Items where Subject is "Film"

In the early 20th century, the techniques of collage and film montage were linked with the cultural production of political radicalism. The assemblage of new wholes from existing parts established a critical method for negotiating the social world. Driven by technological and cultural developments, the practice of combining separate images is now applied within a broad range of art and media forms. Through its assimilation and concealment within the popular and commercial, collage has been detached from its political origins.

This practice led project lies at the intersection of documentary, archive film, animation and history. It’s philosophical framework is critical realism, a position that sees reality as a plurality of interdependent structures and mechanisms operating in stratified systems. The research deploys collage as a practical form of critical realism to explore the history of ‘Welsh Wales’ (Balsom,1985), along with the region’s political, cultural and social identity. The investigation is conducted
through engagement with film collection of the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales.

Theories of Welsh history and identity are used in the analysis, interpretation and composition of the archive materials as evidence of a complex and layered culture.
In the creative mediation of factual material, realist collage addresses the non-physical levels of reality that are not directly visible in the archive film. This is done through using temporal and spatial juxtaposition as a method of realist inference to represent the causally generative domain that determines actual events. An imaginative sense of a non-empirical, complex whole is inferred through the temporal and spatial composition of image parts.

The originality of the research is in development of collage as a visual and practical research method that offers a novel form of critical realist inquiry. The thesis will reflect on the political implications of the practice, advance critical theory of collage, and provide new insights into the function of collage processes in non-fiction film.

Amidst the UK higher education strikes, Lorena Cervera and Isabel Seguí codirected #PrecarityStory, a short documentary that exposes the increasing precarisation of academic labour at universities. Released in 2020, the film follows a working day in the life of Isabel who, at that time, was a cleaner, researcher, and teacher at the same British elite institution. This is a (self-consciously) performative documentary (Bruzzi, 2006) inspired methodologically by the transmediatic form of Latin American testimonio, where an individual subject stands for a community and the film is an activist artefact in which ‘reality’ is managed creatively to further the political agenda of the filmmakers. This chapter explores the complexities of this approach in which a filmmaker and an empowered film subject join forces to challenge an exploitative workplace and interrogate the mode of production of collaborative cinemas.

Following recent endeavours that have unearthed women’s cinema and reclaimed its contribution to film history, this video essay revisits the filmography of the Colombian feminist film collective Cine Mujer (1978–1999). Narrated by three of its members—Eulalia Carrizosa, Patricia Restrepo, and Clara Riascos—through semi-structured interviews that intersect the personal, professional and political, this short film also reuses Cine Mujer’s archive. Its purpose is, one the one hand, to contribute to restoring its legacy and, on the other hand, to reframe and resignify its images within women’s ongoing battle for equality.

From the 1970s, Latin American women began making documentary films with clear political intents. These films shed light on the precarious conditions that characterized women’s entry to the workforce and other labour struggles, on reproductive rights and women’s role in production and reproduction, and on the inevitable questioning of identity that results from migration and displacement. However, the historiography of Latin American cinema continues to ignore the legacy of these filmmakers. This thesis acknowledges and re-signifies women’s documentaries and reclaims their contributions to film history. Moreover, it provides a new lens through which to revisit the history of Latin American documentary while also adding to the scholarship on Latin American women’s filmmaking through both theoretical analysis and creative practice. In the written component, I propose three approximations to the study of Latin American women’s documentary cinema between 1975 and 1994. To do so, I have curated a selection of nine documentaries produced during these decades that illustrate some of the thematic interests, modes of authorship and production, and formal strategies and aesthetic devices employed by women filmmakers. Ultimately, I contend that this corpus of work was produced during a formative moment for women’s and feminist cinema. The analyses of these films have informed the making of the creative component. The short documentary Processing Images from Caracas traces the archive of activist, filmmaker, and photographer Franca Donda and the film collectives that she was part of, Cine Urgente and Grupo Feminista Miércoles. It also shows how Latin American women’s documentaries and other relevant materials that could make up an archive of women’s and feminist cinema are at the brink of disappearance and foregrounds the urgent need to create such an archive.

This article contextualizes and characterizes the Venezuelan feminist film collective Grupo Feminista Miercoles. Founded by Venezuelan Josefina Acevedo and Italians Franca Donda and Ambretta Marrosu, among others, Grupo Feminista Miercoles (1979–88) produced the documentary Yo, tu, Ismaelina (‘I, you, Ismaelina’) (1981) and the videos Argelia Laya, por ejemplo (‘Argelia Laya, for example’) (1987), Eumelia Hernandez, calle arriba, calle abajo (‘Eumelia Hernandez, up and down the street’) (1988) and Una del monton (‘One of the bunch’) (1988), and participated in several activities organized by the Venezuelan women’s movement. On the one hand, this article pays attention to both the cinematic and political contexts that allowed the emergence of this collective, with a focus on the influence that Italian cinematic and feminist ideas had in these contexts. On the other hand, it also provides formal analysis of the collective’s filmography and explores how feminist ideas and praxis are deployed in its films. The overall aim of this article is to restore the contributions of Grupo Feminista Miercoles to both Latin American political cinema and transnational feminist cinema.

Cine Mujer was the name of two feminist film collectives, one founded in Mexico (1975–1986) and the other in Colombia (1978–1999). Sharing the same name but with no ties between each other, these collectives produced films that provided different representations of women, politicized personal experiences and domestic spaces, and promoted processes of consciousness-raising. Broadly, this article looks at the Cine Mujer collectives as part of a larger phenomenon that, although informed by second-wave feminism and the New Latin American Cinema, can be better understood within the singular complexity of Latin American women’s movements. Specifically, it analyses two documentaries, Cosas de mujeres (1978) and Carmen Carrascal (1982), produced by the Cine Mujer collectives in Mexico and Colombia, respectively. Drawing on Laura Marks’ work on hybridity, excess, and haptic visuality, this article explores the relation between modes of production and representation in these films and positions them as emblematic examples of a formative moment in Latin American feminist documentary. By emphasizing the emotional and sensorial appeal of these films, this article also attempts to expand what is understood by political cinema.

This article contextualises and characterises the history and film production of the Colombian feminist film collective Cine Mujer, and analyses how its collective and collaborative practices challenged auteurism. From 1978 to the late 1990s, Cine Mujer produced several short films, documentaries, series, and videos, and acted as a distribution company of Latin American women’s cinema. Its twenty years of activity possibly make it one of the world’s longest-lasting feminist film collectives. Yet, its history is largely unknown in Colombia and abroad. Thus, the question that motivates this article is related to how to inscribe Cine Mujer in film history without uncritically reproducing the methodologies that cast a shadow on women’s cinema. Throughout its trajectory, Cine Mujer transitioned from being an independent cinematic project interested in artistic experimentation to a media organization that produced educational videos commissioned by governmental and global institutions and often targeted at marginalised women. Based on interviews conducted with some of the Cine Mujer members, the Cine Mujer’s catalogues, and its films and videos, I organise Cine Mujer’s corpus of work in three main modes of production that disrupt the role of the auteur and the centrality of the director.

This special section within the issues 61 of Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media was co-edited by Lorena Cervera Ferrer, Sonia Kerfa, and Elizabeth Ramírez-Soto. All the articles included in this special section were peer-reviewed. Moreover, this section also includes book reviews and an edited transcription of the roundtable that took place at the conference 'Cozinhando Imagens, Tejiendo Feminismos. Latin American Feminist Film and Visual Art Collectives,' from which this section emerged.

This article draws on the comprehensive historical account outlined in the author’s recent publication on 1970s British experimental filmmaking which challenges the problematic ‘return to image’ thesis evident in most historical accounts of the decade, arguing that image-rich, expressive, personal and representational films were in evidence throughout the decade. The article includes examples of the ‘return to image’ thesis, demonstrating how this has problematically perpetuated the flawed account of the decade. It also outlines the countercultural, psychoanalytic and mystical influences on filmmaking and on American critic, P. Adams Sitney’s taxonomical distinctions – ‘psychodramatic trance’, ‘lyrical’, ‘mythopoeia’, and ‘diary’ – which provide illuminating characteristics useful for examining some of the personal, expressive forms of 1970s British filmmaking. It gives an understanding of how experimental filmmaking grew from a small handful of films and filmmakers, at the start of the decade, to a veritable ‘explosion’ of filmmaking by the end of the 1970s.

This article discusses encounters occurring between the hand of the artist and filmmaking processes that may bypass the intellect, identifying themselves through intuitive modes of production to reveal integral relationships between film form, materiality and content. In this way the results of non-human agency, registered within film chemistry and processes of production – physical, intellectual, ‘spiritual’, (un)conscious – interact as the filmmaker takes an idea from conception to projection. Jane Bennett’s theorization of ‘vital materialism’ is important for investigations (2010), as is the role of chance discussed by William Kentridge (1993), whereby deliberations include the fortuitous manifestations occurring as encounters between hand, page and camera coalesce in the production of films. Additionally, approaches are informed by Vilém Flusser’s description of the photographer as a ‘Functionary: ‘a person who plays with apparatus and acts as a function of apparatus’ (Flusser 2007, p.83). This is, arguably, equally pertinent for the cinematographer/animator/artist who can ‘creep into the camera [and processing/editing equipment] in order to bring to light the tricks concealed within’ (Flusser, p.27).

This comprehensive historical account demonstrates the rich diversity in 1970s British experimental filmmaking. It acts as a form of reclamation by integrating films having received inadequate historical and critical recognition and placing these alongside films existing as accepted texts of the decade. This history challenges the problematic 'return to image' thesis, providing examples of written evidence and demonstrating how this has problematically perpetuated a flawed account of the decade. This is the first extensive overview of 1970s filmmaking, contextualizing films within broader aesthetic, theoretical and socio-political frameworks. The detailed textual and comparative analyses offer unique approaches to individual films, shedding light on technical, aesthetic and economic decisions informing filmmaking. As such, it provides a unique understanding of how experimental filmmaking grew from a small handful of films and filmmakers, at the start of the 1970s, to a veritable 'explosion' in filmmaking by the end of the decade.

In the year which marked the centenary of the start of the First World War, a series of creative projects in Bristol considered past, contemporary and continuing conflicts. A unique record of these exhibitions and events has now been captured for this book.

Under the generic title Back From the Front: Art, Memory and the Aftermath of War the projects consisted of five overlapping exhibitions staged at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol, UK - a curated show of work by John and Paul Nash; a unique gathering of work by contemporary artists examining war and peace under the title Shock and Awe: Contemporary Artists at War and Peace, and a sequence of exhibitions united under the word Re-membering, which were a series of commissions funded by the Arts Council England and co-ordinated by the Bristol Cultural Development Partnership and Bristol 2014. A fifth exhibition The Death of Nature gave a showcase to the recent paintings of Michael Porter RWA.

This paper is part of a continuing project of repositioning or appropriating practices from the wider cultural landscape with the intention of broadening the conceptual landscape of illustration. Specifically, the aim here is the appropriation of the work of celebrated filmmaker and journalist Adam Curtis as illustration. Rather than any detailed explanation of the intention or original context of this work, this paper aims to utilise Curtis’s practice as a hypothetical space to explore various instances of interdisciplinary appropriation and mischaracterisation in particular regards to an expanded notion of illustration.

A story team’s journey on an animated feature such as Corpse Bride (2005) is similar to that of the audience. It is emotional, full of story and character, has astounding visuals – and it is unlikely you will have experienced anything like it before.

When agreeing to work on Corpse Bride, you are agreeing to wholeheartedly embody Tim Burton’s imagination. By signing the contracts, you accede to keep production secrets and leave your life at the door for the duration of your stay. In exchange, you enter the Burton world – you become a ‘Burton Body’, a crew member. You become dedicated to Burton’s incomplete vision, you enter the ‘dark, edgy, and quirky realm of the “Burtonesque”’ (Salisbury 2006: xviii), and with this agreement there comes glory ‘but also its own, unique set of difficulties, not least in the expectations that both studios and audiences now have of him and his output’(Salisbury 2006: xviii).

Sixteen years later I can reflect on my experience and the processes and write with hindsight. I hope to give a fair account of what it is like to be a ‘Burton Body’ and to explain what story development means on an animation feature. This essay provides an overview of how story teams and their ideas inform the final script, observing that the screenplay is not the beacon of light in stormy seas, but more like a large ship loosely anchored nearby.

The voices of autistic children and their families are routinely underestimated and overlooked in research and practice. Research is challenged methodologically in accessing the views of autistic people who, by definition, are characterised by social and communication difficulties. Consequently, many voices remain unheard and experiences undocumented. This has important implications for the validity of research that is interested in improving the life experiences of marginalised groups since the representation of those experiences is partial and dominated by research perspectives that prioritise particular kinds of evidence. This situation matters because there remains a substantial gap between research and practice such that the longer-term outcomes for autistic people across social, educational and economic indices remain poor. We argue that research can only make an impact on practice if there is a genuine commitment to gathering and understanding these different sources of evidence in ways that connect research and practice from the start. This protocol describes a methodological project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council in the UK. The ‘Our Stories’ project applies and extends a participatory Digital Stories methodology to explore the research challenge of gathering a range of views from autistic children, families, and practice in authentic ways and at points of transition. Digital Stories is an accessible and inclusive methodology that supports the sharing of views and experiences in visual, video form. We describe the rationale for, and design, of the project across four pilot studies in different contexts as well as our approach to analysis and ethics. While our project focuses on autism, the knowledge we gain is applicable to research and practice much more widely and to any voices or groups who are marginalised from the traditional ways of doing research and to any contexts of practice.

Independent filmmaking is often faced with difficulties. For the team behind San Sabba, the issue resided in the invisibilities embedded in the film’s location: a concentration camp within the city of Trieste. This article will explore how and why the writer and director of San Sabba considered Trieste as an archive of multiple histories, memories, and postmemory due to the historical findings the film is based on, and how silenced history informed a phenomenological examination of what a landscape can add to the collective memory. Linking other locations in the city, which contribute to the elucidation of stories and histories deprived of public attention, this article analyses the historical data and considers the ontological qualities of the landscape as an archive where dominant narratives impact the understandings of present and past identities.

While addressing the question of screenplay textuality, this Special Issue takes a close interest in the ‘media thickness’ of the screenplay in its textual form. In doing so, we wish to contribute to the exploration and affirmation of scenaristic processes as both cultural and intermedial practices, as in general, screenwriting and screenplays are indeed to be considered at the crossroads of different artistic, mediatic and social fields. This is a flexible editorial posture and assumed as such, one which above all aims to consider the constitutive plurality of given textual practices, not only in terms of conceptual and social anchoring, but also of styles, modes and languages.

Narrative comprehension, memory, motion, depth perception, synesthesia, hallucination, and dreaming have long been objects of fascination for cognitive psychologists. They have also been among the most potent sources of creative inspiration for experimental filmmakers. Lessons in Perception melds film theory and cognitive science in a stimulating investigation of the work of iconic experimental artists such as Stan Brakhage, Robert Breer, Maya Deren, and Jordan Belson. In illustrating how avant-garde filmmakers draw from their own mental and perceptual capacities, author Paul Taberham offers a compelling account of how their works expand the spectator’s range of aesthetic sensitivities and open creative vistas uncharted by commercial cinema.

Lucifer Rising can be understood as the culmination of Kenneth Anger’s Magick Lantern Cycle. The power of this film, in part, rests on the way in which Anger alludes to a range of esoteric myths and Gods, without contextualising them in the way a more traditional film would do. This article sets out to reveal the various allusions, and in turn elucidate Anger’s unique aproach to filmmaking.

World-leading filmmakers and scholars come together in Introduction to Screen Narrative: Perspectives on Story Production and Comprehension to offer the reader cutting-edge insights into how screen narratives work. This collection explores a variety of mediums (e.g. feature film, television, animation, video games) and how they have evolved. It also explores how major artists have innovatively subverted narrative conventions (David Lynch, Jean-Luc Godard, Bela Tarr), and how academics from a variety of traditions (film scholars, philosophers and cognitive psychologists) have shed insight on screen storytelling from different disciplines.

Books on screen storytelling have traditionally fallen into two separate camps. This first is screenwriting manuals, which are designed to help the reader with story construction, building characters and writing dialogue, along with formatting scripts and finding agents. The second camp is books on film narratology, which aim to make the reader aware of the broad norms of moviemaking and how particular films relate to those norms, currently and historically. This collection is the first of its kind in drawing a bridge between the two domains.

Offering state-of-the-art surveys of narrative from internationally-renown researchers, theoreticians, and media practitioners, this collection is a key text in understanding contemporary research from a range of disciplines in a single, accessible resource designed to engage both novices and experts in the field of screen storytelling.

Across the academy, scholars are debating the question of what bearing scientific inquiry has upon the humanities. The latest addition to the AFI Film Readers series, Cognitive Media Theory takes up this question in the context of film and media studies. This collection of essays by internationally recognized researchers in film and media studies, psychology, and philosophy offers film and media scholars and advanced students an introduction to contemporary cognitive media theory―an approach to the study of diverse media forms and content that draws upon both the methods and explanations of the sciences and the humanities. Exploring topics that range from color perception to the moral appraisal of characters to our interactive engagement with videogames, Cognitive Media Theory showcases the richness and diversity of cognitivist research. This volume will be of interest not only to students and scholars of film and media, but to anyone interested in the possibility of a productive relationship between the sciences and humanities.

This book chapter introduces the reader to the field of experimental animation by surveying various definitions that have been proposed, offering an overview of some of the key figures, explaining the history of visual music, and exploring the theme of medium expansion. It ends by offering three original case studies of contemporary experimental animations.

Practice as Research (PaR), and Practice-led Research, as studied by Hazel Smith, Roger T. Dean, and Graeme Sullivan, are increasingly being implemented in a wide range of disciplines. In this article, I will report on the methodological trajectory of my creative practice, an autoethnographic work that used film forms as research. The process progressed on three levels of investigation: the narrative, the epistemological, and the ontological. It developed from my personal experience and research in the archive, as a network of references supporting and responding to the needs of producing films through the exploration of prior film methodologies, and elaborating novel forms of mediation of history, memory, and postmemory

From the beginning, the Risiera di San Sabba, the only concentration and extermination camp of the Axis in Italy, had been the central character in the film San Sabba (2016). However, in 2014 the project was denied access to the premises. This chapter explores how and why the initial treatment, featuring interviews with survivors and tour guides conducted in a traditional participatory style, evolved into an experimental script for an essay film questioning the ontological status of memorialisation. Constructed around unseen documents, held in multiple languages (Italian, Slovenian, German and English), the narrative aimed to illustrate the harrowing topic without entering the camp. With the story locked in the relationship between the silenced history of the victims and those who struggled for the persecution of the perpetrators, when late into production some access to the camp was granted, the team was brought back to the drawing board and editing became screenwriting.

Lunch with Family is a short film (30’) on postmemory that was shortlisted in the Inspiration category at the AHRC Research in Film Awards held at BAFTA in London in 2016. Judges thought the film to be "visually and thematically engaging and called it strong".

The film reveals the tension between Slav-silenced history in Trieste and its impact on personal life and identity in a city-symbol on the former Iron Curtain, in Italy. The film intertwines the author's own story with the history of forced Italianisation of half a million Slavs, their persecution, their organisation in anti-Fascist groups, and the final attempt to delete this ethnic group, which, in Trieste in 1918, was more substantial than in Ljubljana – the capital of Slovenia.

As part of the wider discourse of postmemory, the films aligns with the work of other scholars: Anne Karpf's The War After: Living with the Holocaust (1997) and Marianne Hirsch's Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory (2004), but also Eva Hoffman's After Such Knowledge. However, Lunch with Family goes further. It uncovers the long history of resistance and the fight for the existence of a community that does not see its history acknowledged in Italy.

Based on interdisciplinary research, archival material and interviews, the film establishes the use of research-by-practice on film as an adequate epistemological methodology to uncover long-buried events and to explore the loop of existential questions the situation provoked and continues to stir in Trieste's Slav inhabitants. A paper published in Screenworks (Vol.8, No.1) in January 2018 explored the context, methods and outcomes of the research enquiry, and Turina presented conference papers and screenings at events in Sheffield, York and Cambridge during 2016-17.

Independent filmmaking is often confronted with difficulties. For the team
behind San Sabha (Turina 2016) the issue resided in the invisibilities embedded
in the film's location: a concentration camp within the city of Trieste. This
article will explore how and why San Sabha considered the city of Trieste as an
archive of multiple histories, memories, and postmemory, and how it evolved
into a phenomenological examination of what a landscape can add to the collective memory of a city. Linking other locations in the city, which contribute to the elucidation of stories and histories deprived of public attention,
this article will consider the ontological qualities of the landscape as an archive
where dominant narratives impact the understandings of present and past identities.

Independent filmmaking is often faced with difficulties. For the team behind San Sabba, the issue resided in the invisibilities embedded in the film’s location: a concentration camp within the city of Trieste. This article will explore how and why the writer and director of San Sabba considered Trieste as an archive of multiple histories, memories, and postmemory due to the historical findings the film is based on, and how silenced history informed a phenomenological examination of what a landscape can add to the collective memory. Linking other locations in the city, which contribute to the elucidation of stories and histories deprived of public attention, this article analyses the historical data and considers the ontological qualities of the landscape as an archive where dominant narratives impact the understandings of present and past identities.

San Sabba is a short film (29‘ 50”) that debates the way we conceive of sites of memorialisation, the way they represent people and who they were in the past. The Hollywood International Independent Documentary Awards gave the film the Recognition Award in June 2017 and screened the film at the Awards event in Los Angeles, US, in March 2018.

Building on the method tested with Lunch with Family, this film displays the archival research and personal engagement in the discovery of the Axis Concentration Camp of the Risiera di San Sabba in Trieste, Italy, which was active from 1943 to 1945. The film debates the alignment of the Museum of the Risiera di San Sabba to the narrative of the Holocaust, as the site was predominantly used for the detention, interrogation and killing of freedom fighters and their families.

San Sabba aligns with known works within the Holocaust film tradition, as it explores events that took place within the same logic of genocide. Especially relevant are filmmakers as Alain Resnais, Night and Fog (1955), and Claude Lanzmann, Shoah (1985), because they tackle the unseen issues related to the depiction of genocide. Equally important is the work of Jeremy Hicks, The Unseen Holocaust of WWII (2014), which casts questions on the predominantly camps based narrative of the Holocaust. However, San Sabba opens the discussion to the concept of memorialisation in Italy, as the camp in Trieste fails to reveal the documented purpose of the site.

Full screenings of the film took place in York and Athens in 2017, and at the Hollywood International Independent Documentary Awards, in March 2018. Turina presented conference papers and particle screenings at peer-reviewed events in Sheffield, York and Cambridge during 2016-17.

This article explores the use of animation in the essay film and analyses how screenwriting animation becomes a complex process of translation of the message the film wishes to address. With a focus on issues encountered in the development of two short essay films, Lunch with Family (2016) and San Sabba (2016), the article maps the process that in both cases guided the scripting of animated sequences, and analyses why in the editing room the director chose to use stills from the animations, instead. An example of the narrative techniques applied to mediate silenced history and postmemory in film, this contribution intends to add to the larger discussion on the current state of the art in screenwriting non-fiction.

The Chapter reports on the screenwriting development processes employed to create the essay film San Sabba (Turina, 2016).

Independent filmmaking is often confronted with difficulties. For the team behind San Sabba (Turina 2016), script development resembled a mission in enemy territory. This chapter will explore how and why the initial treatment, featuring interviews with survivors and tour guides in classic participatory style, evolved into an experimental script for an essay film questioning the ontological status of memorialisation.
From the beginning, the Risiera di San Sabba, the only concentration and extermination camp of the Axis in Italy, had been the central character in this film. However, in 2014 the project was denied access to the premise. What followed were two years of script development. The second script was constructed around unseen documents, held in multiple languages (Italian, Slovenian, German, and English), for a narrative able to illustrate the harrowing topic without entering the premises. With the story locked in the relationship between the silenced stories of some victims and the portraits of the people who struggle for the persecution of the perpetrators in the 1970s, the film had found a form.
However, access to the camp was granted during the last week of production and brought the team back to the drawing board. Having regained the central character of the film, the team went through some hard times in trying not to invalidate already agreed conditions of access to documents while allowing space for the project’s initial angle. The final decisions made ofSan Sabba a piece on postmemory, which benefitted from a strategy of editing ‘as screenwriting.'

The Chapter considers how and why the author explored the silenced history of the indigenous Slovenian community in Trieste, which is largely unknown in Britain. Written from the point of view of a filmmaker associated with the current resurfacing of Slav culture in the city, it explores the relationship between geographical space, memory, and identity as tackled in the short film Lunch with Family (Turina, 2016). It interprets some of the most representative Italian films that influenced the official reading of the Northeastern part of present-day Italy.

Over the last decade developments in virtual reality (VR) technologies have given rise to a new wave of immersive storytelling experiences that have captivated audiences at film festivals, in galleries, through online platforms and various other venues. In response, scholarly research into narrative-based VR has sought to understand the affordances, artistic qualities and immersive nature of this medium. Within this array of analysis and reflection, traditional screenwriting concerns such as narrative structure, plot devices and character development have been discussed alongside notions of immersion, embodiment and user experience design. Accordingly, notions of ‘script development’ have expanded to encompass processes gathered under terms like ‘conceptualization’, ‘prototyping’ and ‘narrative design’, which assume specific connotations in relation to various disciplinary approaches. This Special Issue explores the technologies, practices and paradigms that VR storytelling implements, with particular attention given to the differing terminology across disciplines that resonates, repurposes or redefines conceptual understandings belonging to earlier media, and specifically, to screenwriting for film.

Contact: A Festival of New Experimental Film and Video, Apiary Studios, London, 6-8 May 2016. Curator.

Participating artists including George Barber, Louisa Fairclough, Nicky Hamlyn, Sally Golding, Malcolm Le Grice, Karen Mirza & Brad Butler, Matthew Noel-Tod, Heather Phillipson, Greg Pope, Lis Rhodes, Ben Rivers, Guy Sherwin & Lynn Loo, Jennet Thomas, Jennet Thomas, Andrea Zimmerman.

Contact: A Festival of New Experimental Film and Video featured 70 film, video and performance artists across three days in its venues’ three studios. Its curatorial focus combined a multiplicity of forms, in an accessible and aware manner, which brought together niche and new audiences and formed an important contribution to the contemporary condition of experimental film practices in the UK.

This independent survey, which was supported by ACE, presented single and multi-projector and performance-related works, and specially commissioned installations. To schedule the works in a relatable manner an innovative structure was initiated – the works were presented in small clusters, rather than the normative, often lengthy and formally inappropriate, short film programme format - which challenged viewing hierarchies, introduced new artists, providing the opportunity for the ‘sampling’ and discovery of unknown works. This conception was appreciated by the audience and artists alike (William Raban wrote: ‘Your programming was enlightened').

The Festival programmed established and emerging artists, from original members of the London Filmmakers Co-op to recent graduates, who showed new and untested works. These were selected in consultation with organisations such as no.w.here, collective-iz, Unconscious Archives, Nightworks and Screen Shadows. This ethos reflected the field’s and Festival’s co-operative and collaborative intent, and was emphasised by the supportive presence of many of the artists throughout its duration.

To document the event’s intentions and methodology a publication was produced, which included contextual essays, discussion pieces and all the Festival’s details (Guy Sherwin wrote: 'the brochure is simple, informative, elegant’). This also addressed its legacy through further disseminating its composition and ideas, as such collectable reference points are vital indicators of experimental film and video’s development. The Festival’s discursive structure, which celebrated the fields’ diversity and vibrancy, was enthusiastically and critically received, with each day selling-out.

The Contact Festival included the work of over 70 artists and filmmakers, featuring single-screen films, multi-screen/performance-related works and site-specific installations. Accompanied by a publication including discussion pieces by Luke Aspell and collective-iz (on collective practices), Sally Golding, James Holcombe and Cathy Rogers (on different manifestations of contemporary expanded cinema), and short essays by Maria Palacios Cruz (LUX, Deputy Director), William Fowler (BFI, curator of artists' moving image) and Nicky Hamlyn (filmmaker and writer), plus complete listings.

The Contact Festival included the work of over 70 artists and filmmakers, featuring single-screen films, multi-screen/performance-related works and site-specific installations. Accompanied by a publication including discussion pieces by Luke Aspell and collective-iz (on collective practices), Sally Golding, James Holcombe and Cathy Rogers (on different manifestations of contemporary expanded cinema), and short essays by Maria Palacios Cruz (LUX, Deputy Director), William Fowler (BFI, curator of artists' moving image) and Nicky Hamlyn (filmmaker and writer), plus complete listings.

A series of eight film screening and expanded events, which featured 22 artists. It drew on Film Talks: 15 Conversations About Experimental Cinema's discursive pairings, enabling them to show and perform work.

The applied interaction, between maker and work, in a specific context, further developed the conversation for all - peer-to-peer, artist-to-audience, work-to-context - enriching subject related understanding.

The public returning to the printed text re-animated the original words, indicated further questions and offered new insight, all that can only occur in an informed live interaction.

The events sought to explore (in different ways) how practitioners and viewers can be brought together in sites of co-presence, be part of a collaborative and discursive enterprise that shares and explores conceptual and contextual encounters.

Film Talks is an edited collection of unique conversations on experimental cinema from a range of eminent and emerging film and video makers. The book represents a contemporary snapshot of the ways in which experimental cinema is perceived by its practitioners, often in relation to other art forms, moving image culture at large and wider social issues. It is an invaluable guide for those keen to immerse themselves in the insights and perspectives that only artists can offer.

Pairs: - / -, The Depot, London, 19, 27 June & 3, 10 July 2017. Curator.

Featuring: Jennifer Nightingale/Simon Payne, Nick Collins/Cathy Rodgers, Nicky Hamlyn/Neil Henderson, Amy Dickson/Jamie Jenkinson

Pairs: - / -, was a curated series of four events, each of which featured two artist-filmmakers, who presented new work, alongside a work that inspired them, and was introduced by a printed version of a conversation between the featured pair. Its combination of works and words, and consideration of site, facilitated research into creative, critical and curatorial practice and its public manifestation.

My curatorial practice examines film and video exhibition configuration, the resulting spectatorship and addresses the need to develop more accessible knowledge exchange, through challenging the passivity of most film presentations. Pairs’ furthered my investigation into the importance of discursive programming, how through this developmental methodology artists and audiences can experience a more rewarding encounter.

The series presented diverse experimental film and video practices through peer-to-peer and artist-to-audience dialogues. The pairs had shared and/or contrasting areas of interest, and their transcribed conversations, which is a neglected area of research, reflected on their own and one another’s practices and informed the series. Further to this, the artists’ inspirational film choices provided tracible linkages. The works were presented in their original formats – film and digital projections (single and double screen) and multi-media performance – reinforcing the importance of medium specificity within this field. Some of the artists are key figures in the history of experimental film and in combining their work with that of younger artists, the ‘pairings’ built on the field’s legacy and dissemination.

This configuration allowed related debates - contextual histories, thematic focus, exhibition strategies - to occur in an insightful and relatable manner. It reflected the featured works’ experimental intent, a questioning of form and content, created an active encounter between the works and their reception, always an experimental aspiration, and offered a more interactive experience through its discursive assemblage.

Pairs: - / -, The Depot, London, 19, 27 June & 3, 10 July 2017. Curator.

Featuring: Jennifer Nightingale/Simon Payne, Nick Collins/Cathy Rodgers, Nicky Hamlyn/Neil Henderson, Amy Dickson/Jamie Jenkinson

Pairs: - / -, was a curated series of four events, each of which featured two artist-filmmakers, who presented new work, alongside a work that inspired them, and was introduced by a printed version of a conversation between the featured pair. Its combination of works and words, and consideration of site, facilitated research into creative, critical and curatorial practice and its public manifestation.

My curatorial practice examines film and video exhibition configuration, the resulting spectatorship and addresses the need to develop more accessible knowledge exchange, through challenging the passivity of most film presentations. Pairs’ furthered my investigation into the importance of discursive programming, how through this developmental methodology artists and audiences can experience a more rewarding encounter.

The series presented diverse experimental film and video practices through peer-to-peer and artist-to-audience dialogues. The pairs had shared and/or contrasting areas of interest, and their transcribed conversations, which is a neglected area of research, reflected on their own and one another’s practices and informed the series. Further to this, the artists’ inspirational film choices provided tracible linkages. The works were presented in their original formats – film and digital projections (single and double screen) and multi-media performance – reinforcing the importance of medium specificity within this field. Some of the artists are key figures in the history of experimental film and in combining their work with that of younger artists, the ‘pairings’ built on the field’s legacy and dissemination.

This configuration allowed related debates - contextual histories, thematic focus, exhibition strategies - to occur in an insightful and relatable manner. It reflected the featured works’ experimental intent, a questioning of form and content, created an active encounter between the works and their reception, always an experimental aspiration, and offered a more interactive experience through its discursive assemblage.

Pairs: - / -, The Depot, London, 19, 27 June & 3, 10 July 2017. Curator.

Featuring: Jennifer Nightingale/Simon Payne, Nick Collins/Cathy Rodgers, Nicky Hamlyn/Neil Henderson, Amy Dickson/Jamie Jenkinson

Pairs: - / -, was a curated series of four events, each of which featured two artist-filmmakers, who presented new work, alongside a work that inspired them, and was introduced by a printed version of a conversation between the featured pair. Its combination of works and words, and consideration of site, facilitated research into creative, critical and curatorial practice and its public manifestation.

My curatorial practice examines film and video exhibition configuration, the resulting spectatorship and addresses the need to develop more accessible knowledge exchange, through challenging the passivity of most film presentations. Pairs’ furthered my investigation into the importance of discursive programming, how through this developmental methodology artists and audiences can experience a more rewarding encounter.

The series presented diverse experimental film and video practices through peer-to-peer and artist-to-audience dialogues. The pairs had shared and/or contrasting areas of interest, and their transcribed conversations, which is a neglected area of research, reflected on their own and one another’s practices and informed the series. Further to this, the artists’ inspirational film choices provided tracible linkages. The works were presented in their original formats – film and digital projections (single and double screen) and multi-media performance – reinforcing the importance of medium specificity within this field. Some of the artists are key figures in the history of experimental film and in combining their work with that of younger artists, the ‘pairings’ built on the field’s legacy and dissemination.

This configuration allowed related debates - contextual histories, thematic focus, exhibition strategies - to occur in an insightful and relatable manner. It reflected the featured works’ experimental intent, a questioning of form and content, created an active encounter between the works and their reception, always an experimental aspiration, and offered a more interactive experience through its discursive assemblage.

Resemblance to Other Animals (16 mins, HD, 2019) is a memory work that considers locational effect and its recollection. Its key elements, images of encased taxidermy and a traveller’s voice, offer different temporal plains and positions. The images were shot in the Horniman Museum’s, London, natural history gallery and the recordings were inspired by work related travel, time away from home. These combined sensory streams, conjoined by narrative’s reason, suggest temporal and spatial complexity and the partialness of remembrance.

The Horniman Museum is a testament to the Victorian mania for collecting, which was also the time of the ‘memory crisis’ when Bergson, Freud, Proust and later Benjamin were proposing a new intuitive, individuated, understanding of memory. A museum collection creates history, a vision of the past, that is in itself a product of history. Resemblance to Other Animals juxtaposes this site with personal recollection, which relates a sense of place to identity and can challenge institutionalised positions, examining how this correlation can be conceptualised and represented.

This examination considers whether the artistic engagement with form and content can formulate a place of creative reckoning, were an imaginative exploration can occur and a different past can be discovered, and if these sensory and conceptual elements can create a memorious investigation that generates new readings.

Beyond Beck Road (part of Open House Festival London and European Heritage Days) is a free public art event, where the street becomes a living breathing exhibition space.

The street is a communal stage for artistry, embracing inclusivity, participation and collaboration, through workshops and public exhibition. The event’s participants and artists are all connected to the street and surrounding area and encompass emerging and established creatives if all ages.

Beck Road itself houses resident artists, studios and has significant communal and cultural heritage. The event’s configuration, of individual and collaborative work, reflects its location in the heart of Hackney, as a vibrant and culturally expansive borough.

Beyond Beck Road culminates with Underline, a performative screening event, which takes place in the railway arch that divides the street. For this event it is transformed into a unique cinema space. Its programme combines an open call, short films, expanded cinema and performances in a distinct sensory encounter.

Film is the ‘art of time’, and film and memory’s
generative affiliation is founded in this relationship.
This paper will examine how this mnemonic facility is
invoked through practice and how this in turn creates
memories.

The tension between narrative interests
and memory’s imperatives can form an axis of
experimentation and exploration. All films reference
memory, one way or another, however not all are
works of memory. Some films would evoke the idea
of memory but do not risk structural and psychological
instability whereas others consciously suggest
memory’s presence through offering more than one
temporal plain and other related signifiers.

The latter categorisation includes the films suchas
Muriel ou le temps d’un retour (Resnais, 1963), Tren
de sombras (Guerín, 1997) and Appearances (Meter,
2000). In this work the correspondence of history and
form, narrative and memory relates and develops
subjective and cultural recollection.

These films relate a form of filmic hybridity that
emphasizes conceptual potentiality and will be the
focus of this study. This examination will consider how
these films’ account of memory’s evolving resonances
is an act of writing and re-writing, and how these works
produce new ways of seeing and thinking.

The global pandemic forced the film industry to adapt its practices. The primary driver of these changes was the economic imperative for production to continue. Similarly, film production courses had to deploy new methods to enable student films to be produced. Through this process new and often creative working methods were devised. This necessity for change also allowed for a critical reassessment of standardised industrial filmmaking - this emphasised that until this point there had been a general unwillingness to reflect upon the industrial production and educational norm, with its ecological unsustainability, exclusive practices and embedded hierarchies. So, the imposing of ‘restrictions’ in fact became an opportunity for creative discovery and to rethink practice related possibilities.

In this paper the authors will draw on their experience of teaching MA Film Practice, at Arts University Bournemouth, and the need to reimagine disciplinary engagement and devise new curriculum components. This process transformed restrictions into ‘creative parameters’. It also focused the course’s practice based research ethos and enhanced the student reflexive and reflective development. These innovations are now embedded in the course’s structure and have facilitated a departmental debate concerning ‘standardised’ working methods (copying historical normative models), and how we can foster a more inclusive and inventive learning environment.

Further to this, the graduating students, now emerging reflective practitioners – more socially, ethically and conceptually aware – can potentially affect new standards and approaches to film production, and in doing so promote original and diverse work, as well as embracing inclusive and ecologically sustainable methodologies. This paper will consider the instructiveness of this academic innovation and its potential to inform future film practice.

It is now accepted that current film production practices are unsustainable and new formulations need to be found that address the climate crisis. The issue’s primary reporting is concerned with industrial film productions, which is undoubtedly important, but this top down approach needs to be balanced with more inclusive and imbedded solutions. Therefore, a pedagogic perspective, which considers whether learning initiatives can influence production methods, is timely. This article proposes that through this engagement alternative practices can be developed.