Leslie Hills

Leslie Hills is a director of Skyline Productions and has overall responsibility for its development and management. After a successful and varied career in education, she joined Skyline in 1987. She heads development, produces and works as script reader, editor and assessor and handles the company's rights management.

For Skyline she has written and produced a range of documentary, factual, drama and dramatised programmes for BBC, ITV , C4, arte, Discovery, NKH, 3sat, BR, ORB, YLE, NRW, ZDF, WDR. Le Sept and MTV and produced a wide range of live outside broadcast shows and educational and corporate videos. Her latest credits are as producer of her third collaboration with Thomas Riedelsheimer , Alison Watt - a Painter's Eye, executive producer of Minttu Mantynen's debut Karelian Cowgirls, executive producer on Jes Benstock's film The Holocaust Tourist, his Taggers for Mike Figgis and the London Film Festival and Robin Burke's living lightly, as producer on Women in Black a short film about the international women's peace movement by Nick Higgins for Scottish Screen and STV, on Tracy and I, a new comedy for Channel 4 and as development executive and executive producer on The Fabulous Bagel Boys, a one hour drama with Denis Lawson, broadcast by BBC1.

Among her film credits are Rivers and Tides, Andy Goldsworthy working with Time, which she co-produced. The film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival (2001) and had its British premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (2001). Among other awards, it took the Grand Prix at the Montreal Festival (2002) and the Golden Lolas for Production and Photography at the German Filmprize (2003) Released in the US and Germany to packed houses, it is now on release on DVD worldwide. Touch the Sound - A sound journey with Evelyn Glennie, a 90 minute co-production with Filmquadrat, Munich, on music and time with percussionist Evelyn Glennie first screened at Locarno August 2004 and took the Critics prize. This is her second collaboration with the award-winning director and cinematographer, Thomas Riedelsheimer. Among other awards, the film took the Main Prize at the Leipzig Documentary Festival (2004)and a Scottish Bafta (2004) for best documentary film and the Golden Lola in the German Film Prize for sound.(2005) It is on release worldwide..

For fourteen years she has produced the live three hour OB to the screens at Edinburgh's Hogmanay and provided shows for MTV and footage for UK broadcasters and in January of 2007 she produced an OB for the launch of the Highland Festival in Inverness. Projects in development include a third theatrical feature documentary with Thomas Riedelsheimer - Breathing Earth; Susumu's Dream. Projects in production include a third theatrical feature documentary with Thomas Riedelsheimer - Breathing Earth; Susumu Shingu working with the Wind.

In the early nineties Hills was awarded a Fellowship in Berlin. This has led to co-productions and collaboration in Europe. She has attended PILOTs as writer and story editor and Arista as story editor. She has read and assessed screenplays for The Arts Council Lottery Fund and the Film Council Lottery Department and currently reads for and the Northern Ireland Film and Television Commission and is an external assessor for Scottish Screen. She is Lektorin, tutor and adviser for the Nipkow Program, Berlin and has lectured with the Scottish Screen Academy. She has executive produced numerous short films and acts as a mentor with the Film Council's First Light scheme. She is a member of the Deutsche Filmakademie and has a Spirit of Scotland award for personal achievement in the Screen category.

She has contributed many articles on the arts and on education to books, periodicals and newspapers, publishes short stories and was for many years a regular music critic for the national newspapers and Edinburgh Festival drama critic.

She has extensive experience as Chair of various educational and political bodies and has been a member/chair of the boards of The Edinburgh Video Training Company, the Lyceum Theatre's Backstage, The Fifth Estate Theatre Company, Theatre Workshop, Edinburgh, Flying Horse Theatre Company, Skyline Film and Television Productions Limited, Skyline Educational Ltd, and is a founder member of Engender and of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. She is currently Chair of the board of CMI, Centre for the Moving Image which houses Edinburgh Filmhouse and the Edinburgh International Film Festival.