Zena Merton
United Kingdom

Travelling is what got me into filming, I saw the camera as an excuse to get off the tourist track and into the unknown. After filming my travels in India, Haiti and Europe, in 2007 I decided I needed more discipline and applied to the London College of Communication to start an access course.  Here I completed short documentaries on travellers, drug addicts and Indian street children.  This enjoyable course led me to continue my studies. My FDA film, Bagong Silang about a Manila cemetery shanty town, was shown globally and won the One World Media award in 2012.  IN January I will of  completed my MA film about an historic, though repressed, caste of nomadic blacksmiths in Rajasthan, continuing my work giving a voice to those on the margins of society and attempting to show a western audience they can learn from the East whilst showing the pride and dignity of some of the globe's poorest inhabitants.