Filmmaker of the Year 2026 Awards

A documentary documentary about the life and work of painter Pat Porter that I made in collaboration with Jay Goldmark and Finley Kilmartin for Goldmark Films has been featured in Pro Moviemaker Magazine as part of the Filmmaker of the Year 2026 Awards.

The award winners will be announced in May, but for now you can read all about the documentary Pat Porter: A Hidden Light, which has been placed into the cinematographer category, in the latest issue of the magazine here on page 38. The magazine is also available to buy in shops.

Our documentary celebrates the life and work of Pat Porter (1944-2022), a prolific painter whose intimate still lifes, landscapes, and portraits were created over decades but never publicly shown during her lifetime.

Set against the moving backdrop of her Rutland house and studio, the story unfolds through the voices of her four children, allowing the viewer to explore this long-hidden body of work — delicate, deeply personal pieces that capture the quiet intensity of a woman devoted to observing the world around her.

Though she exhibited only a handful of times during her lifetime, Pat Porter’s still lives and interior scenes reveal a prodigious talent that is only now receiving the recognition it deserves. Porter (née Reynolds) studied at the Slade School of Art in London in the mid-1960s, where her tutors included Euan Uglow and William Coldstream; Derek Jarman was a fellow student, as was her future husband, the painter Tony Porter. Upon graduation, the Porters left London for rural Northamptonshire, where Pat continued to paint, balancing her art while raising a young family.

Porter’s work, which underwent a number of significant and often radical evolutions, drew on her intense observation of the domestic world immediately surrounding her, always working from life rather than memory, photographs, or the imagination. Her still life oils – at times so heavily impastoed to reach a point of near-abstraction, at others Cézannesque, or picked out with Matisse-like flattened colours and outlines – demonstrate an enduring dialogue with artists of the past as well as the objects she surrounded herself with.

“Cinematography is no longer defined by
the size of a crew or the scale of a budget.
Audiences now expect rich, expressive
visuals as standard – and independent
filmmakers are meeting that challenge
with intelligence, sensitivity and craft.
The category praises work that gives big-
screen impact via thoughtful choices.
Jonny Lewis’s documentary on the
life and work of painter Pat Porter is just
one example of that philosophy in action.
Made in collaboration with Jay Goldmark
and Finley Kilmartin for Goldmark Films,
it explores a body of work that remained
largely unseen during Porter’s lifetime –
intimate still lifes, portraits and interiors
created quietly over decades.
Lewis, who has already won in two
editions of Pro Moviemaker FOTY, says:
“She was a prolific painter, but one who
never sought public attention. Her work
was deeply personal, and we wanted the
cinematography to reflect that sense of
observation and restraint.”
Shot in Porter’s Rutland home and
studio, the film allows space for both
the artwork and the voices of her four
children, including journalist and author
Charlie Porter. “The house became part
of the visual language,” Lewis explains.
“We weren’t interested in stylisation for
its own sake. The light, the framing, the
movement – it all needed to feel honest
and grounded in the space in which she
lived and worked.”

That sensitivity extends to how the
paintings are filmed. “Pat always worked
from life,” describes Lewis. “So we tried
to do the same. The camera observes
rather than interprets. It gives the viewer
time to look and notice texture, colour
and stillness.” It’s cinematography in
service of story and subject – purposeful,
considered and emotionally resonant.
Exactly the kind of work this category is
here to recognise.”