School of Film, Media & Performing Arts | University for the Creative Arts

UCA's School of Film, Media & Performing Arts has an active research culture that is focused on establishing links between theory and practice.

It is home to dozens of research staff who are creating work that advances knowledge in a wide range of fields – from documentary storytelling that amplifies marginalised voices, to composition work that ties together music, technology and science.

UCA's School of Film, Media and Performing Arts has an active research culture that is focused on establishing links between theory and practice.

In this school, dozens of research staff are creating work that advances knowledge in a wide range of fields – from documentary storytelling that amplifies marginalised voices, to composition work that ties together music, technology and science.

The school also organises research events, and is home to our Animation Research Centre, which has been leading the way in exploring animation in all its forms for over 30 years.

Our
Projects

The Whalebone Box, Professor Andrew Kötting

In his feature film, double vinyl LP and two booklets, Professor Andrew Kotting tells the story of a whalebone box given to the writer Iain Sinclair almost thirty years ago by Steven Dilworth, a sculptor based on the Island of Harris. Was it an enigmatic object containing a secret, a survivor from a shipwreck, or a magical sculpture with the powers of Pandora’s Box? In 2018, Kötting, Sinclair and the photographer Anonymous Bosch took the box on an 800-mile reverse pilgrimage from London back to the Isle of Harris - an expedition that invoked autobiography, memory and psychogeography.

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Machine Space, Dr Stephen Connolly

Machine Space is a 24-minute film created by Dr Stephen Connolly that animates the built environment of Detroit as a landscape of motion and circulation, and explores the socially-contested spaces of the city. The film charts racially unjust socio-spatial relations in the past and present, and a performance strand of the work strongly suggests that suburban communities were complicit in these inequities. The project explores how the inequities of everyday urban landscapes in North America can be represented through image and sound.

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The Eden Films, Maren Hahnfeld

In two short films, North of Eden and Winter in Eden, accompanied by photographs and a publication, Maren Hahnfeld reflects the perspectives of members of the small, remote community of Eden on the high desert of Southern Idaho, and explores her own position as the artist and researcher, an outsider to the community.

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