Virginia Heath

Virginia K. Heath (born 1959) is a UK-based New Zealand film director and academic; she is a professor of film at Sheffield Hallam University.^[1][2] In 2002 she won the John O'Shea Film Award for the best New Zealand short film by a New Zealand director residing abroad.^[3]

Heath was born in Havelock North, in the North Island of New Zealand. She studied film at Saint Martin's School of Art in London, England, in 1985 and 1986.^[4] She began her film career directing a series of international arts documentaries for the Channel 4 Television series ‘Rear Window’.^[2]

Heath was commissioned by the United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre to create a film to highlight the issue of human trafficking. She carried out interviews with exploited girls and women, and frontline agency workers, and created the film My Dangerous Loverboy. A website and social media channels were later added to aid increased engagement with the film, and the overall project won a cross media award from the National Film Board of Canada and was nominated for a Royal Television Society Award. The film is extensively used in schools and youth centres, and with frontline agency workers across the United Kingdom.^[5]

Heath was also commissioned by Creative Scotland and the BBC to create a film for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. The resulting film, From Scotland with Love, combined film with live music created by King Creosote and was nominated for a BAFTA Scotland award.^[2]