Mark Norfolk

Mark Norfolk is a prolific author and independent filmmaker. He has made documentaries, short films and feature films and authored plays for stage and radio and well as publishing several books.

Born in London, Mark Norfolk studied Independent Film at the University of Wales, Cardiff and has worked as an actor, reporter and sports journalist.

Norfolk noticed while growing up that the voices of black characters in plays and TV shows were never really authentic, "That takes away a large part of what they are: they're just doing what the majority of society has given them to do. What that's done over the years is made black people lose any representation of themselves. So it's very important that people are now trying to use language as it is said." The continuing themes in his writing bring a sharp focus on contemporary British society and how the various groups and generations interlock or collide.

Mark Norfolk's theatre debut came in 1998 when as part of Black History Month his play, Fair As The Dark Get was staged at the Albany Theatre, and closely followed by Buy Your Leave the next year.

He then wrote and directed Diary Of Somebody(2000) a short film which won an LFVDA Production Award (London Film & Video Development Agency) and followed that with a low budget, digital feature film Love Is Not Enough which premiered on 10 September 2001 to a sold out audience at the Curzon Soho Cinema, London as part of the BFM International Film Festival. Time Out film critic Tom Charity wrote "You could call it an avant garde deconstruction of independent film practice and process – or you could call it a piss-take. It's a shambles, but engagingly so. I laughed lots." ITV's popular film show, Movie Nights called it "a highlight of the festival". In 2002 Love is Not Enough opened at the same cinema.

Norfolk's play, Knock Down Ginger was produced at the Warehouse Theatre after being selected for its International Playwriting Festival in June 2002. The play was nominated for the Arts Council's Eclipse Award For Combating Racism Through Theatre and was shortlisted for the Verity Bargate playwriting award, later the same year it was staged in Urbino, Italy, opening the Premio Candoni Festival of New Writing and won a Croydon Guardian Culture Award. The play, directed by Jeffery Kissoon, starred Judith Jacob, Sylvester Williams and marked the stage debut for Troy Glasgow.

...
Wikipedia