Summary of the impact

This study focuses on research which has been of benefit to the Educational Shakespeare Company (ESC) and to its various users, both local and international. The ESC is a Belfast charity (XR40787) that deploys drama and film in therapeutic applications with socially excluded groups (prisoners, those on probation, the homeless and youth at risk). In 2006, the ESC produced Mickey B, a film adaptation of Macbeth made in Maghaberry, Northern Ireland's maximum security prison, with a cross-community group of life-prisoners. Research by Burnett and Wray — on Mickey B, the ESC's work more broadly, and the place of independent local filmmaking inside Shakespearean cinema — has had these impacts:

• an increased awareness of the film and the ESC's work
• improved civil society understanding of Northern Ireland's histories and the current peace process
• increase in sales and revenue for the ESC
• pedagogical tools and the development of educational practices
• the establishment of work-placement opportunities for Queen's students
• the identification of social ideas and cultural values that have positively affected individuals
• developed links with global film-makers and Shakespeare organizations

Summary of the impact

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.

Summary of the impact

Jackson has provided professional enhancement for directors and actors by bringing his research-led insight into the texts and acting traditions of Shakespearean theatre to bear on the preparation of scripts for performances. He has achieved this through collaboration during rehearsals, working at a detailed level of interpretation and performance. His research has also enhanced cultural enrichment for audiences through such forms of public engagement as essays in theatre programmes.

Summary of the impact

This case study refers to the impact of the work of one member of the submitting unit. The assertion is that the work of Zubillaga has had impact on civil society, cultural life and public discourse. It has: illuminated a repository of cultural capital (through archival research) and interrogated cultural values (specific to a Latin American context) enriched the imaginations of those who have viewed his films; enhanced sensibilities with regard to the cultural themes they explore; and extended the range and improved the quality of evidence, argument and expression to enhance public understanding of Venezuelan and more broadly Latin American cultural and political memory.

Summary of the impact

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.

Summary of the impact

Through a range of public engagement activities (film screenings, workshops, collaboration with animation studios including Bristol's Aardman Animations) research on early Russian animation has led to an increased awareness of innovative technological developments from pre- Revolutionary and Soviet Russia, including experiments with stop-frame motion, colour and stereo-scopic vision. `Russian' technologies differ from those of European and American cinema and Beumers has identified differences of approach in film technologies that have facilitated exchanges of methods aimed at promoting the adoption of more efficient technologies in contemporary filmmaking. Her research has promoted the restoration and digitisation of rare historical materials, permitting their distribution to a wide audience in the UK, Germany and Italy.

External partners involved with the digitisation process have developed a 3D system used in animation today in Russia and Estonia. The research has permitted the development of a prototype animation Touch Table with local company Aerian Studios Ltd. The Touch Table, which animates old optical devices, has been on public display at museums and film festivals. A resulting iPad application `Walking Pictures' is freely available on the App Store. The prototype has generated new commissions from other museums, which will provide significant new business revenue.

In a separate development, the Estonian Ministry of Culture, NIKFI Moscow, and the Russian State Film Archive Gosfilmofond have agreed, on the basis of Beumers' research and the proposed project, to accelerate the digitisation of films.

Summary of the impact

Research on world cinema at Durham University has led to collaboration with filmmakers, cinemas and film festivals regionally and internationally. Durham academics have assisted regional organisations to bring major figures of international independent cinema to North East England, in order to showcase work which would not normally achieve wide exposure, and to enhance public understanding of foreign film, culture and language. In doing so, they have helped those organisations to meet their own institutional objectives. Internationally, Durham research has led to jury membership at a film festival whose mission is to raise the profile of independent filmmaking in Ibero-America, and to provide financial support to encourage further film production. This participation has also led to changes in the festival's practice, in the form of increased involvement of jury members with an academic background.

Summary of the impact

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:

1. Engaged new audiences with a previously lost aspect of Birmingham's cultural history — the important legacy of the Film and Video Workshop from the 1970s and 1980s and their influence on independent film and television production
2. Curation and digitisation of BFVW film and video material, now archived at Vivid Gallery in Birmingham, for new audiences, curators and artists
3. Rediscovery of the life and work of Helen Biggar, neglected collaborator of Norman McLaren and pioneer of the women's protest movement.

Summary of the impact

Martin O'Shaughnessy is widely recognised as one of the leading international scholars on the work of Jean Renoir, one of France's greatest film directors. His research into Renoir has generated a range of outputs which have enabled him to raise the profile of film and media education whilst broadening access to culture. The audience for this has been school children and cultural institutions like the Institut Français. This public impact can be tracked through the testimony of organisations that have been supported and strengthened by O'Shaughnessy's impact, and also his footprint in public debates related to Film and Media education.

Summary of the impact

Visible Secrets is focused on innovation in the development of film culture, demonstrating the following impact:

• Growing the audience for Chinese cinemas in Manchester, the North-west and the UK;
• Re-examining the boundaries of what constitutes a `Chinese' cinema, changing perceptions of the Hong Kong film industry and in particular, the place of women in the Hong Kong film industry;
• Developing new ways of public engagement in the specific context of film curation;
• Creating cultural trade and exchange channels between the UK and Hong Kong; in partnership with cinema audiences, directors, the independent cinema sector across the UK and the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO).