tpr media consultants
tpr media consultants tpr is a dynamic public relations consultancy that delivers creative, intelligent campaigs. Our aim is to generate coverage in print , TV, radio, and new media to promote and raise the profile of our clients and their services. Sophie Toumazis, Director
Top Boy Series 1 and 2 A thrilling and raw four-part drama about young lives lived on the edge in east London - an honest and gripping rendition of innercity drug and gang culture
“tpr did a brilliant job promoting Top Boy and made a big contribution to making it is the success it turned out to be.� Ronan Bennett, writer, Top Boy
No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lankia UK and international campaign
Represents the culmination of three years of journalistic investigation and contains deeply disturbing new evidence, powerful eye-witness testimony and compelling personal stories of survival in a war zone.
"tpr media consultants were terrific: Flexible, responsive, pro-active and efficient. They managed a volatile and unpredictable press launch for 'No Fire Zone' with skill, professionalism and good humour. I was very happy indeed." Callum Macrae, Director
nytimes.comhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/world/asia/28iht-letter28.html?_r=0
Revisiting the Horror in Sri Lanka NEW DELHI — In the series of photographs shot in 2009, the bare-chested boy is first shown seated on a bench watching something outside the frame. Then he is seen having a snack. In the third image he is lying on the ground with bullet holes in his chest. The photographs, which were released last week by the British broadcaster Channel 4, appear to document the final moments in the life of 12-year-old Balachandran Prabhakaran, the youngest son of the slain founder of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Velupillai Prabhakaran. The images are from the documentary film “No Fire Zone,” which tells the story of Sri Lanka’s violent suppression of Mr. Prabhakaran’s equally violent revolution, which had come very close to securing a separate state for the Tamil minority of Sri Lanka. After 26 years of civil war between the Tamils, who are chiefly Hindus, and the Sinhalese majority, who are chiefly Buddhists, the Sri Lankan state won decisively in 2009. Human rights activists say that hundreds of Tamil fighters, political leaders and their families, including Mr. Prabhakaran and his family, did not die in action but were executed. They estimate that more than 40,000 Tamil civilians died in the final months of the war. Within its borders, the Sri Lankan government appears to wink at its Sinhalese population to accept their congratulations for ending the war, but it maintains a righteous indignation when the world accuses its army of planned genocide. “No Fire Zone” includes video footage and photographs shot on mobile phones by Tamil survivors and Sinhalese soldiers that were somehow leaked. The film’s director, Callum Macrae, told me that it will be screened at the 22nd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, now under way in Geneva, where the United States plans to introduce a resolution asking Sri Lanka to investigate the allegations of war crimes by its army. It is not clear what such a resolution will achieve because Sri Lanka’s powerful president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has a rustic swagger about him and a manly black mustache, is the triumphant face of Sri Lanka’s victory in the war. The Sri Lankan Army is unambiguously under his control. Whatever the worth of the resolution, India is expected to support it more enthusiastically than it did a similar resolution last March. Over the years, the shape and location of Sri Lanka have inspired several Indian cartoonists to portray the island nation as a tear drop beneath India’s peninsular chin. This is an illogical depiction of Sri Lanka’s trauma because a tear drop is not sorrowful; it is a consequence of someone’s sorrow. Some caricatures that appeared in the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, showed the Indian peninsula weeping and Sri Lanka as the consequent tear drop. This imagery had a stronger logic. India’s history with Sri Lanka is, in a way, about a bumbling giant being hurt by a cunning dwarf. Under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the type of strategists who imagine that they are great Machiavellian characters, and love to add the prefix “geo” to “politics” to feel good about their advisory jobs, ensured that India armed and financed the Tamil rebels. In 1984, when she was assassinated and her son Rajiv Gandhi took over as prime minister, Sri Lanka was engaged in a full-fledged civil war. Now, India wanted to play gracious giant in the region and bring peace to Sri Lanka. In 1987, it sent troops to achieve that end. It was a disastrous move, and resulted in the deaths of nearly 1,200 Indian soldiers and thousands of Tamil fighters. In an act of vengeance, Mr. Prabhakaran made his greatest strategic blunder: ordering the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.
On the early morning of May 22, 1991, as the news spread through Madras (now Chennai) by phone and radio, I saw people run out of their homes in some kind of delirium to pick up the newspapers from their porches. The city had just woken up to the improbable fact that a suicide bomber had killed Mr. Gandhi the previous night in a small town not far from Chennai. Until then, the southern state of Tamil Nadu, whose capital is Chennai, was a haven for the Tamil Tigers. Bound by a common language, the masses of Tamil Nadu felt a deep compassion for the struggle of Sri Lankan Tamils. But Mr. Gandhi’s assassination was seen by them as an act of war against India. The chief minister of Tamil Nadu at the time, Muthuvel Karunanidhi, who was accused of being a friend of the Tigers, went around Chennai in an open-roof van, standing with his palms joined in apology. That was not good enough. In the 1991 Tamil Nadu assembly elections, his party won only two seats. But now, the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamils has returned as a passionate political issue in Tamil Nadu. Mr. Karunanidhi is too old to stand anymore but even as a patriarch who uses a wheelchair, he is a useful ally of the Indian National Congress Party, which heads the national government. He has often demanded that the accomplices of Mr. Gandhi’s assassin now on death row in India be pardoned, and that President Rajapaksa be tried on war crimes charges. Last year, when the United States introduced a resolution against Sri Lanka, India was reluctant to back it for strategic reasons, including that it has commercial interests in Sri Lanka, which China is fast grabbing. But Mr. Karunanidhi and public sentiment in Tamil Nadu finally persuaded the Indian government to support it. In a few days, when the United States introduces its new resolution against Sri Lanka, the brute forces of politics and practicality will ensure that the Indian government led by the Congress Party, whose leader is Sonia Gandhi, will join other nations in asking Sri Lanka to explain how exactly it eliminated the organization that made her a widow. Manu Joseph is editor of the Indian newsweekly Open and author of the novel “The Illicit Happiness of Other People.”
independent.co.ukhttp://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/this-is-proof-beyondreasonable-doubt-of-the-execution-of-a-child--not-a-battlefield-death-8500298.html
This is proof, beyond reasonable doubt, of the execution of a child – not a battlefield death The boy is Balachandran Prabhakaran, the 12-year-old son of Tamil Tiger leader Villupillai Prabhakaran, and the new photographs tell a chilling story. This child has not been lost of course: he has been captured and is held in a bunker, apparently guarded by a Sri Lankan Army soldier. In less than two hours he will be executed in cold blood – and then photographed again. Last year in this paper I wrote about the video footage we had obtained of the aftermath of Balachandran’s execution, which had apparently been shot as a war trophy by Sri Lankan soldiers. These new photographs are important evidentially, because they prove that Balachandran was not killed in crossfire or in a battle – or even that he was executed by some maverick band of paramilitaries. His death was deliberate and calculated. The pictures fill in chilling details on the circumstances of his murder – and leave the Sri Lankan government with yet more questions to answer. There are four new photographs in all – which digital image analysis indicates were taken with the same camera. Two show him alive – and two dead. The embedded information in the pictures places them less than two hours apart. The new photographs of his corpse corroborate the video footage and stills which we obtained last year and were analysed by a respected forensic pathologist, Professor Derrick Pounder. According to Prof Pounder, the speckling on his skin suggests he was shot at close range. The angle of the hole indicates that after that bullet was fired, the boy fell back and was shot four more times. The analysis of the photographs concludes that there is “no evidence to indicate fabrication, manipulation or the use of effects to create the images” and concludes that the photographs “appear to be an accurate representation of the events depicted”. From the separate video sequence recorded later (which has also been authenticated by both digital analysis and a forensic pathologist), it is clear there were several military personnel in the area. The government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa may well continue to simply deny the evidence and cite the undoubted crimes of the Tamil Tigers. But the crimes of one side do not justify the crimes of another. It seems to most observers that the only way ahead is for the creation of a credible independent international inquiry into these events, as called for by the UN’s Panel of Experts – to examine the crimes committed by both sides. Callum Macrae is the director of No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka; www.nofirezone.org
Bedlam Bedlam takes an in-depth and unprecedented look at mental health in Britain today, with exclusive access to a wide range of services, patients and staff at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM).
Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine An intimate look into the life of 21-year-old American student Matt Shepard who was tragically murdered in 1998 because he was gay. Framed through a personal lens by first-time director, Michele Josue, a close school friend of Matt's, it is a story of loss, love and courage in the face of tragedy.
"Sophie and the tpr team did an amazing job promoting our International Premiere at The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). They were invaluable assets to our team, consistently going above and beyond to support us and our film. In tpr, we found not only a wonderful group of hard-working, passionate, like-minded colleagues, but more importantly, a group of wonderful friends we hope to work with again and again in the future." Michele Josue, Director
Social Media
Contacted influential LBGT organisations such as COC, Expreszo and Peter Tatchell Foundation asking them to communicate the screenings – in particular the Gay Night and Shepard's attendance - to their followers.
Ouders vermoorde Matthew doen hun verhaal eenvandaag.nl /buitenland/47993/ouders_vermoorde_matthew_doen_hun_verhaal
Hij is uitgegroeid tot symbool tegen homogeweld; de 21- jarige Matthew Shepard, die 15 jaar geleden in de Amerikaanse staat Wyoming werd vermoord vanwege z ijn geaardheid. Na een gruwelijke mishandeling werd hij vastgebonden aan een hek voor dood achtergelaten. Achttien uur later werd hij gevonden en na 5 dagen in coma te hebben gelegen overleed hij. Jaarlijks wordt z ijn dood wereldwijd herdacht en aangegrepen om aandacht te vragen voor geweld tegen homo’s. Zijn ouders trekken de wereld over om aandacht te vragen voor homogeweld. Op hun initiatief ondertekende president Barack Obama in 2009 een nieuwe wet: homogeweld wordt in de VS nu beschouwd als 'federal crime', wat betekent dat er z waardere straffen op staan. Of dat helpt is maar z eer de vraag: uit cijfers blijkt dat er in 2011 30 moorden in de Verenigde Staten plaatsvonden die rechtstreeks het gevolg waren van haat tegen homo's, lesbiÍnnes, transgenders of biseksuelen. In EenVandaag een exclusief gesprek met de ouders van Matthew Shepard, die in Nederland z ijn om de vertoning van een documentaire over hun z oon bij te wonen op het IDFA. Ook spreken we met de regisseur van de film, die vroeger vriendin was van Matthew Shepard.
vo lkskrant .nl http://www.vo lkskrant.nl/vk/nl/3284/IDFA/article/detail/3545267/2013/11/15/IDFA-presenteert-avo nd-o ver-antiho mo geweld.dhtml
IDFA presenteert avond over anti-homogeweld 15/11/13, 05:18 − bron: ANP/BuzzE
© anp. Het IDFA organiseert dit jaar voor het eerst een speciale Gay Night. Op woensdag 27 november worden in Pathé De Munt twee documentaires vertoond die aandacht willen vestigen op de hef tige gevolgen van homogeweld. Na de f ilms vindt er een gesprek plaats met onder meer Wilf red de Bruijn, de Nederlander die het gezicht werd van de discussie over dit onderwerp, nadat hij in Parijs in elkaar werd geslagen. De eerste documentaire op de Gay Night is Facing Fear, waarin een homoseksuele man 25 jaar nadat hij werd mishandeld vanwege zijn geaardheid weer oog en oog komt te staan met zijn belager. De hoof dpersoon uit de documentaire, Matthew Boger, is ook aanwezig. De andere f ilm is Matt Shepard Is A Friend of Mine. Regisseur Michele Josue maakte een documentaire over haar vriend Matthew Shepard, die in 1998 op brute wijze werd vermoord omdat hij homo was. De Amerikaanse twintiger werd in Colorado in elkaar geslagen en vastgebonden aan een hek achtergelaten. Hij raakte in coma en stierf vijf dagen later aan zijn verwondingen. De sterf dag van Shepard wordt wereldwijd nog steeds door veel homo's herdacht. De Nederlandse zanger Marinus de Goederen droeg een paar jaar terug het nummer Poster Boy aan hem op. Volg de Volkskrant op Twitter Word vriend van de Volkskrant op Facebook
f ilm krant .nl
http://www.filmkrant.nl/nieuws_2013/10144/nieuws/p_cnt_nieuws/1
IDFA organiseert voor de eerste keer Gay Night
Matthew Shepard is a Friend of Mine nieuws Anti-homowetgeving in Rusland, voetbalanalisten die op de Nederlandse buis onzin uitkramen over de sportcapaciteiten van gays, en nieuwsberichten over potenrammers en homopesters. Geen overbodige luxe dus dat IDFA dit jaar voor het eerst een Gay Night organiseert. Op 27 november worden in PathĂŠ de Munt twee documentaires vertoond over de gevolgen van geweld tegen homo's. De eerste f ilm die vertoond wordt is Facing Fear van Jason Cohen. Hoof dpersoon Matthew Boger gaat de conf rontatie aan met Tim Z aal, een van de mannen die hem vijf entwintig jaar geleden in elkaar sloegen vanwege zijn homoseksualiteit. Z owel regisseur Cohen als Boger zijn bij de vertoning aanwezig voor een gesprek achteraf . De leiding daarvan is in handen van Wilf red de Bruijn, die in april dit jaar in Parijs werd mishandeld toen hij hand in hand op straat liep met zijn vriend. De f oto's die hij daarna op Facebook plaatste, zorgden voor een wereldwijde schok. In Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine vertelt Michele Josue het verhaal van haar vriend Matthew, die in 1988 zodanig werd gemolesteerd dat hij aan zijn verwondingen overleed. Matthews ouders, die na de dood van een stichting tegen hate crimes opzetten, zijn aanwezig bij de vertoning van de f ilm op 30 november en 1 december. Naast de IDFA Gay Night worden er verschillende korte Q&A's georganiseerd na af loop van LHBTgerelateerde documentaires.
co c.nl
http://www.co c.nl/algemeen/gay-night-tijdens-idfa-2013
Gay Night tijdens IDFA 2013
22 november 2013 Op woensdag 27 november organiseert het International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam (IDFA) in samenwerking met Roze Filmdagen voor het eerst de IDFA Gay Night. Tijdens de IDFA Gay Night worden twee aangrijpende documentaires vertoond over de hef tige gevolgen van homogeweld: Facing Fear van Jason Cohen en Matt Shepard Is A Friend Of Mine van Michele Josue – deze documentaires worden vaker vertoond en met de link krijg je een overzicht van de data en plaatsen waar ze te zien zijn. Tijdens de IDFA Gay Night volgt na af loop van de vertoningen een nagesprek met de regisseurs en hoof dpersoon Matthew Boger uit Facing Fear. Wilfred de Bruijn, die zelf op dramatische wijze te maken kreeg met homogeweld in Parijs en het gezicht werd van de discussie over het onderwerp, zal het gesprek leiden. Naast de IDFA Gay Night worden er verschillende korte Q&A’s georganiseerd na af loop van LHBTgerelateerde documentaires. Z o zijn Dennis en Judy Shepard, de ouders van Matthew Shepard, die in 1998 overleed aan de gevolgen van homogeweld, aanwezig op zaterdag 30 november en zondag 1 december. Z ij zullen vertellen over hun zoon Matthew, over hun ervaringen met het homogeweld tegen hun zoon en over de Matthew Shepard Foundation, die zij na zijn dood hebben opgericht. Er is daarnaast ruimte voor vragen uit de zaal. IDFA GAY NIGHT Datum: woensdag 27 november 2013 – vanaf 19.30 uur Locatie: Pathé de Munt, Vijzelstraat 15 te Amsterdam [Bron/Illustratie: IDFA]
Mum and Dad are Splitting up Based entirely on honest, intimate interviews with both young people and their parents (often sat together and discussing the event for the first time), director Olly Lambert draws out the complex feelings and secrets that took root in the family when mum and dad split up.
At short notice, tpr somehow managed to pull of one of the best and most intelligent publicity pushes I've been lucky enough to be involved with, getting the film and its difficult subject matter talked about up and down the country. Olly Lambert, Director
The Mill Powerful historical drama series, based on the lives of real people, telling the story of young 19th-century apprentices taking their lives into their own hands for the first time
“tpr workied tirelessly to secure interviews, articles and general press interest for The Mill. Their work made a huge impact on the enormous sucess of the show.�
Caroline Levy, Producer
Notes from the Inside with James Rhodes Classical pianist and former psychiatric patient James Rhodes takes a grand piano into a psychiatric hospital to play pieces he hopes will resonate with patients
“Classical piano and mental illness rarely make the headlines. tpr took these two difficult subjects and, with great sensitivity and imagination, brought them to a huge range of media from twitter to the Times. Best PR I've known!� Ursula Macfarlane, Director
Broadcast
16/07/13 "Suzy Klein's guests include maverick rock-star classical pianist James Rhodes. He'll be performing live in the studio as he limbers up for an appearance at the 2013 Latitude Festival."
24.07.13 "James Rhodes: the incredible story behind his new documentary."
17.07.13 "Libby Purves meets ... pianist James Rhodes ...James Rhodes is a classical pianist who has made a name for himself by performing in non-traditional classical venues ... Notes from the Inside, he takes his piano into a psychiatric hospital, where he spent time himself, to perform for the patients."
22/07/13 "Listed Londoner designer Steve Edge, musician James Rhodes, St John Stephens on gardening and live music from Kat Edmonson"
21/07/13 "The Archbishop of York says the number of people earning low wages is a national scandal. Do you care what your doctor wears to work? How Britain is leading the way in sport. The big interview is with classical musician James Rhodes, who tells Stephen about returning to a psychiatric unit."
22/07/13
All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry One of Britain’s most high-profile artists examines class and taste in today’s society
“tpr put their all into promoting the series and got us everywhere from The Sun to Start the Week, helping make these the most talked about tapestries since Bayeux.” Neil Crombie, director
Murder BBC2 Drama Murder Marks UK Debut of Director of Critically Acclaimed Danish series The Killing
The Undatables Series 1 and 2 People living with challenging conditions are often considered 'undateable' - this series meets a few and follows their attempts to find love
“tpr were not only fantastic at getting brilliant press, but they handled our contributors with sensitivity and care. A lovely experience all round.� Lucy Levuegle, Series Executive, The Undatables