film production office with swatches.
Many of the costumes in the film were made by the costume department. Bob Ringwood had worked in the theatre before films and he knew many of the workshops at the theatres in the West End. I remember he sent me to the back of The Royal Opera House with a swatch of fabric; he wanted it to be dyed a specific green, they made the actual costumes in the building and he knew the people there. Several days later I went back to pick up my swatches, all dyed various colours of green. I think this was for the Joker’s green costume for the film.
Batman (1989) directed by Tim Burton, starring Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Kim Basinger.