Saints of Somewhere

Casting director, Des Hamilton is the man that film-makers like Lars Von Trier, Andrea Arnold, Nicolas Winding Refn and Shane Meadows go to for original thinking on acting talent. He has cast some of the most outstanding films in modern cinema. Hamilton’s career in the industry began after a chance meeting with the director Lynne Ramsay while he was in rehab for drug addiction at the same time as her brother. It was the first of a series of chance encounters with Ramsay that led to her eventually asking him to cast for her movie Morvern Callar. Des made his name by ‘streetcasting’ - by pounding pavements and scoping out raw talent. He found unknown Kathleen McDermott in Glasgow city centre, who despite having never acted previously, went on to star in the film alongside Samantha Morton and win a BAFTA for best newcomer. Almost two decades on, as well as working with agents and drama schools Hamilton still tracks down unknowns out on the streets to great success, most notably with the casting of Thomas Turgoose for ‘This is England’. Forever unconventional in his approach to work and life, Des Hamilton is uncompromising and as real as it gets - and the world is a better place for it. Check him out now.

Jewellery designer Shaun Leane’s stunning collaborations with the late, great Alexander Mcqueen have become part of British cultural history. They are the fruits of a beautiful friendship and extraordinary meeting of minds that have come to define much of Leane’s adult life. Never one to conform, North London boy Leane opted for an apprenticeship as a goldsmith in Hatton Garden over a future heading up the family construction business. Again, a few years later rather than set diamond tiaras for Bond Street princesses he chose to make his mark as a jeweller by crafting coiled corsets and feathered headpieces for the catwalk. The rest, as they say, is fashion history. Press play to escape to the diamond encrusted sparkle of Mayfair from where Shaun Leane homes in on life’s essentials - family and friendship - with Saints of Somewhere.

“I did think - when I was young and arrogant - that we could make a film and change the world, and of course you can’t. What it might do though is change people’s consciousness so that they care more, understand more and demand political change. That’s what you can do.” Tony Garnett is a British TV legend. Together with Ken Loach he made era defining, agenda setting social drama like Cathy Come Home, Up The Junction and Kes. A famously private man, Tony has shied away from the press and giving interviews, until now. He’s decided it’s time, in his eighties, to open up and write a memoir, The Day The Music Died. Partly to process the devastating way his parents died within just weeks of one another when he was only five years old but also to lift the lid on the secrets of a ground breaking career. Tony Garnett is an incredibly wise man, so press play and prepare to soak up a little of that wisdom as he talks about his heroes and inspirations on Saints of Somewhere.

Peter Tatchell has dedicated his life to fighting hate, bigotry and injustice. The human rights activist is anchored by the simple belief that everyone should be treated equally and fairly. Listening to him is inspiring, uplifting and inevitably makes you pause to think: What do I stand for? What am I willing to do for the things I believe in? Over the last four decades he’s held mass kiss-ins, outed bishops and had a go at making a citizen’s arrest on Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe. His support for others has come at a price though. Peter himself has become a target; dodging bullets, bricks through the window, not to mention dealing with the effects of brain damage brought on by beatings dished out by both Mugabe’s security and homophobic Russian thugs. He’s not about to back down though. If anything, the opposition Peter Tatchell stirs up in others galvanises his resolve to stand up and fight for love and global equality. He is genuinely a once in a generation activist.

George Shaw is the most charming, smart, funny and straight talking death obsessive you’ll ever come across. He is also one of Britain’s most compelling contemporary artists and a wonderful mass of contradiction. George has spent two years working underground, deep in the basement studio of the National Gallery in London, preparing work for his show My Back To Nature, which marks his tenure as the gallery’s associate artist. Shaw is best known sparse scenes of Tile Hill, the estate near Coventry where he grew up. A series of landscapes which took twenty years to paint and which the turner prize nominee says are essentially self ­portraits. Saints of Somewhere talked to him to try and understand a bit more about the detail in those landscapes.

Henry Holland crashed into the fashion industry in his early twenties with a bag of T-shirts and no training. A rookie fashion writer, he switched from pitching feature ideas to editors to showing a catwalk collection at London Fashion Week within a matter of months. Over the last ten years Henry’s gone on to build a hugely successful independent British fashion label. Saints of Somewhere caught up with him at House of Holland HQ in Hackney to talk about that success but also to try and eek out of him exactly how he’s resisted a lot of the cynicism and hype that characterises certain parts of the industry. We chat about overcoming snobbery, not taking fashion too seriously and why he’ll always enjoy a selfie with the likes of Kim Kardashian.

Susanna White is the softly spoken British movie director who made Hollywood sit up and take notice with the balls out war drama Generation Kill. As a film ­maker she can handle anything, whether it’s heaving corsets in Jane Eyre or double crossing gangsters in Boardwalk Empire. Her latest movie Our Kind of Traitor, released Spring 2016, is a slick adaptation of the bestselling thriller by John Le Carre starring Ewan McGregor and Naomie Harris. Susanna talks to Saints of Somewhere about what it’s like being a female director when only nine percent of Hollywood movies are made by women, the magic of working with radicals like David Simon, the genius writer behind both Generation Kill and The Wire and hanging out in LA with the Hollywood portrait artist Don Bachardy and his friend Armistead Maupin.

Kim Chambers danced as a ballerina before the accident that changed the course of her extraordinary life. Now she is one of the world’s leading open water swimmers and Kim is the first woman on the planet to have swum 30 miles through the shark infested waters from the Farallon Islands just off San Francisco to the Golden Gate Bridge. That’s 17 hours non-stop in an area where 40% of all US shark attacks occur. Kiwi Kim talks to Saints of Somewhere about her incredible life including the immediate aftermath of her horrific accident when doctors were preparing to amputate one of her legs and the two years she spent in rehab learning to walk again, during which Kim stepped into the ocean and found new freedom and purpose.

The lawyer and human rights activist has represented over 300 prisoners facing the death penalty in the United States. Over the years he has prevented execution in all but six cases. As Clive talks to SOS about his ‘Saints’ - his heroes and inspirations - he shares stories about last minute reprieves, final words and what his work on Death Row has taught him about human nature. Outside of the US, as director of the campaign group Reprieve, Clive secured the release of over 70 detainees from Guantanamo Bay. Listen here then also as he describes what it was like setting foot in the most notorious prison on the planet. In a world where we’re often quick to judge and write people off Clive Stafford Smith does neither. Hearing him talk is humbling, inspiring and shocking. All rolled into one.