Sheila Hayman (born 1956) is a British documentary filmmaker, journalist and novelist.

Life

Sheila Hayman was born in 1956, one of three daughters of

Walter Hayman Walter Kurt Hayman FRS (formerly Haymann; 6 January 1926 – 1 January 2020) was a British mathematician known for contributions to complex analysis. He was a professor at Imperial College London. Life and work Hayman was born in Cologne, Ger ...

and Margaret Hayman, who together founded the British Mathematical Olympiad. She is a descendant of the composer

Fanny Mendelssohn Fanny Mendelssohn (14 November 1805 – 14 May 1847) was a German composer and pianist of the early Romantic era who was known as Fanny Hensel after her marriage. Her compositions include a string quartet, a piano trio, a piano quartet, an or ...

. Her older sister is Carolyn Hayman, cofounder of Peace Direct. She was educated at Putney High School and

Newnham College, Cambridge Newnham College is a women's constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sidgwick and suffragist campaigner Millicen ...

. Hayman joined the Science department of the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

, and later worked with

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...

. In 1990 she was awarded a BAFTA Fulbright Fellowship in film and television by the

Fulbright Commission The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people o ...

. She moved to

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

to learn screenwriting. In California she encountered the early internet, about which she made the BBC documentary ''The Electronic Frontier''. Hayman's film ''Mendelssohn, the Nazis and Me'' (2009) wove together the legacy of

Felix Mendelssohn Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 18094 November 1847), widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic music, Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions inc ...

with the experience of her family and other Jewish survivors of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

. The documentary was nominated for the Grierson Arts Documentary of the Year in 2010. In 2016 Hayman was appointed a Director's Fellow at the

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fi ...

. At MIT she began a documentary project, ''Senseless'', on the difference between machine and human intelligence. In 2020 she was Artist in Residence at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. The residency led to a short film, ''Complexity'', with music by

Cosmo Sheldrake Cosmo Christopher Sheldrake is an English musician, composer, and Record producer, producer. He is the son of Parapsychology, parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake and voice teacher Jill Purce, and the brother of mycologist Merlin Sheldrake. He rele ...

, on the challenges of reducing the natural world's complexity to computer models. Hayman's 2023 documentary ''Fanny: The Other Mendelssohn'' told the story of her great-great-great-grandmother, the composer

, and the rediscovery of her lost ''

Easter Sonata The ''Easter Sonata'' () is a piano sonata In music a sonata (; pl. ''sonate'') literally means a piece ''played'' as opposed to a cantata (Latin and Italian ''cantare'', "to sing"), a piece ''sung''. The term evolved through the history of ...

''. Hayman is married to the TV producer and writer Patrick Uden. She serves on the advisory board of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy. She has a long-term job at

Freedom from Torture Freedom from Torture (previously known as The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture) is a British registered charity that provides therapeutic care for survivors of torture who seek protection in the UK.

, where she coordinates a creative writing group for torture survivors, 'Write to Life'. She has also written three comic novels.

Works

TV

* (dir.) ''Robots: Taking the Biscuit''. BBC 1, 1986. * (producer) ''Killer Bimbos on Fleet Street!'' BBC 2, 1990. * (dir.) ''The Electronic Frontier''. BBC, 1993. * (dir.) ''Witness: LA Coroner''. Channel 4, 1997.

Films

* (dir.) ''Mendelssohn, the Nazis, and Me''. 2009. * (dir.) ''Complexity''. 2020. Short film. Music by

. * (dir.) ''Fanny: The Other Mendelssohn''. 2023

Novels

* ''Small Talk''. Hodder Headline, 2001. * ''Are We Nearly There Yet?'' Hodder Headline, 2004 * ''Mrs Normal Saves the World''. Various Books, 2009.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hayman, Sheila 1956 births Living people People educated at Putney High School Alumni of Newnham College, Cambridge English journalists English women journalists English documentary filmmakers British women documentary filmmakers British documentary film directors English film directors English women film directors 21st-century English novelists English women novelists