In this masterclass, filmmaker Theo Panagopoulos will guide us through his process of reclaiming archival footage of Palestinian wild flowers, made in the 1930s and 1940s by a Scottish missionary who had decided to film the floral splendour of the Holy Land.

Issue 28 - Moving Beyond the (De)Colonial Container: The Work of Film Festivals

Edited by Estrella Sendra and Sheila Petty

The First Frame initiative brings together students from over 50 film courses, universities, and further education institutions from around Ireland to view a curated selection of student films in competition.  

Please join us for a conversation with the director of the film Sinéad O’Shea and Dr Maureen O’Connor, expert on the life and work of Edna O’Brien.

WHERE AND WHEN:

14:00–15:30 on February 11, in the Film & Screen Media Auditorium, Kane Building Basement [B10.B]

This talk explores the documentary medium as a form of scientific enquiry, examining its potential to uncover overlooked urban ecologies and advocate for ecological renewal and protection.

“‘I’m on My Own Path’: Musical Development of the Musical in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015–2019)” Jessica Shine (MTU), Tue 4 Feb @4.15pm, Film And Screen Media Auditorium, Kane Building B10.B

The Film Artist in Residence role, based in the School of Film, Music and Theatre, is jointly funded by the Arts Council and UCC and is now celebrating 11 years of successful residencies. The scheme is designed to provide a film artist of distinction with a unique opportunity to develop their practice in a university environment, while offering students and staff of Film & Screen Media the opportunity to engage with a practising artist in a meaningful way during the course of their studies.

This talk will examine the relationship between VR media and the “body genre” of melodrama, so-called by film theorists (Clover, 1987; Williams, 1991) for its tendency to elicit tears from audiences, ones generally assumed to be female. Gender is central to critical responses to film melodrama, yet it is often an under-theorised element of research into VR and other immersive technologies. In line with this, while there is already a growing body of literature on virtual reality horror and pornography, both also classified as body genres, research into the melodramatic nature of various VR experiences has so far gone unexamined. In this talk, I aim to go beyond simplistic classifications of melodramas as “tearjerkers” to examine how their often-gendered melancholic affect relates to contemporary discourse around VR’s emotive and empathetic potential (e.g. Herson, 2016; Mitchell, 2017; Bollmer, 2017).

This paper will demonstrate how operations relating to land ownership and management are problematically informed by patriarchal ideological discourses, which have endured in Ireland for centuries and have been variously co-opted by both colonial powers and the Irish State. 

The Northern Ireland Now: Contemporary Collecting Project is run by the Nerve Centre in partnership with Northern Ireland Screen. The aim of the project is to tackle underrepresentation in Northern Ireland's Digital Film Archive by working collaboratively with twelve community groups across the North of Ireland to make a new video collection that celebrates equality, diversity and inclusion.