Goldsmiths - University of London

Gerry McCulloch

Gerry McCulloch is a Photographer, Cinematographer and Lecturer with many broadcast and exhibition credits in Film Drama, Documentary, Television Advertising Commercials and Promotional Music Videos. He was a Director of Untold Productions and currently operates Darshana Photo Art. Gerry has undertaken Photo and Cine work in Namibia, Cuba, Canada, the USA, Mexico, Venezuela, Tibet, Nepal, Laos, India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Thailand, Singapore and many parts of Europe. He has also worked as a Film Editor at the BBC.

Gerry devised and convenes the MA Filmmaking programme at Goldsmiths as well as the Undergraduate Film Courses of the BA in Media and Communications. He is particularly eager to utilise the lack of commercial constraints and executive controls in education as a creative opportunity for student filmmakers. Since its launch in 2006, the Goldsmiths MA in Filmmaking has become one of the UK’s main postgraduate film production courses. Examples of films made on the course can be seen here. The programme attracts high profile industry contributors and hosts an annual screening at BAFTA each January.

While developing this curriculum, Gerry completed two Fellowships at the Goldsmiths Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching and was presented with a Peake Award for Excellence in Teaching. Gerry is an External Examiner for the Undergraduate Film Practice courses at Queen Mary, University of London and he contributes to the BA in Film at Lasalle College of the Arts in Singapore.

Gerry’s major research interest is the history and aesthetics of the short fiction film, especially the current world-wide renaissance in short filmmaking. As a member of the Goldsmiths Screen-school research unit, he pursues related interests in the convergence of still and moving-image technology, in pre-verbal signification strategies in narrative cinema and in pedagogy of screen drama generally.

Overseas travel on Cine and Photographic projects, especially in Asia, resulted in a parallel interest in applying Eastern philosophical ideas to still and moving-image production. Gerry pursues this interest through Darshana Photo Art, most notably in a long-term project about the construction of the London Tibetan Buddhist Centre for World Peace – Kagyu Samye Dzong. This project applies Indian and Tibetan teachings on wisdom, compassion, impermanence and emptiness to the production of still and moving images in parallel to - and influenced by - the construction of the temple itself.

Established photographic terminology is replete with the language of aggressive material acquisition: we ‘take’ pictures; we ‘shoot’ photographs and films; we ‘capture’ images. We unthinkingly construct subjects as objects, perpetuating stereotypical forms of looking and promoting knowledge as a commodity to be accumulated, rather than as an opportunity to metabolise a meaningful truth about our relationships with the world.

By contrast, this project advocates a receptive rather than an acquisitive approach, in which the production of images is conceived of as an interaction between perceiver and perceived, not as a conquest. The focus is on interconnectedness, not otherness and the status of the process is in equanimous balance with the product. In this configuration of creativity, the artist is figured as an unselfconscious catalyst rather than a self-determined author, and the subject itself is regarded as a co-creator and collaborator.

The photographer's priority as the catalyst linking events and images is to align picture-forming methods with the aims and purpose of the over-arching human project. The central task is to become more and more attuned to those spontaneous occurrences when auspicious combinations of pictorial elements intersect metaphorically with events in seemingly coincidental yet meaningful ways. This intuitive approach is both organic and rational, and is analogous to a Tibetan form of mind-training known as Lojong.

In addition to his teaching and practice work, Gerry is executive officer of the UK & Ireland association of Film Schools and Media Departments (NAHEMI). He is involved in the organization of a number of short film festivals and he sits on festival juries and funding panels.