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Michael Cumming

Michael Cumming

Directing

Biography

Michael Cumming is a British director and filmmaker. He is best known for directing comedy shows such as Brass Eye, Toast of London, Toast of Tinseltown, The Mark Thomas Product, Snuff Box, The Mark Steel Lectures and Rock Profile. After graduating from the Royal College of Art film school in the late 1980s, Cumming began directing at the BBC on Tomorrow's World and then as a freelance director on shows including Lonely Planet, The Word & The Sunday Show before moving into comedy. Brass Eye was his first comedy directing credit. Alongside comedy directing, Cumming also makes independent films. His 2017 cinema-only release – Oxide Ghosts: The Brass Eye Tapes - played to sell-out audiences throughout the UK. In 2017 Cumming was awarded an honorary doctorate for his outstanding contribution to television & film production. He is a member of BAFTA, Directors UK and the Performing Rights Society.

Known For

King Rocker
7.3

How does a working class autodidact, with no visible means of support, maintain his role as the leader of a cult British underground band into its fifth decade? Comedian and writer Stewart Lee, director Michael Cumming and James Nicholls investigate the mysterious existence of Robert Lloyd, Britain’s ultimate post-punk survivor. Robert Lloyd’s Prefects played with The Clash on the White Riot tour in 1977, and their ongoing incarnation, as Birmingham’s Captain Beefheart suffused post-punk poets The Nightingales, recorded more John Peel sessions than any other band. Ever. But what were the social, cultural and economic circumstances that enabled and sustained such outsider artists in the punk and post-punk eras, and how has the world changed to the point where such figures are unlikely to flourish in the same way today? Lloyd’s own odyssey echoes how abstract notions of social mobility, of the value of culture and music, have changed in the last five decades.

King Rocker

2020Movie