Rachael Castell is a director, producer and interactive consultant. Currently, in addition to working on The Congo Project, Rachael consults on ‘Support your local Cinema’ - a pan-European initiative to engage new audiences with specialised film through the use of digital and social media. She is in post-production on a short film about the artist Belle Benfield whose focus on ‘home grown wealth’ (the value of environmental sustainability over money) is of deep interest to Rachael.  And she is in pre-production on the short film Charlie Brown Goes Fishing – the story of a carbon neutral fisherman in Norfolk, UK.

Until December 2009, Rachael was English National Opera’s Interactive Producer producing and directing high quality video content with a view to providing dynamic, engaging, uniquely creative access to ENO productions, company members and teams.  It was also her task to develop a long term interactive audience development strategy for the company, involving social networking and blogging.  Prior to her appointment at ENO, Rachael worked as the Head of New Media for Adventure Pictures (Sally Potter’s production company), and previous to that spent four years as Producer of the East End Film Festival. 

Rachael is a freelance sub-editor and film journalist with print and radio experience, and holds an MA in the History of Film and Visual Media with distinction. She has produced and directed a total of over 100 short films on a range of formats from 35mm to HDv – both as part of her interactive outreach work and purely for art. Between these titles, her films have screened at the London Film Festival, The Palm Springs Intl. Film Festival, Tampere Film Festival, Raindance Film Festival, the Halloween London Short Film Festival and the Coney Island Festival. Girlfriend in a Kimono was the winner of the Time Out Best London short award at Halloween 2006. Self Help was selected by the British Council in 2004/5 to represent British talent around the world and in December 2006, was signed to a three-year contract with PBS Chicago's Image Union, for TV broadcast and screening online.

Rachael also runs her own production company and consultancy, under the banner of which she has directed films for the Royal Institute of British Architects, Independent Cinema Office, Opera Europa, Glyndebourne Opera, English National Opera, Masterclass Haymarket, the UK government’s Music and Dance Scheme, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

She is one of the originators of the GRIST process (Global Radically-inclusive Sustainable Theatre) explored in The Congo Project.  Through GRIST, theatre work can be seen as an international call-to-arms, a positive collaboration that transcends barriers of race, class, ability or prejudice. By attempting to make all work sustainable, this in turn draws attention to the need for conscious consideration of the materials used worldwide in the name of entertainment, and ensures the handover and celebration of traditional, environmental working methods.