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Brothers, Collaborators in the Antikythera Mechanism Project and TAC Festival 2016 Keynote Speakers:

Dr Tony Freeth

Tony Freeth, Ph.D., is a founding member of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project and an Honorary Senior Research Associate at University College, London.  His academic background was in mathematics, with degrees from Cambridge and Bristol.  He then worked as a film director/producer for 25 years—for example, making films in Sub-Saharan Africa with Nobel Prize recipient, Norman Borlaug, about how to raise food production for subsistence farmers.  In 2000, he proposed and organized new scientific investigations on the Antikythera Mechanism, a sophisticated mechanical computer made by the ancient Greeks.  The results revolutionized Antikythera research and were published in Nature in 2006 and 2008 as well as other prominent science journals.  He also produced and appeared in the award-winning TV documentary about the Antikythera Mechanism, broadcast in the USA as Ancient Computer (WGBH NOVA and distributed internationally by the BBC, ARTE, NHK, and many other major TV channels.)

After a long production career making science shows for the BBC and then serving in some executive roles, Martin Freeth returned to filmmaking and now is having the time of his life.  He is well versed in the new cross-platform world.

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Martin joined BBC science in 1971, working on the Horizon/Nova series and many other series comprising dozens of productions shown on BBC channels and in the US.  In 1995, he set up the BBC Multimedia Centre, pioneering new media.  He led the startup of BBC Online, established interactive media awards and directed the new hands-on science center, “Explore At Bristol.”  He was a founder of The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) and was responsible for the Sci-Art program with the Wellcome Trust, for Web site development and for a large grant-giving program in innovative education.  Within NESTA, he was a founder of Futurelab, which generated new kinds of learning software and media.  As Managing Director of Windfall Digital, beginning in 2005, Martin helped create “DNA Interactive” comprising footage created for a Channel 4 series; made online films for the Lasker Foundation; made science films for The British Council; produced a complex CD-ROM in 15 languages for breast cancer patients; and created a media-rich interactive resource for science centers about human genetics entitled Choose Your Character.

Since 2008, through his own company, MFreeth.Com, Martin has been producing 30 short films each year.  Among these was a short film, The Antikythera Mechanism: Decoding an Ancient Greek Mystery, made for the science journal Nature and accompanying a Nature paper about the mechanism by Tony Freeth and other researchers. This was screened in Eugene at TAC Festival 2009.  Tony’s own one-hour international TV film, The 2000 Year Old Computer, was screened at TAC Festival in 2014 and then broadcast by WGBH NOVA as Ancient Computer. He followed that in 2015 with The X-Ray Time Machine, about the technology used to investigate the Antikythera Mechanism, submitted for TAC Festival 2016.  His main clients now are the international science journal Nature and the British Medical Journal, but he also works for major corporate clients and for charities.  A recent labor of love is a documentary portrait of a French Village containing some 30 short films and entitled The Living Map.  All this work and more can be viewed via Martin’s web site (go to www.mfreeth.com – and then click on “projects”).