In 1960 Guest joined the
BBC’s
Panorama and became its first female producer/director, working with
Richard Dimbleby,
Robin Day and
John Morgan, making programmes on domestic issues and international affairs before moving on to direct and produce a series of profiles of political leaders including
Hugh Gaitskell,
Harold Macmillan and
Edward Heath. She left the BBC in 1966 to become Head of the European Bureau of the
Ford Foundation's two-year experiment in US public broadcasting, Public Broadcasting Laboratory which led to the creation of
PBS. In 1968, with her husband, she formed Transatlantic Films, the first truly independent documentary film company to co-produce quality films for the international television market.
Transatlantic films Since its creation, Transatlantic has produced more than one hundred and fifty films and series, working in co-production with the BBC,
Channel 4 and other major UK broadcasters, as well as with leading TV networks in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe –
Discovery Channel,
TLC,
Animal Planet,
A&E,
Group W,
Metromedia,
PBS,
ABC,
TVNZ,
TF1, La Cinquième,
NDR and
ORF etc.
Direction and production Guest's directing and producing credits include:
London Rock and
Black, White and Blues, co-productions with the BBC and
Metromedia;
In Search of Paradise, a co-production with TF1 in France, Channel 4 in the UK and
TVOntario in Canada;
4 American Composers, a series of four one-hour films directed by
Peter Greenaway;
Plácido Domingo, A Year in the Life of an Opera Singer, also for Channel 4. Then followed three major award-winning series:
The Horse in Sport (8 x 50'),
Greek Fire (90 x 25'), and ''History's Turning Points'', a 26 part series which won the Prix de Basle, Barcelona Bienale for Culture and the Prix Stendhal.
Trailblazers (26 x 50') was the highest-rated series on the Travel Channel in the US, a co-production with Discovery Channel Europe.
Horse Tales (26 x 25') was the first UK/Canadian Treaty Co-Production of a factual television documentary series.
Three Gorges (2 x 60') was an acclaimed documentary on the construction and completion of the largest dam in the world along with the efforts of the Chinese government to save their antiquities from the rising waters.
The Science of Love (3x60'),
Extreme Body Parts (6 x 60') and
Sleep and Dreams (2 x 60') were all co-produced with
Discovery Health in the United States, Great North and Alliance Atlantis in Canada,
S4C in Wales and NDR in Germany.
Legends of the Living Dead (4 x 50') was a co-production with the Travel Channel, S4C and S4C International and most recently, she co-produced
Return to the Three Gorges (1 x 90') a
Discovery Channel special made in co-production with West Beach Productions. Her drama credits include producing and directing
Man in a Fog for Channel 4, a psychological drama starring Tim Piggot Smith, and later produced
Belzoni, a three-part drama series, also for
Channel 4. Her feature film ''Makin' it'', directed by
Simon Hartog, was chosen as the British entry for the Director Fortnight at
Cannes Film Festival in 1972. More recently she was Executive Producer of the
BAFTA and
The Oscar nominated 2011 feature film,
War Horse (film), directed by
Steven Spielberg. Guest was also Executive Producer of "Covent Garden Pioneer" – a joint venture between the
Royal Opera House and the Japanese electronic company, Pioneer. During this time she produced fifteen full-length opera and ballet productions from Covent Garden in co-production with the BBC, Channel 4 and NHK. == Literature ==