Ian Woodward was born in Brecon, North Wales, and was formerly a show business correspondent with a speciality in in-depth interviews with big-name stars of stage and screen. He appeared regularly on the BBC as presenter of Radio 2’s Jazz in Britain from the stage of London’s Camden Theatre (from where The Goon Show with Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, Michael Bentine and Spike Milligan was broadcast some three decades before Ian Woodward set foot on the same stage). He was Arts contributor to Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, among other BBC shows. He is Associate Producer of the US-made 3D animation cartoon film Raegan and RJ Save the Day, a Christian-inspired space adventure for children which is slated for production in 2018. It is a sequel to the multi-award-winning Raegan and RJ in Space: First to Mars.

Top photo: Kim May as Nature Woman in Adoration
Lower photo: Norman Bowman (Jim) and Virginia Byron (Emma) filming I’ll Walk with God on location

He and his wife Zenka have two children, Philip and Stefanie, and three grandchildren, Eva, Anna and Joe. Eva appears briefly as the Child of Hope in Too Many Ghosts  (below), the filmmaker’s award-winning commentary on the folly of military conflict set at the end of World War Two and starring Petros Koukoulomatis with David Sutherland, Mandy Carr and Eva Woodward. Too Many Ghosts, narrated by Beth Mayoh (below right), has been screened in 23 countries, spanning Canada and South Korea, Australia and Russia and all across Europe, East and West, including one showing at the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz and 13 showings at the cinema of Britain’s famous Imperial War Museum in London. It was given the Best Director award at the International Historical Film Festival in Bulgaria and at Italy’s renowned International “A Film for Peace” Festival in Trieste it received the following citation: “The artistic direction grants Too Many Ghosts the Special Mention award for having addressed important issues regarding human rights and the right to peace.”

He is the author of more than 30 books (including volumes of verse), which have been translated into German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Indonesian, Arabic and Japanese. His books include Audrey Hepburn: Fair Lady of the Screen (a worldwide best-seller and never out of print since first published in 1984; the Japanese edition hit 1st place in the country’s top booksellers lists; the 1993 Virgin paperback is now in its 19th printing; the title was released as an eBook in 2012 and is available worldwide on Amazon); The Werewolf Delusion; Glenda Jackson: A Study in Fire and Ice; The Story of Clowns; Dance (with an introduction by TV’s former Strictly Come Dancing judge and theatre director Arlene Phillips); The Grand Music Themes; Birds in the Garden; Lives of the Great Composers (two volumes); Spotlight on Ballet (foreword by choreographer and former Royal Ballet star and English National Ballet artistic director Wayne Eagling); and the best-seller One Hundred Favourite Poems.

Audrey Hepburn: Fair Lady of the Screen spawned the tribute musical Fair Lady of the Screen, composed by former Bee Gees keyboardist Rudi Dobson. The musical was released on CD (below left) by President Records with an accompanying book written by Ian Woodward.

A single from the Fair Lady of the Screen album was later released with Clive Waite singing Rudi’s arrangement of the Henri Mancini classic Moon River (above centre), originally sung by Audrey Hepburn’s guitar-strumming Holly Golightly on the fire escape outside her apartment in Manhattan’s Upper East Side (above right) in the multi-Oscar-winning Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The legendary Italian-American composer, conductor and arranger Henri Mancini, of Pink Panther, Love Story and Romeo and Juliet themes fame, personally approved Rudi’s idiosyncratic hit version of Moon River. “He loved it,” says Rudi.

Ian Woodward’s interests outside writing and filmmaking embrace music and natural history. For a period, before being waylaid by more pressing distractions, he studied composition (harmony and counterpoint) and piano (under opera star and Proms favourite Josephine Nendick) at the Watford School of Music and Drama. He has been a keen naturalist since childhood. He has a particular interest in ornithology and has undertaken many scientific research projects in recognition of which he was elected an honorary Member of the British Ornithologists’ Union (MBOU) and the American Ornithologists’ Union (MAOU) and made a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London (FZS). He passionately supports and actively participates in the work of the RSPB, the research organization British Trust for Ornithology and the Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust.

His last six films – Adoration: A Natural History, Love Song: The Triumph and Tragedy of Tchaikovsky (photo above), The Red Rose, Too Many Ghosts, Silly Robin and From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields (photo below) – have won major awards at international film festivals and been screened worldwide, from the United Kingdom to Canada and the United States, from Australia, South Korea, Russia and Belarus and across Europe to Germany,  Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, the Ukraine, Italy, Cyprus, Greece, Armenia, Slovenia, Estonia, Portugal, Macedonia, Austria, Malta, Slovakia, Serbia and the Czech Republic.

Above: Ian Woodward with some cast members of his 2013 fantasy film The Red Rose

Above: Palace Trumpeters in the March of the Bluebells scene from The Red Rose
Below: Love Song: The Triumph and Tragedy of Tchaikovsky with Simon Alexander (right)
as the troubled Russian composer and Lee Farrell as his pupil and muse Eduard Zak

Above: March 2014 marked the international film-festival release of Love Song: The Triumph and Tragedy of Tchaikovsky, a biopic drama that has rocked the classical-music Establishment. The film, starring Simon Alexander as the Russian composer with Lee Farrell as his pupil and inspiration Eduard Zak, is based on exclusive ground-breaking research by lifelong Tchaikovsky aficionado Ian Woodward. His screenplay reveals for the first time the heart-rending true story behind the creation of the composer’s fantasy overture Romeo and Juliet which spawned one of the most famous love themes ever written.

The film has been screened worldwide, taking in – outside numerous venues in the United Kingdom and the United States – Greece, India, Austria, Armenia, Croatia, Belarus, Portugal, Romania, Cyprus, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Canada where, in April 2015, at the Canada International Film Festival, it received the prestigious Award of Excellence trophy (a very heavy, 11-inch engraved crystal-glass “Star Tower”) at a star-studded awards ceremony held at Vancouver’s beautiful Edgewater Casino (above).

And, in the United States, a welcome Diploma of Honour came Love Song’s way at the Bayou City Inspirational Film Festival in Houston, Texas (above) – along with a dazzling, sold-out Garden Grove theatrical screening at the Indie Fest USA International Film Festival in California where sensational all-girl hard-rock metal band Almost Anywhere (below) entertained the crowds.

Ian Woodward, FZS, completed production of his wildlife docudrama Adoration: A Natural History in January 2015, winning the prestigious Award of Merit at the Christian Life International Film Festival in Ontario, Canada. It has been screened across the United States, Europe, the Caribbean and India. The film is a lyrical portrait of the English landscape as seen through the prism of its fauna and flora and the seasons that shape the countryside and through the eyes and poetic imagination of Nature Woman, played by London-based rising star Kim May (above and below).

Below:  He has recently completed production of I’ll Walk with God, a musical romance about an American opera-singer-turned-priest starring Norman Bowman and Virginia Byron with Claire Heverin. The film’s Coventry-based hero is known to locals as “The Singing Vicar”. Musical numbers include Ave Maria, You’ll Never Walk Alone and the Neapolitan song Come Prima.

“Unlike all the other art forms,

film is able to seize and render the passage of time,

to stop it, almost to possess it in infinity.

I’d say that film is the sculpting of time.”

ANDREI TARKOVSKY

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