La Langue Rouge [The Crimson Tongue]
I composed the music for this film by Violaine de Villers. We were delighted when the film won the Prix du Film sur l’Art at the Brussels Art Film Festival.
Mon Amie Païvi
I was brought in as an editor on this beautiful film about Päivi Pennola, a Finnish artist, and her longstanding friendship with filmmkaer Violaine de Villers. You can see the trailer here: https://cbadoc.be/fr/movie/mon-amie-paivi/
Singing Truth to Power: Politics, Opera, and the Russian State
This collaboration with UCL is about directing, performing and seeing the opera ‘The Life & Death of Alexander Litvinenko’ and explores artistic representation, truth and political assassination in Putin’s Russia. It focuses on an opera by Anthony Bolton (music) and Kit Hesketh-Harvey (libretto), which premiered in 2021 at Grange Park Opera and features director Stephen Medcalf and mezzo soprano Olivia Ray – who sang the role of journalist and mediator Anna Politkovskaya – with writer-journalist Owen Matthews, Russian politics expert Ben Noble and anthropologist Michal Murawski.
Compromised Identities
Here is some information about Compromised Identities, a project at University College London for which I made a series of thirty films. The project is a really fascinating one, and thinks about perpetration and complicity around World War II. Here is what they say:
We readily think of ‘perpetrators’ as those directly involved in physical violence: giving the orders, pulling the trigger, killing innocent victims. But under Nazi rule, millions were involved in broader processes of persecution. How can we understand not only direct perpetrators, but also those who were complicit in systemic racism, as well as the passivity of ‘bystanders’?
https://compromised-identities.org/
The Philosophy of Public Health
Professor James Wilson
UCL Professor of Philosophy James Wilson explores major philosophical public health questions that are more relevant than ever after the coronavirus, including: What does it really mean to have a “human right” to health? How should states weigh the protection of health against the value of liberty and economic activity?
Angels, Demons and Hungry Dogs: Magic in the Middle Ages
Dr Sophie Page
Sophie Page, Associate Professor in History at UCL, takes us back to the Middle Ages to explore how medieval people imagined the cosmos, and their own world, as swarming with invisible spirits – angels and demons. From a 12th century pious magic text and a 15th century demon conjuring manual to medical illustrations and the natural magic of mandrake roots, this short film offers a glimpse into the beautifully unorthodox side of the medieval European imagination.
The Silent Storyteller: Reading Kafka through his Czech Contemporaries
Dr Peter Zusi
This film is on an author I love: Franz Kafka. This time, I worked with Dr Peter Zusi and the team at the UCL European institute. We spent a lot of time on the sound, so do listen with headphones if you have them handy!
The Venice Variations
Professor Sophia Psarra
It was a great pleasure to work together with Professor Sophia Psarra and the European Institute to make a film about Sophia’s research on Venice. You can find the book of her project here.
Postcolonial Writers Make Worlds
I was very pleased to work with Professor Elleke Boehmer on this project.