Sarah Greenwood, production designer & Katie Spence, set decorator have been close collaborators for 25 years. Together they imagined the worlds of critically acclaimed films like Anna Karenina, Atonement and Pride & Prejudice. The duo were recently tapped by Greta Gerwig to bring Barbie Land to life in the record-beating, hottest film of the year, Barbie. The results of their work are truly dazzling.
Join us for a dynamic conversation as the creative duo discuss the collaboration required to pull off a director’s vision and the difference between set design for modern utopias and period pieces, offering us a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes magic.
This talk will be moderated by director and journalist, Chandler Levack (I Like Movies, 2022).
Presented by
Media Partner
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Guests
Sarah Greenwood
Production Designer
Born in England, Sarah began her career designing for the stage. Moving to the screen she went on to work at the BBC, becoming a Senior Designer and establishing the successful series Later with Jools Holland and The Late Show. Here she won a Royal Television Society Award and received a BAFTA TV Award nomination for her production design work on the drama series The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
Sarah Greenwood is a six-time Academy Award nominated production designer, earning her most recent acknowledgement for her work on Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour and Bill Condon’s Beauty and the Beast. Sarah received her previous Oscar nominations for her work with Joe Wright on his acclaimed films Pride and Prejudice and Atonement, for which she won a BAFTA, and Anna Karenina, for which she also won the Art Directors’ Guild Award, The European Film Award, The Evening Standard Award and the Hollywood Production Designer of the Year Award.
Sarah has recently finished working on Barbie with Greta Gerwig and Back to Black with Sam Taylor Johnson. She has worked closely for many years with Katie Spencer, her longtime collaborator and set decorator.
Katie Spencer
Set Decorator
Born in Yorkshire, England Katie studied at Stage Management at Central School of Speech and Drama in London. After several years working in the West End and theatres including the Royal Court, Almeida, and Donmar Warehouse, Katie moved as a freelancer to the BBC, retraining first as a production buyer then as a set decorator on television and film.
At the BBC she met and first worked with production designer Sarah Greenwood, a close collaboration and that has continued for over 20 years. Their work together has ranged from period pieces like Pride and Prejudice and Atonement to the action movies of Sherlock Holmes and Hanna, innovative pieces like Anna Karenina, the musicals Beauty and the Beast and Cyrano, through to their latest collaboration, Barbie.
Katie is a six-time Academy Award nominee and has been nominated for seven BAFTA awards, winning for Atonement. Katie is on the Executive Committee for Production Design at the Academy of Motion Pictures. In May 2024 the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will host an exhibition showcasing the collaboration between Sarah and Katie.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
There's Still Tomorrow
A critical and box office sensation in Italy, Paola Cortellesi's triumphant directorial debut is the tale of a Roman housewife in 1946, who stands up against the routine sexist abuse she suffers. Funny, heartbreaking and inspiring.
The Way, My Way
All manner of pilgrims flock to France and Spain to walk the 800 km Camino de Santiago. One such is Bill, a stroppy sexagenarian Australian filmmaker who's determined to do the Camino with minimal prep, a dickey leg, and no firm idea why.
The Stand
This rousing doc explores a 1985 dispute over logging in the Haida Gwaii. Taking us from canny retrospective commentary to the thick of the action, director Chris Auchter employs animation and a wealth of archival footage to riveting effect.
Resident Orca
Captured in Puget Sound in 1970, killer whale Lolita spent the next half century in a cramped tank in Seaquarium, Miami. The film follows a coalition of Lummi elders, animal lovers and philanthropists on a rescue mission to return her to the ocean.
No Other Land
Deemed by many critics one of the essential films of 2024, a multiple festival award winner and Academy Award winner for Best Documentary, No Other Land is a reminder that mass expulsion is by no means a new reality for Palestinians.
Misericordia
Edgy, eccentric, and unapologetically queer, this film goes from drama to comedy without putting a foot wrong. Sex and murder are the subjects, and writer-director Alain Guiraudie (Stranger by the Lake) mines them for suspense and outrageous laughs.