People
Who we are
Sian Barber
Sian Barber is a lecturer in Film Studies at Queen’s University, Belfast. She has published on British cinema and cinemagoing, and the work of the British Board of Film Censors. She is the author of Censoring the 1970s: The BBFC and the Decade that Taste Forgot (2011), The British Film Industry in the 1970s: Capital, Culture and Creativity (2013) and Using Film as a Source (2015). As well as continuing work on local film censorship she is working with RTE Archives to explore film debates on television through the earliest years of the broadcaster.
Lucy Baxter
Lucy Baxter is an experienced managing director in the creative sector and has worked as executive/series producer, producer/director and production manager on documentaries, shorts, features, news and dramas for BBC, ITV, C4, Sky, C5, Al Jazeera and for cinema and digital release. Her book Running a Creative Company in the Digital Age was released in 2017 by Kamera Books. She has also produced branded content, digital education projects and industry events. Her work as producer has won BAFTA and RTS awards, been runner up for the Japan Prize and nominated for the Learning Onscreen awards. Lucy founded and ran Mandrake Films and has now founded a non-profit media campaigning organisation, Mental Abuse Matters. She has taught at various universities and film schools and currently teaches at UCA Farnham, NFTS and others. She is also on the Sheffield Docfest advisory board. www.lucybaxter.net. Lucy’s latest work, Mental Abuse Matters, can be found at www.bbc.co.uk/news/
John D’Arcy
John D’Arcy lectures in Digital Media at Queen’s University Belfast. His research focuses on storytelling and song-making in digital-media artefacts and live performances. John has presented projects and events at festivals and conferences across Ireland including Belfast International Arts Festival, Happy Days International Samuel Beckett Festival and the Irish Sound Science and Technology Convocation. In 2014, John worked with Kids’ Own Publishing Partnership on ‘The Lullaby Project’ capturing the process of their touring arts initiative for infants and creating in an interactive audiovisual app to document the between artists and participants. In 2017, he led a course in project documentation for artists and educators with Arts in Education Ireland. John’s ongoing podcast The Jewel Case features interviews with a range of artists in a variety of practices working in Northern Ireland. www.thejewelcase.johndarcy.com
Frank Delaney
Frank Delaney is an award-winning director, writer, editor sound designer and composer with over 25 years international filmmaking and storytelling experience behind him. He has written, directed, edited and produced documentary/factual films, radio documentaries, and signature TV series for broadcasters such as Discovery Channel (USA, Asia and Europe), National Geographic, MTV, CNN, RTE, TG4, PBS (USA), BBC and Channel 4. His work spans a wide range of genres and styles, including history, science, arts, culture, sports, biography, travel and adventure. He has worked on everything from formatted shows to documentaries and everything in between. Frank also has a strong track record directing and producing on international productions. Over fifty percent of his work has been for US and international productions and his has been broadcast globally across territories in US, Canada, Asia and most countries in Europe.
Don Duncan
Don Duncan has a background in journalism and documentary making with 20 year career spanning Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. He works across all media, with a particular interest and focus in audio-based storytelling. He currently works as a practitioner and as a critical theorist of audiovisual practice. As a theorist, Don's focus is currently on audio storytelling; formal innovations happening in and resulting from podcasting; hybrid work between various documentary media typologies. As a practitioner, Don is also interested in innovation and experimental approaches to audio and audiovisual storytelling, including hybrid forms and playing with genre conventions. Others areas of interest include multilingualism and media practice; blending spoken work and live theatre with broadcast practice; fact/fiction hybrids; folklore and mythology; sound design; and puppetry. www.donduncan.net
Mary Freedman
Mary Freedman is a PhD candidate, whose research involves investigating, using experimental film, the socio-spatial representation of the city of Rio de Janeiro, in particular the issue of gender in an urban environment.
Aaron Guthrie
Aaron Guthrie is an emerging Creative Producer based in Belfast and London. He graduated from Film & Television Production BA at the University of Westminster. He founded a documentary screening project New Notions Cinema, funded by the British Film Institute’s Audience Network through Film Hub NI. He curates a programme of documentary film events and industry workshops. His current interests are in investigating ideas of impact and new audiences for documentary film.
Cahal McLaughlin
Cahal McLaughlin is Chair of Film Studies at QUB and Director of the Prisons Memory Archive (PMA). He has a background in community and broadcast film production and teaches and researches documentary practice and theory. His films include Armagh Stories: Voices from the Gaol (2015) on the female Troubles prison; We Never Give Up II (2012) on reparations in South Africa; and the most recent It Stays With You: Use of Force by UN Peacekeepers in Haiti (2017. He sits on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Media Practice and on the Board of the Belfast Film Festival. He has published the monograph, Recording Memories from Violence: a Filmmakers Journey (Intellect: 2010), and in journals such as Journal of Memory Studies. www.prisonsmemoryarchive.com
Séan Murray
Seán Murray is a filmmaker from Belfast. He’s also director of Respect Belfast Human Rights Film Festival. His main interests are in post-conflict / testimony focused documentaries addressing legacy issues pertaining to the recent conflict in the north of Ireland.
His creative practice has been looking at particular historical events in order to assist victims affected by exceptional traumatic experiences. The role of filmmaking in creating a space for families to take ownership of their own narratives has been central to his work, while promoting wider public acknowledgment of the experiences of bereavement, loss, and the lack of closure and justice, that has been suffered.
As director of the recent Respect Film Festival, he delivered a series of films, events and panel discussions exploring the wider cultural, human and socio-political implications of conflict and the countless ways these have been presented through film, both historically and in contemporary cinema.
Hugh Odling-Smee
Des O’Rawe
Dr Des O’Rawe lectures in Film Studies at Queen's University Belfast, where he is also a Fellow in the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice. His research focuses chiefly on comparative and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of film, and his recent publications include: Regarding the Real: Cinema, Documentary, and the Visual Arts (Manchester UP, 2016) and Post-Conflict Performance, Film, and Visual Arts: Cities of Memory (with Mark Phelan; Palgrave, 2016). He has also published journals such asFilm Quarterly, Studies in Documentary Film, Screen, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Kinema, Literature/Film Quarterly, and Screening the Past. Several of his research projects have been externally funded by British Academy (PI); Wellcome Trust (PI); and AHRC (CI)), and in 2013-14 he was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship.
Richard O’Sullivan
Richard O’Sullivan is an experimental filmmaker. His videos respond to theoretical questions and have focussed on the portrayal of landscape; he has also produced personal documentaries. He studied at the University of Warwick and the University of California at Los Angeles (U.C.L.A. Film School). O’Sullivan’s videos have been selected for, amongst others, the New York Video Festival, Lincoln Centre, Manhattan (2007); Dresden Film Festival (2008); Media Forum at the Moscow Film Festival (2008); I.S.E.A. juried exhibition (2009); Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux Paris (2010); Scope Basel (2010); Traverse Video, Toulouse (2011); Director’s Lounge Festival of New Media Art, Berlin (2012). Seven videos are held in the collection of Collectif Jeune Cinema, a Paris-based international archive/distributor.
Stuart Sloan
Stuart Sloan. Having completed both a BA and MA in film at Queen's University Belfast, Stuart started editing feature documentaries in the USA in 2010. He has worked on films shown on PBS, at SXSW and San Francisco Film Festival, among many other festivals worldwide, working with Sundance and Cannes-winning directors, and Oscar-nominated producers. In Northern Ireland, Stuart has produced Voices of the New Belfast, a video project on migrants in Belfast and co-founded Second Chance Cinema, a Belfast-based pop-up cinema organisation, who specialise in documentaries and programming for various festivals across Northern Ireland. He is currently editing a film about one woman's childbirth, Of Woman Born, and is the documentary programmer for the Belfast Film Festival.
www.belfastfilmfestival.org and www.secondchancecinema.org
Elspeth Vischer
Elspeth Vischer is currently working on a film as part of her Creative-Practice PhD that analyses the development of grassroots feminism in Belfast. With a particular focus on the period of The Stormont Assembly's collapse and the legacy of The Women's Coalition Party, Let Us Be Seen, is an oral history project showcasing the stories of those working in Arts, Education and Activist grassroots organisations. Elspeth's previous documentary output includes her short film, In The Water Tower, about the life and home of Elspeth Beard. This film tells of how renowned traveller, motorcyclist and architect, Elspeth Beard decided to renovate and live in a 130-foot Victorian Water Tower against all odds. Elspeth is interested in marginalised groups and their representation in culture and on screen. Elspeth is currently working with Richard O'Leary and the LGBT+ Heritage Group, archiving local history and will begin work on a documentary project about people active in the local scene during the 1980's-1990's next year.