The BAFTSS Practice Research SIG, in association with the UWE Moving Image Research Group, presents the first in a series of seminars exploring how academic filmmakers situate their practice as research.

In this seminar, four filmmakers whose work focuses on various aspects of the family archive will present their work:

Fatherland - Kayla Parker & Stuart Moore

The essay film interweaves memory, archive and voiceover to explore the liminal spaces between present and past, and the borders between cultures and nations in Nicosia.

The Family Album and Other Images - Stephen Connolly

This personal look through a family album began an examination of what images can say and how they might narrate a past event that may be obscured or unknown.

The Album - Sana Bilgrami

The Album is a self-reflexive personal interrogation of identity and displacement through the lens of family history. Using diverse narrative approaches, the documentary film performs the simultaneous act of archaeology and collage-making.

How to access the event

Once you register you will be sent a link to watch the films and the accompanying 300-word research statements which you are asked to watch and read prior to the seminar.

At the event extracts of the work will be screened with a brief presentation, followed by a discussion of each work, and then a Q&A addressed to all four filmmakers at the end. Together the filmmakers and the audience will aim to probe the Significance, Rigour and Originality and contribution to new knowledge of the presented works - in what is hoped will be an informal, friendly and constructive environment - with a view to supporting the contributors in honing the way in which they articulate their practice as research for REF2021 and beyond.

BAFTSS Practice Research SIG Seminar Series

We had planned a one-day symposium last June which had to be cancelled due to the pandemic, and this has now evolved into a series of online events celebrating filmmaking in the academy. These events are intended to create a safe space for dialogue between the filmmakers and the wider (academic) community to explore how their practice can be articulated as research ("new knowledge effectively shared") in the context of funding and research assessment criteria.

Other Events in this Series

Documentary Methodologies - Wed 2 Dec

Videographic Film Criticism - Wed 13 Jan 2021

It is hoped that the practice work, statements and the resulting conversations could be written up and submitted as a strand to BAFTSS online journal Open Screens.

Credits

BAFTSS Practice Research SIG champions practice research within the field of film, television and screen studies. Practice research is an established academic area which has demonstrated an impactful contribution to the field, both within the REF and research council funded projects. This group focuses on building on these foundations, exploring how screen media practice research can be developed within BAFTSS. The group aims to disseminate practice research and evaluate how practice can contribute new knowledge to the field in terms of its significance, originality and rigour. The group also explores innovative methods of academic dissemination and peer review; as well as the potential of practice research for public engagement and impact.

BAFTSS is the subject association for Film, Television and Screen Studies, championing pedagogy, research into and critical analysis of screen-based media, which we believe are central to understanding the culture, society and economy of the new century. BAFTSS exists to:

• promote the recognition of the discipline and represent the academic and professorial interests of those engaged in it to the academy, government, funding agencies, the cultural industries and the public;
• encourage best teaching and research practice;
• promote the training of postgraduate students in research;
• give researchers and practitioners the opportunity to attend and present a paper at the annual BAFTSS conference.

This event is supported by the Moving Image Research Group and the Digital Cultures Research Centre, UWE Bristol.