ARTICLES I'VE WRITTEN
BBC Films Online
It was Piers Beckley who gave me my first break as a BBC New Media Trainee in the year 2000. For several months I worked with Piers, Martyn and Sian on the now-defunct BBC Films website: commissioning articles, interviews and reviews and uploading them to the site. It was one of the proudest moments of my life when Piers allowed me to write an article of my own. In fact, I went on to write several. The site was shut down in October 2003 but it's still online for now:
Review Index
Mrs Brown (I've never actually watched it, I can confess that now)
Jet Li Profile
Chris Columbus Profile
Monkeys in Movies (spot the Simpsons references!)
Live and Let Die
Casablanca
Santa Claus The Movie (very controversial, this one)
Holymoly ARTICLES WRITTEN ABOUT ME AND MY STUFF
I've started writing a few entertainment articles for Holymoly.com on a semi regular basis. From music apps to TV series to videogames. More for fun than anything. I won't be writing for Time Out any time soon:
Bjork's Biophilia App
Game of Thrones Season 2: Five new characters
BBC Ariel Newspaper
Around the time that Stiletto came out, the BBC's in-house newspaper Ariel did a short profile of me complete with a cheesy director photo and a lot of factual inaccuracies. You can view the original article as a PDF.
Ariel Magazine, May 2008
Empire
I've been reading Empire magazine since Issue 2, featuring Michael Keaton dressed as Batman on the cover in 1989. For me to have my name appear in the magazine for the third time (after two appearances on the letters page) was an incredible honour. You can see a screengrab of the page:
Empire magazine, January 2010
Sight & Sound Sheffield Telegraph Sheffield Star
I don't think I ever imagined I'd make a comedy porn film. Even less likely that it would get reviewed in the British equivalent of Cahiers du Cinema that is Sight & Sound. But it actually happened. And they were very positive about it too! Click the link for proof:
Sight & Sound magazine, January 2010
Sheffield Telegraph, Nov 2009
The Sheffield Star, Nov 2009
Able Magazine
An interesting article about the state of disability cinema, written around the time of The Magic Hour's first release in 2009/2010.
ablemagazine.co.uk
Holymoly
The Holymoly gossip site's always been very supportive of my stuff - and this is a nice review of Hands Solo after it appeared online:
holymoly.com
Short of the Week
This site is one of the best repositories of short films online often featuring award-winning shorts of Oscar/BAFTA standard - so I was over the moon when they nominated Hands Solo as a short of the week. They also ran a very nice interview with me the following day.
shortoftheweek.com/hands-solo/
shortoftheweek.com/qa-with-hands-solo-dir-william-mager/
IdeasTap
A very nice site about creativity. This interview was written by Tom Seymour, whose first job in the film industry was as a runner on Hands Solo. Now he writes for Sight & Sound, Little White Lies and more.
ideastap.com/William-Mager-interview
Deaffest
The first time I went to the Deaffest film festival was way back in 2001, where they showed Waterfront. Back then, the standard of deaf filmmaking was variable at best. But every year the films shown at the Wolverhampton lighthouse go from strength to strength - and I've always enjoyed showing stuff there, from Text Batteries and Earwax to The Association, from Stiletto to My Song. They did a nice piece with me prior to the release of My Song.
deaffest.co.uk/director-of-my-song-william-mager/
I Look so I Can Hear
This is a fantastic blog about one woman's journey to getting bilateral cochlear implants. She also wrote some very nice things about My Song which meant a lot to me. So, y'know, read it.
funnyoldlife.wordpress.com/my-song/
Disability Arts Online
My Song was shown at Brighton's Upstream festival, where it had a really positive response, including from Colin Hambrook, Editor of DAO. He had some very interesting thoughts on the film.
disabilityartsonline.org.uk/
More links and clippings to be added soon...
