Running order:
Jane ShirleyThe Sea and Me
Tip top top tips: Skill up
Banyak FilmsThe Weight of Light
Tip top top tips: Discover
Root ExperienceThe Shout Project
Tip top top tips: Campaign
Michael SzpakowskiFryent Country Park
Tip top top tips: Pause
Ben BoardmanCome & Create
Paul Michael BrowneEvery eye sees its own shade of black
Carolina KhouriBall on a beach
Lucy LeeThe Wasteland
Lucy LeeThe Gates of Heaven
Tip top top tips: Chat
Second FrontRed Dog for Freddie Herko
Tip top top tips: Giving
Haiste & LawrenceKen Loach’s Star Wars
Martha Deed and Millie NissJewel of the Eyrie Canal
Voting
Tip top top tips: Teamwork
Lynn DennisonRunners
Jack AshleyMusic for Susan
Lizzy HobbsRestore
Keiichi MatsudaHyper-Reality
Edward PicotDr Hairy in: Mentoring
The Sea and Me (Jane Shirley)
Jane Shirley was raised in Somerset, studied Biological Sciences at Birmingham, and then, after making amateur wildlife films in her spare time for several years, took an MA in Wildlife Filmmaking at UWE. “The Sea and Me” is about a naturalist called Grethe Hillersoy who lives and works on a remote Norwegian island.
Tip Top Top Tips (I am an Egg Dance Company/Mean Feet Dance/Barney Witt)
A series of 30 second films inspired by the NEF’s Five Ways to Wellbeing. The films have been produced with filmmaker Barney Witts as part of a community project working with adults with mental health needs, led by professional dance artists with lived experience of mental health issues. They have all been devised collaboratively with the participants, who come from a dance company that meets every Monday at Bridgwater Arts Centre in Somerset, to engage in dance training and make and perform dance and movement work in order to gain voice and reduce stigma and discrimination.
The Weight of Light (Banyak Films)
Banyak Films have been creating ’Cinematic non-fiction for the big and small screen’ since 2006. They have offices in Devon and London. The Weight of Light was produced by Banyak for Guardian films. It’s about a designer called Jim Reeves and his attempt to solve the lighting problem for communities off the electricity grid in sub-Saharan Africa by designing a simple, low-cost gear-train and generator that uses a descending weight to power a perpetual light source.
The Shout Project (Root Experience/Xtrax)
Root Experience “make interactive theatre, events and workshops that inspire people to positively connect with the world.” In 2014 they “created an interactive gaming performance on the streets of Hastings with a group of young people from the drop in centre Xtrax... The final performance gave audience members an MP3 player and they walked across the streets of Hastings listening to the stories, hopes and dreams of the young people. At key intersections they met the young people and played games with them. Through these games they spoke about their lives and what is important to them and their futures.”
Fryent Country Park (Michael Szpakowski/Grove Park Special School)
‘Fryent Country Park is an extract from a longer series of films made together with students from Grove Park Special School in Brent in 2008. One of the briefs for the project was to get out and about in the neighbourhood, so we visited Wembley IKEA , Brent Town Hall and Fryent Country Park on successive weeks recording our adventures each time. Wherever we went we were met with real warmth and friendliness. The students and I all gathered video footage - we had three or four cameras on each trip - and I edited it together afterwards. Once I'd got a rough cut I took it back to them and noted their comments and recorded their commentary, which I then dubbed on together with specially composed music.’
www.somedancersandmusicians.com/
Come and Create (Ben Boardman/Christopher Sacre)
Ben Boardman is a film-maker, photographer and artist from Medway, and Christopher Sacre is an artist and facilitator, also from Medway, who runs workshops for the hard-of-hearing and their families. ‘COME and CREATE was a project aimed at Young Deaf Families... a group who have faced significant barriers to inclusion in mainstream arts projects, due to their particular cultural and linguistic needs. These workshops took place during the Family Arts Festival between 9th October and 1st November 2015.’
Every Eye sees its own Shade of Black (Paul Michael Browne)
Paul Michael Browne is a ‘British interdisciplinary artist observing human interaction and behaviour’, and this film was originally designed to be shown in a loop as part of an installation. ‘Going over a personal mistake or disappointment with an enmity bordering on a perverse desire to take yourself to task was the impetus behind this project.’
Ball on the Beach (Carolina Khouri)
Carolina Khouri is ‘an artist Based in North London warehouse district’. She says about this video, ‘Looking at the sea and listening the waves I got an idea what I wanted to achieve. I did many recordings and in the end this one was just right and the length of the video matched ideally the length of the music, which I imagined it could be only Eric Satie’s 'Gymnopedie no 1'.’
From The Wasteland/The Gates of Heaven (Lucy Lee)
Lucy Lee is an animator who works in various different styles, mostly hand-drawn. She is Visiting Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire and her independent animations have won various awards, including the Gold Hugo (Chicago). From the Wasteland is a sand-animation based on Celtic mythology, and The Gates of Heaven is based on a Chinese myth.
Red dog for Freddie Herko (Second Front)
‘Second Front is the first performance art group in the online virtual world of Second Life.’ It was founded in 2006, and there are currently seven members. Patrick Lichty, the one who submitted this video, writes that ‘It was [created as] a remembrance of an old friend of one of our members (Bibbe Hansen). Freddie was a great dancer, but he also drove himself to madness. So in our treatment, we acknowledged this while celebrating the beauty inside him.’
Ken Loach’s Star Wars (Haiste and Lawrence)
Greg Haiste and Marie Lawrence are a comedy duo who ‘started gigging together in July 2011, having met devising a comic play. They debuted a show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe called Jollygoodlarks – How to Make it Huge’, and since then they have appeared in numerous shows and television programmes, both together and as individuals. Ken Loach’s Star Wars won the first prize at the ShortCom comedy festival in 2016.
Jewel of the Erie Canal and Voting (Millie Niss and Martha Deed)
Millie Niss was a writer and new media artist who died in 2009 from swine flu, Behcets’ disease and complications. Before that she struggled with ill health for many years, but nevertheless managed to produce a great variety of interesting work, much of it very funny, and much of it in collaboration with her mother, Martha Deed.
Runners (Lynn Dennison)
Lynn Dennison started as a painter after completing a degree in Fine Art at the Slade. She gradually began to gravitate towards sculpture, and then to include moving images in her work. Today she makes collages, prints and video installations as well as videos. For more information about her work, see .
Music for Susan (Jack Ashley)
‘Jack Ashley is a filmmaker living and working in London. He recently graduated in BA Fine Art: Sculpture from Camberwell, University of the Arts London. His current focus as a filmmaker revolves around absurdities found in his family history, humour and underlying mysteries in everyday life. Music For Susan is the first moving image piece in an ongoing series of sound and visual experiments. The series utilises unnoticed poetic nuances found amongst the home. These sounds in particular are made using the chimes from inside an old clock, having removed its casing and then plucking each chime as if it were a guitar.’
cargocollective.com/jackashley
Restore (Lizzy Hobbs)
Elizabeth Hobbs is a visual artist based in Hackney. For the last 12 years she has been making animated films, which have won many awards. A part of Elizabeth’s work is creating participatory animated films with young people and community groups. She also lectures in animation at Anglia Ruskin University. Restore was commissioned by Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge. Learners from ESOL Café, an organisation providing English language lessons for adults at Chesterton Community College, worked with Lizzy to share and represent the breadth of things they do to feel restored and like themselves again.
Hyper-Reality (Keiichi Matsuda)
Keiichi Matsuda is a designer and film-maker. His research examines the implications of emerging technologies for human perception and the built environment. He has exhibited his work internationally, from London’s V&A Museum to the Art Institute of Chicago, the New York MoMA, and Shanghai EXPO. ‘Hyper-Reality presents a provocative and kaleidoscopic new vision of the future, where physical and virtual realities have merged, and the city is saturated in media.’ It was crowdfunded, and shot on location in Medellín, Colombia.
Dr Hairy in: Mentoring (Edward Picot)
Edward Picot is the online pseudonym of Julian Le Saux. He’s been making puppet-animation videos about a fictional Doctor called Dr Hairy since 2010. Some of these videos were shown as part of the Invisible Forces show at the Furtherfield Gallery in Finsbury Park, London in 2012, and some of them have been written about in Springerin magazine, an arts-and-culture magazine based in Austria.