Madeleine is a British artist and filmmaker living in Los Angeles.
For film inquiries contact
Claire Best at Claire Best & Associates
Saatchi Art
Madeleine Farley started out as a photographer. Trained by Ansel Adams’ protégé Ellie Kaufman, she began her career as a regular photographic contributor to US fashion magazine, ‘Flaunt’.
After several years as a successful professional photographer, Madeleine heeded the call to influence not only the captured image, but the subject matter itself.
In the early 2000s, London’s ‘Proud Gallery’ saw an exhibition of her work entitled ‘Movie Tips’. The premise is disarmingly simple: great moments from iconic motion pictures reinvented with Q-Tips playing the leading roles. The fresh approach and quirky, playful imagery made the exhibition an instant success. Further exhibitions followed at Manhattan’s ‘Tribeca Print Works’ and Frank Pictures at ‘Miauhaus’ in Los Angeles.
Among the exhibits on show was an animated short film: ‘Psycho’, a tongue in cheek homage to Hitchcock’s greatest work, with the parts played by the ubiquitous Q-Tip.
In the wake of her successful shows, Rankin published a well-received book of Madeleine’s photographs.
The plight of the homeless of Los Angeles captured her imagination and she directed her first feature film, the critically acclaimed documentary ‘Trollywood’. This brave, honest look at the down and out of Tinseltown was nominated by BIFA for Best Documentary 2004 in the UK and won Best Documentary that same year at both Cinemania and the Oslo Film Festival.
Her work with The Aspinall Foundation, an internationally renowned animal conservation charity dedicated to protecting rare and endangered animals and returning them to the wild, spanned over two decades from 2001 until today. And in 2009 the opportunity of a lifetime presented itself in the form of ‘Gorilla School’, a 13-part television series for Discovery Channel. Madeleine lived and worked in the remote jungles of West Africa for over a year directing and shooting for the acclaimed series which aired in May 2010. Her YouTube short film, in which Damian Aspinall is emotionally reunited in the wild with a young male gorilla after years of separation, is a moving example of the power and grace of the work she achieved. Today the video has had over 30 million views.
Inspired by her adventures with her gorilla family, Madeleine began work on a new exhibition called ‘Endangered’. The new work, unveiled at Maddox Arts in London’s Mayfair, draws attention to the plight of gorillas in the wild and was once again received with both commercial and artistic appreciation.
Her feature documentary “Stooge” premiered at the 25th Raindance Film Festival and was nominated for ‘Best UK Feature’. The film is about the illusive god of rock and roll; Iggy Pop and his obsessive super fan, who never grew up. Stooge is a truly heart-warming story of one man’s passion, and a tragically funny testament to keeping the dream alive, no matter who, or how old you really are.
Currently Madeleine is in production of “Marcus: Can anybody see me?” A film about the injustices of the US Title IX system told through the personal story of Marcus Knight, a young mixed race adult born at just 22 weeks with autism and cerebral palsy.