Events and ways forward

As part of the Bradford Film Festival, the brilliant Dodge Brothers played at the Bradford Film Festival last Sunday. One of the members of the band is an old lecturer of mine (Mike Hammond from Southampton Uni) who taught us all about the origins of cinema seven (!) years ago. It was amazing to see him again and I just love the band. Have a look here if you wanted to listen to some ace Americana and Skiffle music!

On Friday I also attended the last training session of the UNESCO film literacy training scheme which sparked my PhD. Philip Webb was, as always, really inspirational and it's great to see how he uses film in such creative ways. This time the focus was on how to combine books, technology and film music to get the students to write.

I was especially taken by his idea to break up stories in boxes (or rather bags) and show them to the students in an much more 3D way than just on a piece of paper. This way they can write a paragraph each about characters, settings, conflicts and resolutions.

Last but not least, Bradford City of Film also put on a day entitled Opportunities for Women in Film and Television. Unfortunately it clashed with the Film Literacy day and as such I was only able to go for the first half an hour, but it really inspiring to see all these amazing women who came together to exchange experiences and help each other. Women are seriously underrepresented in the film industry and events like these are really important I think.

After all these events (and my consultancy work for the Bradford Film School) it has been hard to get back into the swing of the PhD. I have now been reading and researching for almost seven months and my original document includes 31,000 words of notes! After speaking to my supervisor, we have now agreed that I am going to start writing up most of it in order to prepare for my transfer at the beginning of July. Wish me luck!