We bring together foundations, NGO’s, policymakers and media around global issues such as human rights, green energy, improving health, environmental change & education – to forge coalitions and campaigns that are good for all these partners, good for the films and good for society.

We have devised, developed and produced more than 30 documentary series for the BBC. Our funders include leading broadcasters around the world + the Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Skoll Foundation, WHO, UNICEF and many, many more. We have produced more than 500 films.  

Overview: 

SWPictures is a London-based producer and distributor of documentaries and short films. For more than 40-years, Scott White – the owner of SWPictures, has worked with some of the world’s leading broadcasters such as the BBC, CBC, ABC, C4 and PBS on the production and distribution of hundreds of films. We hate to see powerful documentaries shown once and forgotten – which is why we’ve become pioneers in niche marketing. Our videos are also used by millions of students worldwide as education tools and at parliamentary hearings to change government policies. They have played at international film festivals and some have been theatrically released, but they are generally hard to see. The films are available on a pay-by-view basis.

Distribution & Sales:

You can download & stream the hundreds of films on this site. We have documentary series on the environment, health, education, science, history & business, as well as many single films as diverse as Blood on the Stone about diamond smuggling out of Africa, The Trouble with Girls about girls pretending to be boys in Afghanistan, India’s Super 30 about poor maths geniuses being given a chance to succeed, Child Marriage in Africa, Underwater Treasure about hunting for Spanish galleons, to Jade mining in Burma. We also sell footage from these films.

Production:

We’re a leading film-maker in the fields of human rights, health, science, renewable energy, the environment, business, history, current affairs and beyond. Our reach is global. Our films win awards – including the BBC World Viewer’s Choice Award for Best Documentary – three years in a row + two Emmys, a BAFTA, an Oscar, an RTS award & several film festival awards for best picture.

Educational:

SWPictures is a premier source of high-quality video on academic, vocational and life-skills topics.

We’re an on-demand streaming video service for educational institutions that provides 20 million students and faculty with access to hundreds of exclusive films each year.

We offer a growing collection of high quality educational videos that can be purchased and accessed online as digital streams.

SWPictures offers educators and librarians an easy one-stop shop for educational video needs—simply select the titles you want, add them to your shopping cart, and pay with a credit card.

We offer acclaimed and award-winning documentaries, independent non-fiction films, foreign films and shorts, and other educational titles, nearly all of which are exclusively available online through SWPictures.

We’re proud to serve the needs of schools, colleges, libraries, the medical community, lobby groups and other institutions with a broad and deep range of content.
 Our streaming video support students both in and outside of the classroom, enriching their understanding, entertaining them, and stretching their horizons at school, in work, and in life.

Company History:

SWPictures was started in 1994. The company’s founder & director, Scott White, is a multi-award winning journalist. He worked for WTN (now AP) – the world’s biggest television news agency – in the 1980’s & 90’s. He was Head of the Newsroom in the 1980’s managing a multi-million dollar budget. Concurrently he was the Israel bureau chief at the start of the first Intifada in 1987, the Czech bureau chief for the Velvet Revolution in 1989 & the Iraq bureau chief for the first Gulf War in 1991 in which he also covered Saddam’s repressions in Karbala & Najaf and the refugee crisis in Kurdistan.

He was a pioneering VJ in the early 1990’s who travelled to the “hotspots” of the world revealing, often through clandestine filming on small cameras, the grubby activities of rogue regimes and companies. These films told personal stories to illustrate world-changing events such as the documentaries “Burma’s Shining Light” in 1990 on Aung San Suu Kyi (C4), “Inside the Tamil Tigers” in 1991 (BBC1) shortly after a Tamil Tiger female suicide bomber blew up the leader of the world’s largest democracy, Rajiv Gandhi and “The March of the White Flag” in 1993 (BBC2) about the emergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. All were broadcast by scores of TV stations around the globe.

His time as a war correspondent ended abruptly when Scott was shot in the head & his cameraman killed while filming a documentary in Algeria.

So he turned his skills to working with independent film-makers to produce & distribute films for the vast network of broadcasters, corporations & NGO’s which he had supplied as an independent producer.

Since 2005 Scott has devised, developed and produced more than 30 series for leading broadcasters all over the world on health, science, education, the environment, renewable energy, business and so on.