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The Africa in Motion Film Festival (AiM), based in Glasgow and Edinburgh, directly emerged from research led by David Murphy and a community of postgraduate students at the University of Stirling. The festival has attracted new audiences for African cinema (over 20,000 spectators since 2006) and contributed to wider debates about it amongst the general public, NGOs, as well as cinephiles in Scotland and more widely. In particular, two projects on the `lost classics' of African cinema allowed neglected films to be discovered both by a general audience and influential film critics/journalists.
African filmmakers have long experienced difficulties in funding, exhibiting and distributing their work, reflecting the dominance of Hollywood and `mainstream' cinema. Dr Lindiwe Dovey's research into African film and international film distribution investigates how such difficulties might be overcome, while drawing attention to the diversity and originality of African filmmaking practices. This research inspired and enabled the creation of the UK's largest film festival, Film Africa, showcasing African-made culture to a wider audience, and providing a space where African filmmakers can meet with distributors and funders, enhancing their potential to further their careers internationally.
Jane Thorburn's research into Nigerian cinema and storytelling forms, together with her long-running practice-based research within documentary and experimental arts filmmaking, led to a NHS commission to produce a film on sickle cell disease (SCD). The Family Legacy project has had an impact on cultural values and health and wellbeing in civil society, and on public services and education in the UK and Nigeria. Making innovative use of the story-telling conventions of Nollywood home videos in order to engage its audience, the film successfully led an NHS campaign to educate — and enhance the public service offered to — people at risk of producing children with debilitating sickle cell disease, enabling them to make informed health choices before conception and during pregnancy. It also challenged taboos and myths that previously surrounded the disease. The Family Legacy has been widely disseminated, not only on television channels in UK, USA and West Africa, but also on genealogical websites and in ground-breaking outreach campaigns in barbers' shops, mosques, churches and doctors' surgeries in the UK. An estimated 12 million people have been reached by this campaign, with positive feedback of attitude change from the 3500+ people attending NHS awareness-raising sessions.
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:
This case study examines the impact of Catherine Wheatley's research into spectatorship, audiences, and critical contexts through engagement with the popular press and public-facing media institutions. It focuses on Wheatley's work with Sight & Sound, the monthly consumer magazine published by the British Film Institute, which reaches beyond academia to a cine-literate but non-specialist audience. Her research has influenced discussion and criticism of cinema for a large, interested cine-enthusiastic audience as well as contributing to broader public debate and cultural discussion of cinema through mass-media appearances. She has also judged a competition for budding female critics, encouraging more women to write thoughtfully on film, and nurturing a new generation of women critics through which her research has been able to influence the practice of film criticism more widely.
Film Festivals constitute the main institutional alternative to commercially-driven cinema and as such occupy a vitally important part of our cultural heritage. The BFI estimates that `only 7% of all cinema screens are regularly devoted to non-mainstream film', and cites the film festival as an exemplary model for broadening cinema knowledge and education (`New Horizons for UK Film 2012-17'). Film Studies Queen Mary is committed to enhancing a public understanding of obscure and complex film through film festivals, bringing to bear insights born of research including production histories and analytical interpretations of film texts and performances. Collaborating with programmers, curators, local authorities, and diasporic communities, researchers have made significant contributions to festivals including to the founding of two new film festivals (the London Spanish Film Festival 2005 and Cutting East Youth Film Festival 2013), engaging with constituent groups and cultures that are not strongly represented in the UK's commercial film culture.
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.
Dr Julie Brown's research on the sounds of `silent film' exhibition in Britain has had an impact well beyond academia. Her collaborations with film festivals and major film venues plus public lectures have brought about an enhanced public awareness of a lost media art. Through a practitioner/academic network and via practice-based activities involving professional musicians she has had a direct impact on musical practice, and also brought significant performances to the general public in well-attended public events and film festivals at major cinema venues in both Edinburgh and London. Her work has led to enhanced public understanding of the history of the sonic dimension of `silent cinema' in Britain.
The first film festival, in Venice, was established in 1932. Today, the global festival circuit counts 10,000+ - a disparate and loosely linked galaxy of events — and it is still growing. Yet up until 2009, when our first collection of film festival studies was published, research into festivals was next to non-existent. Our project connects the community of festival practitioners and systematically analyses the work they produce. We enable them to learn from shared experience and improve operations. Five years into the project, we are recognised as `the global hub of film festival research' (as per U.S. critic B. Ruby Rich) and enjoy worldwide visibility and brand recognition for our Film Festival Yearbook series. At least a third of the festivals around the world have heard of our work or have used our publications; the majority of leading festivals have taken part in it. We already see massive recognition as festival directors get in touch to ask us to work with them.
Through the agency of Screen Archive South East (SASE) and Cinecity, GRAY's research has transformed the history and wider understanding of screen cultures, particularly during the industry's formative years. Primarily his work has affected public life through the collection, preservation, cataloguing and conversion of diverse footage to publicly accessible formats, creating access to material from otherwise marginalised and forgotten film histories. Engaging with local communities, national and international museums and broadcasters, he has developed new public audiences for contemporary and historical screen culture that have generated over £1.8m in income, with total audiences exceeding 25 million. Secondly, his research has shaped public policy by contributing to the strategic direction of screen heritage across the UK.