Despite dreams of wanting to be a journalist, an air hostess and a fireman (!), what came naturally to Tina-Louise Smith was storytelling. As soon as she had the tools – literacy, a pencil and a notebook – at the age of seven, she would spend hours absorbed in penning the stories that her mind came up with and would hand them over as birthday presents to friends and siblings.

As a result of a troubled childhood and growing up in apartheid South Africa however, she was blissfully unaware that there were options beyond writing that would allow her to tell the stories she wanted to tell. Writing was her tool, so she schooled herself in the workings of the English language and language in general.

The adult life of Tina-Louise includes fits and starts in different jobs – some of them simply jobs, while others were attempts to get closer to working at something that she enjoyed, that used her creativity and that was rewarding on a very personal level. Because she believes that it is only when she is genuinely happy that she is doing what she was meant to do.

One of the things that she found satisfying during this period was watching films at the cinema all by herself in the mornings while most of the world was at work. The characters, the emotions, the images and the colours touched her deeply and she would think about these films for days on end. This kick-started the writing of her own scripts and the dream began to grow that she would be able to tell stories like those she was seeing on the big screen.

Eventually, through trial and error and doing what she was good at, she ended up in television where people kept telling her that she should direct. At a loss in this new world, but a fast learner with an eye for the bigger picture and also able to pay fastidious attention to detail, she was fortunate enough to work on various productions as researcher, editor, production co-ordinator, production manager, and also as director and producer.

Credits to her name that include work for the SABC, are Get Real (researcher and director), Gaz’Lam: The Inside Story (director), loveLife Games (director), Vuyani Mzantsi! (production manager, director, and insert editor) and Bridget Jones in South Africa (producer).

This long and bumpy road meant that she eventually met up with Simon Damast and Jemima Spring. Through their commonalities, the three of them saw an opportunity to support and develop each other as a team where they could eventually realize their dreams of telling their own stories through film and video.

Tina-Louise is a member of various filmmaking organisations and continues to use the various skills she amassed along the road to filmmaking. As a member of the Documentary Filmmakers’ Association in South Africa, she uses her language and writing skills to edit their Perspective blog of interviews with South African documentary filmmakers whenever she finds the time.