GMM Lecturer Estrella will participate in the ‘Teaching Women’s Filmmaking’ Conference

The Conference will be hosted online from 16 to 17 April, by the Department of Film and Television in Istanbul Bilgi University

This virtual conference marks Istanbul Bilgi University’s third annual event dedicated to women and media, following the conference Female Agency and Subjectivity in Film and Television in April 2019, with a book from Palgrave Macmillan published in November 2020and the March 2020 virtual conference Gender Equality and Sustainability: Agnès Varda’s Sustaining Legacy, with proceedings forthcoming from Bloomsbury (2021): The Sustainable Legacy of Agnès Varda: Feminist Practice and Pedagogy in Cinema and Visual Arts. 

This year’s focus blends scholarship with pedagogy. Scholars and teachers around the world will be sharing strategies, best practices, and past experiences when using films made by women in the classroom and when navigating women’s careers in cinema through teaching and research.

GMM Lecturer Estrella is delighted to participate with her presentation of the video essay ‘Film As Sound Art: Embracing Love through Extra-Diegetic Sound in Nadine Labaki’s Caramel’, produced for teaching and learning purposes.

The keynote speaker for the conference is Catherine Grant, a pioneering artistic researcher and video essayst, who will be presenting ‘Making nearby? On teaching and unlearning women’s filmmaking through theaudiovisual essay‘ on Friday 16 April at 18h30 (GMT+3, so 4:30 pm in the UK).

Registrations are now open! It would be great to see you there!

The University of Southampton hosts the BAFTSS Annual Conference with over 450 participants

Time and the Body in Film, TV and Screen Studies

The University of Southampton is delighted to be hosting the 9th British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Annual Conference, whose theme is Time and the Body in Film, Television and Screen Studies.  In focusing on time and the body, the conference seeks to bring attention to two elemental components of the physical world, whose manifestation in moving image media is however always dependent upon technological, cultural and artistic determinants.

Conference activities include panel discussions, based on pre-recorded presentations, in order to foster exchange, connections and knowledge transfer among the over two hundred researchers presenting in this annual meeting point for film and screen media scholars and practitioners.

Beyond the dialogical space in these thematic sessions, the conference will also feature a PGR workshop, a practice-based film screening of Independent Miss Craigie, followed by a Q&A with filmmakers Lizzie Thynne (University of Sussex) and Hollie Price (University of Sussex), an ECR roundtable with guidance on Post-Doc, Fellowship and Lecturer applications within the field of film and screen media, a practitioners round table, featuring Prof Lindiwe Dovey (Screen Worlds, SOAS, University of London), Leena Manimekalai (Independent Filmmaker), Hanan Razek (BBC Arabic) and Alys Scott Hawkins (Animated Documentary), followed by the presentation of the BAFTSS Outstanding Achievement Award and a closing academic roundtable with leading researchers in the field.

The conference runs entirely online via MS Teams. Registrations are still open, offering free access to all students. The hashtag for the conference is #BAFTSS2021.

Please join us in this exciting programme, organised by a series of film scholars from the Centre for International Film Research in the University of Southampton, led by Dr Louis Bayman, and joined by Dr Estrella Sendra (Winchester School of Art). Megen de Bruin-Molé, also from GMM, will be involved too as chair of one of the panel sessions. We look forward to having you with us!

GMM students and tutor involved in the Winchester Film Festival

At Winchester School of Art we enjoy linking research and practice to teaching and learning. Last evening, during the 9th Winchester Film Festival, a number of GMM students gathered together to participate in such cultural event, as part of their experience at university. Some were volunteering, responsible for audience involvement feedback, which included gathering responses from the audience through qualitative surveys. Some were simply enjoying the event, which last evening celebrated Iranian cinema, and was hosted by Estrella Sendra, one of the tutors in the MA in Global Media Management.

Estrella emphasised that “it would be very problematic to understand Iranian films as merely Iranian, since they are, first and foremost, films.” However, since outside of festivals like the Winchester Film Festival, it is still rare to watch Iranian films in commercial cinemas, the GMM tutor was invited to contextualise such films within the context of film production in Iran, and more specifically, in the post-revolution Islamic Republic of Iran. The five films screened were Funfair (directed by Kaveh Mazaheri), whose awarded film in last year festival was screened again this year at the end of the evening, Retouch, All Eyes on Me (directed by Saber Tatarchein), Cover (directed y Vahid Alvandifar), and The Old Man and the Dead (directed by Amirreza Falaki).

“What the new Iranian cinema has achieved is providing both a social critique and a forum for discussion between Iranians inside and outside the country. Through viewing and debate, cinema has become an important medium for the renegotiation of Iranian cultural identity.”

We are very proud of our students for their involvement in this event!