A JFS teacher turned award-winning filmmaker has claimed that making ground-breaking films is just as challenging as teaching students at the largest Jewish school in Europe.
Neil Grant won a Bafta award for best factual series on Sunday after the success of his three-part Channel 4 documentary The Murder Detectives.
Mr Grant taught politics at JFS for seven years before later working at the BBC, and is now managing director of independent production company, Films of Record.
The show, which followed the 18-month investigation into the murder of a teenager, also received two awards at the Bafta Craft TV ceremony in the director and editing categories.
The 56-year-old, from Kingsbury, north-west London, said: “You have to work a lot harder in documentary these days to get an audience. You have to think of a way to make hard stories accessible. I wanted to do something that was bold and very different. I suppose in a way I had been somewhat inspired by Scandinavian crime dramas.”
Mr Grant, a former Hull University Jewish Society chairman, said film-making was “as challenging” as teaching at JFS in the 1980s.
He explained: “I absolutely adored teaching at JFS. They were my formative years. I adored it so much that I went on to become a school governor after I left.
“I had done everything I wanted to do as a teacher. I was seemingly regarded as quite a successful teacher — but my love lay in the classroom and not going up the food-chain.
“Going into filming was a natural progression. All of my teaching experience helped me as a researcher on a political programme.”
During his time at JFS, Mr Grant also worked as a voluntary researcher for then Labour MP Ken Livingstone, who is currently suspended from the political party.
But the film-maker has not spoken to the former London Mayor for almost 20 years.
Mr Grant said: “Ken is not the person I remember. It’s very sad for me.”
