Directors Guild of Great Britain

The Directors Guild of Great Britain (DGGB) is a professional organization which represents directors across all media, including film, television, theatre, radio, opera, commercials, music videos, corporate film/video and training, documentaries, multimedia and "new technology". It has evolved to become an independent trade union and a non-profit limited company asset-linked to the Directors Guild Trust.

The DGGB was founded in 1983 by a group of leading British directors who were dissatisfied by poor representation by technical trade unions. The first meeting was at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London, where they agreed directors needed an independent voice and that directors would be best represented by their own organization of directors.

Guild members have an interest in the broad nature of the directing profession and the guild reflects this diversity in the nature of its members and in their training events. The Guild has championed understanding and respect for the work of directors both within their own industry and throughout the public at large. It sponsors workshops, master classes, seminars, one-on-one mentoring, as well as conducting screenings, gala events and presenting periodic "lifetime achievement awards" to recognize outstanding British directors. Guild members are both professional and associate (supporting) members who hail from the United Kingdom, as well as directors from a few other countries who support the goals of the Guild, many of whom are influenced or inspired by the British directing aesthetic (or style).

The DGGB continues to be instrumental in working to improve directors’ terms, conditions and remuneration. In 1987, they established The Directors & Producers Rights Society (DPRS) and initiated the TV directors’ rights strike in 2000, creating an industry-wide alliance of the Guild, BECTU and the DPRS, which has brought about new residual block payment agreements with the main UK TV broadcasters and production companies and an industry-wide Directors Forum and has generated contract advice guides and a "code of practice" guideline for directors in television drama and non-fiction programming. Through specific motion picture, television, theatre, and radio groups, the Guild has produced model contracts, guides and provides advice across all live and recorded media. In 2008 the DPRS became the Directors UK, now the foremost industrial negotiating body for British recorded media directors.

The Guild is based in Central London.

Lifetime Achievement Awards

Over the past 25 years, The Guild has staged ten Lifetime Achievement Awards honoring individual directors, as well as two large-scale Guild Award ceremonies to honor outstanding directors in a variety of categories. Those awards were presented to the following:

1993 Fred Zinnemann
1994 Roy Boulting
1995 Joan Littlewood
1996 Christopher Morahan
1997 Sir Richard Eyre
1998 Sir Alan Parker
1999 Stanley Kubrick
2001 Peter Brook
2002 John Schlesinger
2003 Sir Trevor Nunn
2005 Sam Mendes

Blue Plaques

The Directors Guild Trust is the charity arm of the Guild supporting both Guild activities and the wider remit of promoting British directors' art and craft to a national and international public through education, events, commemorations and memorials. The Guild has erected blue plaque memorials to

• Brian Desmond Hurst
• David Lean
• Alexander Mackendrick
• Michael Powell (director)

External links

• Directors Guild of Great Britain website