Digby Rumsey (born 2 April 1952) is an English film director, producer, writer, cinematographer, editor, sound recordist and film diarist.
Early life
Rumsey was born in Bournemouth on the south coast of England, the son of John (a chartered surveyor) and Joyce Rumsey. He was educated at Bradfield College in Berkshire before training at the London Film School. During this time he began work on his first film. Shot with three standard 8mm cameras, it is a surrealist, diary film entitled For All the Immigrants in England. He subsequently gained an MA in Independent Film at the London College of Printing.
Career
1970–1999
Rumsey initially worked as an actor at the Quipu Basement Theatre in Greek Street, but after film school, he gained industry experience as an assistant editor and sound recordist. Crewing on several British Film Institute Production Board films, he worked with Terence Davies, Bill Douglas and Peter Greenaway.
In 1972 Rumsey set up Fantasy Films and over the following two decades specialised in adapting the work of Victorian and Edwardian fantasy writers such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Ernest Bramah and Lord Dunsany. He would later go on to adapt Nevil Shute's novel On the Beach.
In the mid-1970s Rumsey worked with the film & photography collective Amber Films in Newcastle. During this period he produced In the Twilight, which was showcased at the London Film Festival, and the 163-minute compilation Seven Years.
With the rapid growth of the Independent Sector in the UK, Rumsey was appointed the first salaried Co-ordinator of East Anglian Film-Makers, where he raised money for the group from Channel 4, the British Film Institute and Norwich City Council.
After the release of The Pledge by Twentieth Century-Fox in 1981, Rumsey spent the next year in Europe seeking co-production funds for his first feature film The History of the Devil. He was unsuccessful.
Returning to England, Rumsey worked as an editor at Anglia Television for several years before moving back to London in the late 1980s, continuing to work as a film editor for companies and broadcasters such as Channel 4, BBC, TWI, Mentorn and Fulcrum and many American broadcasters. Clocking up more than 150 credits, including Greed and Glory, The Thatcher Factor and Lloyd's of London.
Additionally he moved into directing, working in the corporate sector with clients like the Department of Trade and Industry (United Kingdom), Tate Gallery and Médecins Sans Frontières. On the home-front he continued editing magazine programmes such as the BBC's Gardeners’ World and Discovery's Mission Wild.
2000–2014
In 2000 Rumsey set up Auteur DVD, a Soho-based authoring house. This evolved into Auteur TV, a real time web streaming service for artists and film-makers around the world.
In 2005 Rumsey decided to concentrate on documentary production and spent a year living and working in India as a Director/Cinematographer. It was during this period that he made the political documentary Kashmir Under the Shadow of the Gun and the DVD collection Sketches of India.
On his return from India, Rumsey was diagnosed with an aggressive prostate cancer. Deciding to concentrate on a long-term ambition, Rumsey wrote the screenplay “Justified!” and set about seeking the finance for a feature-length adaptation of James Hogg’s Gothic novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. With rival companies all fighting for the same production finance, this film has still not been made. In the film Help! – and Redemption, Rumsey chronicled his experience of diagnosis, treatment and partial remission for this most common form of male cancer.
Having made three films based on the work of Lord Dunsany, in 2012 Rumsey embarked on a documentary about the life of this influential and contradictory Irish aristocrat. Shooting for the Butler was released in 2014.
Rumsey was a member of Directors UK and for many years an active Trade Union member on the Writers, Producers and Directors committee of BECTU. He represented the Union on the Working Group on Copyright and Technology for the British Copyright Council.
Rumsey was married once and had three children.