Manx-born documentary maker Sarah Kerruish enjoys working in two very different careers.

As a chief strategy officer for a cutting edge biomedical tech company she is currently working at the forefront of an exciting development in the technology used to detect early signs of cancer.

She also is an award-winning documentary filmmaker who revels in the chance to get to the heart of a story, which is what has brought her back to the Isle of Man.

Sarah was invited to the island by Lovetech, an initiative which aims to empower women to enter careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, to show her latest film, General Magic, which gives a fascinating glimpse into the birth of the technology that is now commonplace in our society.

The films shows the struggles of a small tech film, General Magic, as they try to create the world’s first smartphone, during the early 1990s.

Sarah captured the excitement and energy invested in creating the technology from scratch, charting both the initial failure and the subsequent successes of the individuals involved.

Sarah worked with General Magic during their early years and, realising that there was a story to be told, began to document their work.

Twenty years after filming the rise and development, and then charting the ultimate failure of the company, Sarah retraced the individuals who had worked to create the technology that would ultimately become an integral part of our lives, and the developments that grew out of the first efforts to create a smartphone.

Journey

They include the creation of eBay and developing the Android phone system, creating the iPod, iPhone and Apple Watch, and forming global technology policy from within the White House.

’I was really interested in the role of failure in the journey of bringing good ideas to life and I knew these people had gone on to do extraordinary things,’ said Sarah.

’It was really fascinating, and fundamentally it is a story about what it really does take if you have an important idea that you want to bring in to the world. The perseverance, the boldness, the courage to keep going and being able to take these hard knocks and keep going and to realise that your vision may not be realised, or even to see that you are not the one to realise your vision.’

Sarah sees a clear similarity in her role as a filmmaker and as a tech operative.

She is currently living and working in London, with a firm, Kheiron Medical, who she describes as world leaders in developing cancer detection algorithms, and is also making more films with her American-based company, Spellbound Productions.

’I do have this weird career where I make films and I also work in tech companies,’ she said. ’But I consider myself somebody who wants to bring ideas into the world, and sometimes film is that vehicle, and sometimes it is a piece of tech or a product.’

’I think they are very, very similar in many respects.

’It is hard to make a film, and it is also hard to create a piece of tech.

’You need a good team to get you there and there are tons of obstacles in making films just as there are when you are working in a tech company.

’I think they are strangely similar things, although the output is obviously very different.’

Her own story began after she left the Isle of Man, under the Ella Olesen scholarship in 1982. It sees a female degree student spend a year studying at the University of Idaho in the United States.

The former Ballasalla and Castle Rushen High School student initially studied law before becoming attracted to radio and journalism.

This eventually led Sarah into documentary filmmaking.

Storyteller

’Fundamentally I am a storyteller, and stories have the power to inspire and change everything,’ she said.

’Each time you make a film, you really immerse yourself in that world, and experience it, whether it is as a fast jet pilot, an astronaut who has walked on the moon or the first person to photograph a snowflake, or films about deaf children in their early years when they were developing cochlear implants.

’You really get to immerse yourself in those worlds and you get as close as you can to walking in someone else’s shoes. It’s a unique privilege and I am very lucky.’