BAFTA nominated filmmaker Marisa Zanotti originally trained as a dancer at the Laban Centre and worked with several choreographers in the UK and mainland Europe including cult dance company The Cholmondeleys. Her work as a director in film, hybrid work and participatory projects is informed by her background in performance, choreography, theatre and installation practice.
Photo by Hugo Glendinning
Marisa co-founded Glitch Projects with Alex Morrison www.gl-tch.org and she is an associate of Cogapp.
Marisa is an Italian-Scot from Glasgow and she is bi-lingual.
Film
Her first short film drama At The End Of The Sentence received BAFTA and BIFA nominations and awards at Encounters and The Hamptons film festivals. With funding from the UK Film Council she developed the feature script Blackwaterside with the writer David Greig. She regularly collaborates with the composer Matthew Whiteside on screen projects.
In the last few years she has been working in documentary and documentation of performance and rehearsal process.
Marisa works with small crews or as a self-shooter. If not editing work herself she often works with the editor Ian Ballantyne
Theatre
She worked extensively in new writing theatre as a movement director (1996-2002) collaborating with many directors including Vicky Featherstone and John Tiffany, in plays by Abi Morgan,Stephen Greenhorn, David Harrower and David Greig with whom she has worked on several film projects.
Dance
Marisa has directed many interdisciplinary performance projects through commissions from Tramway Glasgow, CCA, Arnolfini Bristol and New Moves, South East Dance, composer Matthew Whiteside and Magnetic North Theatre.
Higher Education
Marisa was a Reader in Choreography and Digital Technologies at University of Chichester in the dance department until 2019. Her doctoral research developed principles for screendance adaptation. She was a co-editor of the International Screendance Journal. She has been been a guest lecturer at Glasgow School of Art, Wimbledon Art School, University of Glasgow and the Art Institute of Chicago