Elephants Paul Hills

REVIEWS

Paul was born in London in 1969 and moved to Stevenage in 1975. It wasn't long before he was shooting Super 8 films, becoming by the age of 15 a prolific maker of short films.

After leaving school he immediately began making music videos for local bands. Over the following years he shot promo's for Fire Records, Bluebeat Records, Unicorn Records, P.M.I., culminating in 1987 with the 60 minute concert video The Legendary Laurel Aitken live at Gaz's Rockin' Blues.

Paul went on to make another four short films before producing, in 1990, Danny Cannon's Play Dead at the National Film and Television School. When the 55 minute film was screened on Channel Four it received an audience of 3 million - the highest ever achieved by a U.K. student film. Danny Cannon later remade Play Dead as the feature film The Young Americans.

In January 1991 Paul embarked on the feature film The Frontline - a crazy endeavour, shot at weekends over a period of six months on a budget of £8,000. Although nearly destroying Paul financially and mentally, upon its release in 1993, it received much acclaim;

Boston Kickout - Paul's award winning autobiographical 1996 film, was his first budgeted feature. Screened at over 50 international film festivals, including Cairo and Tokyo, the film was runner up in audience votes at the London and San Sebastian Film Festivals, the Bermuda Film Festival making it the winner. At the Valencia Cinema Jove Film Festival it won "Best Film" and the lead actor, John Simm "Best Actor".

Since 1998 Paul has been successfully directing commercials including the award winning Great Escape commercial for Umbro and more recently the 3 minute advert for market leading Japanese beauty company Shiseido which plays in entire advert breaks.

Paul has also continued to direct pop promos. “Company Car” for Jackie On Assid being voted 5th best video of the year in 1999 and in 2007 being featured on Live TV’s “Britain’s Next Top Model” directing “Cecilie” for The Wolfmen.

Recently Paul has directed channel 5’s series Urban Gothic (2001) episodes Lacuna and Cry Wolf, the shorts f2point8 (2002) and Secrets (2005) as well as the documentary Good as Gold (2007) and his third feature The Poet (2003) starring Dougray Scott and Laura Harring. He is currently preparing his fifth feature film The Cult.

Since 1996 Paul has sat on the Executive committee of the New Producers Alliance (NPA), becoming Vice-Chair in 1997, then Co-chair three times in 1998, 2000 and 2006. Now Paul sits for a second time as a Trustee.