Richard Collings

Richard Collings is a broadcaster, director and producer, working principally for the BBC. He has presented radio programs including the Financial World Tonight and World Business Report. In the past three years he has made a number of short films. He was the BBC‘s South America Correspondent for two years, covering the dramatic hostage crisis in Peru, General Pinochet‘s last days as head of the army in Chile and the ups and downs of Colombia‘s civil war. In 2006 and 2007 he worked for ‘Newsnight‘, the BBC‘s flagship news and current affairs programme, producing on the day news stories and longer features on a wide range of subjects, from politics to art. His most recent success has been a film about the Colombian artist Fernando Botero. To date the film has been shortlisted for two highly coveted awards: it was part of the Judges‘ Official Selection for the Orlando Florida Film Festival 2007 and was nominated for the UK‘s prestigious Grierson Documentary Awards. Richard Collings was nominated as "Best Newcomer Director" for these awards. The Observer newspaper called the film documentary of the week: "Fascinating, moving and brilliantly photographed, this is unlike any other documentary you will see this week." The film was shown to full houses at two Odeon cinemas in central London in November 2007, the Odeon Panton Street, Leicester Square and the Odeon Covent Garden.