Stewart Mackinnon is a Scottish film and television producer, founder and former CEO of Headline Pictures.
[3][4][5] Mackinnon designed the artwork for the British TV movie The War Game[6] and went on to draw illustrations for Oz, Nova, Time Out, the Edinburg Review, Spare Rib, Ambit, The Times, Sunday Times and Management Today,[7][8] and was featured in the Radical Illustrators issue of Illustrators magazine (no.38) published in 1981 by the Association of Illustrators in which co-editor George Snow singled out Mackinnon as “perhaps the greatest single influence on today’s Radical Illustrators.”[9] In the 1970s and 80s Mackinnon directed and produced a number of films including the Brechtian film Because I am King[10][11] and Ends and Means written by Andy McSmith.
[12] Mackinnon went on to found Trade Films[13][14] which produced films and television such as The Miners' Campaign Video Tapes,[15] When the Dog Bites, Woodbine Place, Border Crossing, an interview with Paul Rotha,[16][17] and the Northern News Reel,[18] which was distributed to trade unions and members of the Labour movement around the UK.
So began a decade of experiment with progressive and aesthetically avant-garde documentaries and dramas screened on British television, which continued until 1990.
[29] In 2020, Mackinnon and Jere Sulivan founded Circle Pictures, a company to produce feature films and television drama.