Earlier this year I joined BBC World Service Arts Hour host Nikki Bedi and sarod player and composer Soumik Datta to talk about everything from what makes a well written female role to how Virtual Reality might elicit empathy, and on writers who’ve helped us through grief, plus so much more. Broadcast around the world, you can also listen back to the show here.
Following Encounters Short Film Festival in 2017, I was moved to write about a film that, after repeat viewings, has deeply affected me and become of my most highly rated contemporary works, Mark Jenkin’s Bronco’s House.
My article appears for BFI Sight & Sound online, “Mark Jenkin’s short movie about the Cornish housing crisis was crafted by hand at every stage, so it was a genuine pleasure to see it projected on film for the first time, and to anticipate more analogue marvels in the future.”
My report on the 61st BFI London Film Festival for Senses of Cinema includes review and rumination on Alex Gibney’s No Stone Unturned, Sinéad O’Shea’s A Mother Brings Her Son to be Shot, Frederick Wiseman’s Ex Libris: New York Public Library, Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here, Paddy Considine’s Journeyman, Kogonada’s Columbus and Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country.
As part of the Exeter Phoenix’s Two Short Nights film festival, I was asked to curate a short film programme on behalf of 20th Century Flicks. Given the current housing problems in the UK, it struck me that the question of what makes a house a home is was ripe for discussion. Here, I have programmed some of the greatest short works I’ve seen in the last year alongside Lois Weber’s silent narrative thriller, Suspense, an early contemplation of how space, safety and barriers might create and subvert what we understand as ‘house’ and ‘home’.
Saturday December 2nd, 6pm, Exeter Phoenix. More information and book tickets here.
At this year’s Encounters Short Film Festival I checked out all of the VR they had to offer – with varying results. While I admired the attempt to make a solitary art cinematic, my body was at a loss in its engagement… so I wrote about it for BFI’s Sight & Sound online.
At this year’s Cinema Rediscovered we launched our inaugural talent development programme in the shape of a critics day – The State of Things: Film Critics Day.
Ahead of the programme, film critic Mark Kermode visited the Watershed to deliver the Second Annual Philip French Memorial Lecture, which I wrote about for the CR blog: An Honourable Art.
Following the festival, participants created written articles and video essays for submission on the CR blog. Each of the articles have been edited by me and a further three articles were selected for publication on MUBI’s Notebook.
After three years abroad, I returned home for a special guest appearance on film criticism radio show and podcast Plato’s Cave. On Monday August 7th we presented a very special live outside broadcast at the Melbourne International Film Festival at the Forum. The following week saw my second guest appearance to discuss more MIFF gems during Plato’s Cave live Radiothon show. You can listen back to Plato’s Cave online here and subscribe to the podcast via all good platforms and places, including iTunes.
With thanks to Plato’s Cave co-hosts; Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Cerise Howard, Thomas Caldwell and Emma Westwood.
I had the pleasure of serving as a mentor on the critics campus at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival. Following the festival, I wrote about the extraordinary Pioneering Women programme for Desist Film.
Also screening at the festival was Kriv Stenders’ new film, Australia Day, which I found surprisingly affecting.
I will be introducing a screening of Basim Magdy’s beautiful short films at Bristol’s Arnolfini, Thursday May 18th. If you are or were unable to make the screening, you can read my short blog post for Arnolfini here: Notes from the road: an epic and enchanting excursion through the films of Basim Magdy.
I have also written about Magdy’s films for FIPRESCI, following a curated screening by Julian Ross in 2015 at IFFR, Basim Magdy Explores the Farthest Reaches of our Dreamlike Haze in “Waking Life”.
After serving on the Scottish and International short film juries at GSFF 2017, I wrote about five impressive, Scottish shorts that challenge the status quo for Sight & Sound.
