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I am Breathing, a feature-length documentary directed by Emma Davie (ECA) and Morag McKinnon (unaffiliated) and released in 2012, builds on experiments in co-creativity in film, and explores the ethics and the aesthetics of making a film with, rather than about a man dying of Motor Neurone Disease (MND). Neil Platt wanted to use the film to raise awareness about MND, and since his death, I am Breathing has not only been screened 242 times in thirty-four countries, but has been distributed in concert with the MND Association, raising awareness about the disease, contributing to increased sign-ups to the Association, and lending people with MND a new public voice.
Elizabeth Cowie's scholarship centres on the intersections of art, politics and the cinema. The impact of her research lies in the challenges she makes to existing paradigms, challenges that resonate within and beyond the academy. Widely taught in Higher Education (HE) across Europe, North America, and Australia, her research on documentary is also particularly significant for its influence on artist filmmakers. Insights gained from her arguments on aesthetics, spectatorship, and political engagement have been taken up by artists whose own work seeks to explore complex ideas about art, politics, trauma and memory.
Conceived, directed and edited by Clio Barnard, The Arbor (2010) explores the life, work, and legacy of the playwright Andrea Dunbar. Among many other prizes and nominations, the film won the Grierson Trust Award for Best Cinema Documentary, and The Guardian First Film Award, both in 2011. It has achieved a wide-ranging and significant impact, informing public debate, transforming the lives of those depicted in and working on the film, bolstering cultural heritage in West Yorkshire, generating sustainable employment in the film industry, influencing fellow filmmakers and making a significant contribution to UK cultural life.
Roger Shannon's research on the legacy of the Birmingham Film and Video Workshop (BFVW) has fed directly into the curation and digitisation of previously neglected productions from this pioneering collective, which are now available for public exhibition at arts centres, cinemas, galleries and festivals. The specific examples of the public articulation of the impact include the Participation exhibition at the Vivid Gallery in Birmingham (2009), the digitisation of the original BFVW material, and the Hell Unltd/Traces Left event at the Glasgow Film Theatre (2013) which Shannon co-ordinated. He also worked closely with musician Kim Moore in her composition and performance to accompany the Hell Unltd event.
Three claims to impact stemming from Shannon's research are made here:
Jo Fox's research on the British Documentary Film Movement has benefited: (1) the Grierson Trust, by enabling its members to contextualise the Movement's purpose and, through them, assisting film-makers to have better understandings of the documentary form and its heritage; (2) nominated and award-winning film-makers, by promoting their work to an international audience and to the film and television industries; (3) Lambent Productions, by profile-raising and assisting it to secure further contracts with the BBC and other television stations; (4) the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, by promoting the significance of Film Australia collections to wider audiences.
Elliott, Haillay and Young are central to our research in film-making. Theirs is a socially-engaged but elegiac cinema of contemporary times. Elliott (writer and director), Haillay (producer) and Young (writer/producer) have, over the REF period, collaborated with one another, and with others, to create an influential body of work. The innovative approaches to narrative and the visual beauty of their cinematography have had an important impact on cinema audiences nationally, even more so internationally. They have participated in numerous international film festivals and won awards. With new productions currently at an advanced stage, the trajectory of their research is still upward. The standing of their backers and finance-providers attest to their growing international prestige, and audiences for their work continue to grow.
This research, led by Amy Hardie and the Scottish Documentary Institute from 2006 onwards, investigates the practice of communicating and engaging with science through creative documentary filmmaking, developing a screening strategy heralded as 'a completely different paradigm of cinema' (5.1). By drawing out human stories in award-winning, critically-acclaimed films, it has mainstreamed complex subject matter about stem cell research, redressing public and media misconceptions along the way. One film has been watched over 112,000 times in 190 countries, while behind the camera, it has forged cross-disciplinary collaborations between artists and biological scientists that have been discussed and admired by policy-makers in Brussels and Tokyo.
The MyStreet project explores a new collaborative anthropology by training and facilitating filmmakers in in using techniques some of which were inspired by study of Mass Observation. This is achieved through a competition and online film archive with a global audience, and the annual Open City Docs film festival which has led to new partnerships with private and community organisations, and inspired a similar project in Prague. Through DocinaDay, about 350 students and community groups from high-exclusion areas received training in filmmaking and a screening platform, with positive impacts on social cohesion and individual welfare.
Michael Uwemedimo's research on re-enactment in non-fiction filmmaking has contributed to the development of innovative methods and approaches to documentary practice as a means of precipitating critical national and international reflections on histories of political violence. The Act of Killing (2012, 116mins) demonstrates the potential of film production and exhibition as a means of popular mobilization and political intervention through which accepted discourses around history and genocide are reframed. This work has had a significant impact in the following contexts:
Key indicators of the reach of this impact include the range of stakeholders in the project, such as local advocacy networks in Indonesia, the Indonesian Government's National Human Rights Commission, human rights NGOs, and international documentary makers, programmers and audiences.
Carter's research into the life and work of the Hungarian film theorist Béla Balázs (1884-1949), and her collaboration with Rodney Livingstone (Professor Emeritus, Southampton) on the first English translation of his early works, provided the inspiration for a travelling exhibition, film screenings and website that showcased Balázs's early writing, and explored the connections between his film theory and contemporary film practice. Artist Zsuzsanna Ardó approached Carter to collaborate following the publication of an article on Balázs (Screen 2007), and worked with her to mount an exhibition at BAFTA and three Everyman Cinemas in London, accompanied by public talks and film screenings.