The Screen School: Activities 2003-2005
Inaugural Event - The Screen School’s inaugural event in November, 2003 at Goldsmiths, featured the first annual Olive Till Memorial Debate:
Sir Alan Parker, filmmaker (The Life of David Gale, Evita, The Commitments), Chairman, UK Film Council in conversation with John Akomfrah, filmmaker (Handsworth Songs, Speak Like a Child, Seven Songs for Malcolm X), Smoking Dogs Films, on the topic of ‘Creativity and Industry’.
This was followed by Stewart Till CBE - CEO, United Pictures International & Chairman UK Film Council, presenting the first MA Script Writing student bursary, in memory of his mother Olive.
Visiting Speakers to the Screen School events and master classes over the last year have included:
- Helena Appio (Development Producer with the BBC)
- Linda Aronson (author of Screenwriting Updated)
- Claire Battersby from Movie House (Sales Agent)
- Clare Binns from City Screen (Exhibitor)
- Norman Brock from the Film Council
- Chris Cocuzzi Cox (Cinematographer)
- Terry Flaxton (Cinematographer)
- Stephen Kelliher from Beyond Films (Sales Agent)
- Mark Isaacs (Documentary filmmaker)
- Isaac Julien (artist and filmmaker)
- Steve Clarke Hall (Producer)
- Sally Hibbin from Parallax (Producer)
- Bob Storer from Harbottle and Lewis (Media Lawyer)
- Tim Morrison (Picture Researcher, South Bank Show)
- Kim Longinotto (Documentary filmmaker)
- Joe Oppenheimer from BBC Films
- Phil Parker (author of The Art & Science of Screenwriting)
- Ben Robert from Metrodome (Distributor)
- Jess Search (Commissioning Editor, Independent Film and Video, Channel 4)
- Lucy Sher from Script Factory
- Meera Syal (writer and actress)
- Stewart Till (UIP)
- Justin Trefgarne (Working Title Films)
- Dorothy Viljoen from PACT Business Development
- Rebecca Watson (Valerie Hoskins Associates)
- Natalie Wreyford ( UK Film Council)
Symposia & events
Over the last year Screen School has organised a number of events - often in collaboration with others from both inside and outside of the College. These have included:
Exploring Visual Identities was a series of two well attended seminars on documentary filmmaking, put on jointly by the Screen School and Philosophy and Human Values from the Department of Sociology. In the first seminar , the filmmaker John Akomfrah used extracts from his own work over the last 20 years to give his perspective on the development of documentary, as a black filmmaker interested in formal experimentation. In the second seminar Michael Uwemedimo gave an account of his research project - an exploration of the interrogative and confessional interview, as method, model and metaphor in the work of Godard, Rouch and Marker. He also talked about the interview in his own work with the Vision Machine film project.
Rethinking World Cinema - One day conference on May 5, 2004, Keynote Speaker: Shiv Visvanathan, chairperson: Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Panelists: Ji Yeon Lee, Richard MacDonald, Gareth Stanton, Rachel Moore and Janet Harbord.
Sonic Subjects & Acoustic Objects was a highly successful one day symposium attended by over one hundred participants on May 2004 . This event was the first to identify sound as an emerging area of research interest across the College. It was organised by The Screen School, The Electronic Music Studio (Music Dept.) and the Anthropology Department. The symposium brought together panels, participants, demonstrations and performances from a very wide range of disciplines and departments including: Sociology, Computing, Visual Arts, Visual Cultures, Design, Drama as well as Music, Anthropology and Sociology and Media & Communications. The event also attracted participants from other universities, the BBC and the GLA. The Keynote Guest Speaker was Professor John Hull, University of Birmingham , and the event was given a most enthusiastic opening from Professor Simon McVeigh, Pro-Warden (Research and Enterprise ) and Senior Pro-Warden, Goldsmiths.
Supervising and Examining Practice-based PhDs in the Moving Image - This was a one day symposium in October 2004, held at the University of Westminster, Regent St , and organised jointly by Screen School , and Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media (CREAM) at the University of Westminster . The symposium was designed to offer a forum in which academic staff could share information and debate ideas about supervising and examining PhDs in the moving image practice area. It was attended by around 70 academics form all around the UK), and opened with presentations from Professor Malcolm Le Grice, formerly Head of Research at St Martin’s School of Art, London Institute, Professor John Ellis, Head of Media Arts, Royal Holloway, University of London, and Dr Stephen Nugent, Reader in Anthropology, Goldsmiths. The symposium was financially supported by the Art, Design & Communication – Learning & Teaching Support Network, now part of the Higher Education Academy
Story Design in the Short Fiction Film - A lecture, acompanied by the screening of a selection of award winning short films, given by Professor Richard Raskin of the University of Aarhus, Denmark; author of “The Art of the Short Fiction Film” – on 15 th October 2004.
Second Olive Till Memorial Debate on November 2004 - In association with Goldsmiths Film Network Society and with the support of the Cinema Museum Ronald Grant Archive, the ScreenSchool held its second Olive Till Memorial Debate on November 2004. Anthony Minghella, the acclaimed writer, director and Chair of the British Film Institute, discussed his experiences of film making, including The English Patient, The Talented Mr Ripley and Cold Mountain with Jonathan Romney, Film Critic for the Independent on Sunday. Stewart Till, Chair of the UK Film Council, Chair and CEO of United International Pictures presented the Olive Till Memorial Bursary to a Goldsmiths MA Script Writing student Ellie Woodcock.
First Person Films 2: A symposium on the performance of the self in Video Diary making - This event was held at Goldsmiths on April 3rd and 4th 2005, attended by 40-50 people.
On the first day there were screenings and presentations of video diary material and the second was the symposium proper. Contributions ranged across a number of disciplines including Visual Arts, Media/Film studies, and sociology/anthropology. There was also be a chance for participants to experience video diary making personally, by contributing to US video artist Wendy Clarke's 'Love Tapes project' during the two days.The purpose of the symposium was to look critically and concretely at a wide range of contemporary video diary practices to see what kinds of knowledge they generate.
The screenings on Sunday 3rd included the Love Tapes by Wendy Clarke - with encouragement to the audience to make one of their own, and the Symposium on Monday 4th consisted of three sessions. In the first Tony Dowmunt (AHRB Fellow in the Creative & Performing Arts, Goldsmiths) presented and talked about video diary material from his Fellowship , and Jon Dovey (Reader in Screen Media, Department of Drama: Theatre, Film, Television, University of Bristol) t talked about the significance (and showed examples) of Vlogging (video blogging).
The second session featured Mandy Rose (New Media Editor, BBC Wales) discussing the issues and aesthetics of first person work on BBC platforms through "Video Nation" and the "Capture Wales" digital storytelling project, then Marlène Monteiro giving a paper entitled 'Playing with the camera: The diary films of Sadie Benning and Sophie Calle'. In the third session Valerie Walkerdine and Maria Pini presented 'Girls on Film: Video Diaries as 'Auto-ethnographies' - their analysis of some of the contradictions of the use of video diaries in the 4.21 project, and Gerry Bloustien, in a paper called Mind the Gap - Look who's (not) talking!, also discussed the ethics of her work involving researching youth through (auto) video ethnography. Finally Deborah Hickling (Institute of Caribbean Studies - University of the West Indies, Mona) presented 'WE WANT JUSTICE!!!' & ' VIDEO MI!!!' - showing how Jamaican popular performances to camera in Dancehall and street demonstrations reveal the collective self.
Practice-based research: inventing methodologies? - (June 2005)
This interdisciplinary workshop addressed the disjunctive relationship between theory and practice within the novel and highly-contested notion of practice-based research.
It was aimed at practice-based researchers throughout Goldsmiths, engaged in the creation of still and moving images. The workshop was especially designed for the presentation of projects in progress, rather than completed projects. Practitioners reviewed their implicit methodological processes instead of simply presenting their visual projects, providing a forum for the discussion of our 'methodologies'.