Dr Alan Marcus
Reader in Film and Visual Culture
B.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. (Cantab), FRSA
Personal Details
| Telephone: | +44 (0)1224 272632 |
| E-mail: | a.marcus@abdn.ac.uk |
| Address: | School of Language and Literature King's College University of Aberdeen Taylor Bldg. A Aberdeen AB24 3UB Scotland, UK |
Web Links
Film and Visual Culture Programme, University of Aberdeen
In Time of Place research project
Biography
University of Cambridge, Ph.D., 1994
University of Cambridge, M.Phil, 1990
University of Illinois, B.A., 1981
Fellow, Royal Society for Arts
Life Member, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge
Fellow, Cambridge Philosophical Society
Member, Society for Cinema and Media Studies
Member, Directors Guild of America
Alan Marcus is a cultural historian and Programme Coordinator of Film and Visual Culture, having joined the University of Aberdeen in January 2007 from the University of Manchester,
where he was Director of the Centre for Screen Studies.
Research Interests
Representations of the city in film and visual culture; history and methodologies of documentary film and other forms of documentary imagery; practice-as-research in documentary film; representations of the Holocaust and sites associated with Jewish identity and the diaspora, visual anthropology and issues of ethnicity and the representation of indigenous peoples in documentary and popular film; variation in communication within and across cultures.
Current Research
 |
The
project investigates selected symbolic sites associated with Jewish
identity, the diaspora and the Holocaust. The project focuses on the
creation of four practice-as-research films made in Dachau, Venice,
Prague and Boston, and a series of publications. The films, each 30
minutes in length, adopt an experimental observational approach to
consider the stature and significance of place, its layering,
reinvention and interpretation. The weight of history, the role of
public memory and the act of memorialization are repositioned in the
films through documenting both private and public engagement with the
diverse urban environments. Archival imagery is not used, underscoring
the intent that the films are about the present, as informed by the
past.
The selection of sites for study and filming is guided by
the fact that Venice is the site of a ghetto, where the term
originated; Prague retains Europe’s oldest synagogue and Jewish
cemetery; Dachau was the first Nazi state concentration camp, where the
first prisoners to be executed were Jews; and Boston offers one of the
most recent Holocaust memorial sites. All four films consider
witnessing and the symbolic meaning of place in association with loss,
absence, renewal and tourism. Most of the public who interact with the
sites today were not first hand witnesses nor alive at the time of the
Shoah. As such, the films engage with perceptions and debates on
collective memory, cultural memory, and post-memory. The project also
evaluates the way our digital culture influences how we interact with
historic sites and use the camera to witness and situate our
involvement.
The In Time of Place project developed from work undertaken for the experimental video installation, Beautiful Dachau
(2006). The title of the film was drawn from a poster on a bus shelter
outside the former concentration camp that announced: 'Beautiful
Dachau, things to see and do'. The slogan encapsulates the challenges
facing a town whose name is associated with the torture and murder of
thousands of people. This video installation and the issues it
explores are examined in recent writings, including 'Spatial
transfigurations in Beautiful Dachau' (The Journal of Architecture, 2006) and 'Beautiful Dachau's Contested Urban Identity', featured in Visualizing the City
(Routledge, 2007). The film foregrounds a traumatic space and the
erasure and reappropriation of place. Following its debut installation
at the TRANS
visual cultural exhibition and conference in Madison, Wisconsin in
2006, a series of screenings, keynotes and invited lectures on the
project have been given in 2007 at the Constructions of Conflict Conference, Univ. of Wales, and at Harvard, Princeton and other institutions and venues. In 2008, the film In Place of Death has had invited screenings and been the subject of talks at Edinburgh, Liverpool, Haifa, Canterbury, Cambridge, Syracuse, Manchester and Derby. Copies may be ordered through the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology.
Alan
Marcus is the principal investigator on the project, which has received
initial funding from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of
Scotland, the University of Aberdeen’s College of Arts and Social
Sciences and the School of Language and Literature.
 |
 |
After making documentaries for British and American television on such topics as cultural change in a Sami reindeer-herding community in northern Sweden, People of the Four Winds (1989), Alan Marcus conducted fieldwork in Inuit communities in the Canadian Arctic, which resulted in two books, including Relocating Eden (1995), and a series of articles. This research explored issues of filmic and literary representations of indigenous peoples, and such themes as cross-cultural perspectives of landscape, homeland and sense of place. His work in visual anthropology includes a recent article, Nanook of the North as Primal Drama (2006), on Robert Flaherty’s classic film set in the Canadian north.
 |
 |
The stature and systemic role of the urban environment in society as featured in film, photography, pictorial art and other forms of visual culture, occupies a key area of his current research. His most recent book, Visualizing the City (Routledge, 2007), presents a range of interdisciplinary explorations that illustrate our fascination with the urban experience, modernity and different architectural idioms. His guest edited journal issues on various aspects of Visualising the City include History of Photography (2006), The Journal of Architecture (2006) and Film Studies (2007). Further edited books on The City Film Genre and Berlin: Screening a Metropolis, are forthcoming with MUP.
His doctoral students engage in research on areas of documentary and ethnographic film, reflexivity, practice as research, representations of race, and various aspects of American film history.
Teaching Responsibilities
FS1503 Introduction to Film and the Cinematic Experience
FS2505 Cinema and Crisis
FS301A The Real Thing: Blurred Boundaries in Documentary and Dramatic Film
FS35FA Cinematic Cities
FS401A Documentary Film
FS4501 Dissertation in Film Studies
Selected Publications
Books
In preparation: Berlin: Screening a Metropolis, co-editor with Dietrich Neumann. Manchester, Manchester University Press.
In preparation: The City Film Genre, co-editor with Rajinder Dudrah. Manchester, Manchester University Press.
In preparation: The Documentary Image: Representations of Realism. Manchester, Manchester University Press.
Visualizing the City, co-editor with Dietrich Neumann. London, Routledge, 2007. ISBN 978-0415419700.
Relocating Eden: The Image and Politics of Inuit Exile in the Canadian Arctic. Hanover, University Press of New England. 1995. Included in UPNE's Native American Studies Series, 1998. ISBN 0-87451-659-5.
Out In the Cold: The legacy of Canada's Inuit relocation experiment in the High Arctic. Copenhagen, IWGIA, 1992. ISSN 0105-6387.
Selected Articles and Book Chapters
In preparation: ‘Psychotic, ideal and real spaces in Downfall (2004)’, in A. Marcus and D. Neumann (eds.), Berlin: Screening a Metropolis. Manchester, Manchester University Press.
In preparation: ‘Auckland: Once Were Warriors and the Indigenous Urban Narrative’, in A. Marcus and R. Dudrah (eds.), The City Film Genre. Manchester, Manchester University Press.
In press: ‘Place With No Dawn – A Town’s Evolution and Erskine’s Arctic Utopia’, in R. Windsor Liscombe (ed.) Architecture and the Construction of the Canadian Fabric. Vancouver, University of British Columbia Press.
‘The Interracial Romance as Primal Drama: Touch of Evil and Diamond Head’, Film Studies, Issue 11, (Winter) 2007: 14-26. ISSN 1469-0314.
’Beautiful Dachau’s Contested Urban Identity’, in A. Marcus and D. Neumann (eds.) Visualizing the City, London, Routledge, 2007: 75-95. ISBN 978-0415419700.
‘Spatial Transfigurations in beautiful Dachau’, The Journal of Architecture, Vol. 11, No. 5 (November) 2006: 531-541. ISSN 1360-2365.
‘Nanook of the North as Primal Drama’, Visual Anthropology, Vol. 19, Nos. 3-4, 2006: 201-222. ISSN 0894-9468.
‘Looking Up: the child and the city’, History of Photography, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Summer), 2006: 119-133. ISSN 0308-7298.
'Reappraising Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will', Film Studies, Issue 4, (Summer) 2004: 75-86.
‘Uncovering an auteur: Fred Zinnemann’, Film History, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2000: 49-56.
'Reflecting on Contested Images', in J.C.H. King. and H. Lidchi (eds.), Imaging the Arctic. London, British Museum Press, 1998: 190-6. ISBN 0-7141-2537-7.
Practice as Research
Director of the four films which comprise the In Time of Place research project, including In Place of Death (2008). Director, Beautiful Dachau (2006), a 30min. experimental observational film designed as a video installation, which examines the use of space and role of place in the interrelationship between the city and camp of Dachau, and the city of Munich. Distributor: Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology. Screenings in 2006 at the University of Manchester and the TRANS visual culture exhibition, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Screenings in 2007 include keynote screening at the MEICAM Constructions of Conflict conference, Swansea, and Harvard, Princeton, Brown and Bryn Mawr College.
Photographic Exhibition, Faces and Places (June-Sept 2001), featuring twenty-four black and white images taken in Samoa, the Arctic and North Wales. Clare Hall Gallery, University of Cambridge. The exhibition explored issues associated with a comparative sense of place and space.
Selection of Images from exhibition (click to enlarge)
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Producer/Director/Writer, Heimatland (2000), a 40min. documentary on former German prisoners-of-war who settled in the villages of North Wales. The film explores notions of homeland, identity, liminality and assimilation. Distributor: Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, University of Manchester.
Keynotes, Invited Lectures and Contributions to Conferences
2.Invited speaker, Bodies on Display: gender ambiguities and
Riefenstahl’s Olympia, John Carlisle-Irving lecture, University of British
Columbia, Vancouver (2009).
3.Invited speaker, In Time of Place, Centre for
Transcultural Research and Media Practice, Dublin Institute of Technology
(2009).
4.Invited speaker, Beautiful Dachau: investigating memory and
the identity of place, University of Manchester (2008).
5.Invited speaker, When a Town is Called Dachau: urban
reinvention and the stature of place, Manchester Architecture Research
Centre (2008).
6.Invited speaker, The Holocaust: in harm’s way, University
of Derby (2008).
7.Speaker, When We Forget: Dachau and the displacement of memory, Visible
Memories conference, Syracuse University, NY (2008).
8.Invited speaker, In Time of Place, Narrascape workshop,
Dept of Architecture, University of Cambridge (2008).
9.Speaker, In Absence of Memory, Cultural Memory conference, University of
Kent (2008).
10.Keynote Speaker, The Interface Between Architecture and
Cinema, Symposium on Cinema and Architecture, Haifa, Israel (2008)
11.Invited Speaker, A Tale of Two Cities: Dachau Observed,
City in Film, Liverpool University (2008).
12.Keynote Speaker, Without Voice, In Place of Death,
Practice-as-research documentary symposium, Edinburgh College of Art (2008).
13.Invited Speaker, Sensory Applications in Observational Cinema,
Harvard University (2007).
14.Invited Speaker, Beautiful Dachau: the tourism paradox,
Princeton University (2007).
15.Invited Speaker, Filming ‘Beautiful Dachau’, Bryn Mawr
College (2007).
16.Invited Speaker, Dachau’s Architectural and Urban Integration,
Brown University (2007)
17.Keynote Speaker, Beautiful Dachau: practice-as-research,
MEICAM Memory and Conflict conference, Swansea. (2007).
18.Speaker, Observing
Contemporary Dachau on Film, Beyond Text conference, University of Manchester
(2007)
19.Speaker, Spatial Transfigurations in Beautiful Dachau, Trans Visual Culture
international conference, University of Wisconsin, Madison (2006).
20.Speaker, Imaging Urban Youth: New York City in the 1930s/40s, Photography
and the City conference, University College Dublin (2006).
21.Invited Speaker, Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North – the
Sequel, Cambridge University Film Seminar, Centre for Research in the Arts,
Social Sciences and Humanities, Cambridge(2006).
22.Deviser and Chair, Organizing
Committee, Visualising the City,
international conference, University of Manchester (2005).
23.Speaker, The Moral Divide: Riefenstahl & De Sica’s Urban Terrain, Visualising
the City conference, University of Manchester (2005).
24.Speaker, Black Narcisus as Primal Drama, Michael Powell Centenary
Conference, University of Wales, Bangor (2005).
25.Co-deviser and co-chair, Film Studies and the Popular, symposium,
University of Manchester (2004).
26.Speaker, The Interracial Romance and Translucence of the Popular, Film
Studies and the Popular symposium, University of Manchester (2004).
27.Invited speaker, Erskine’s Arctic Utopia,
Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies lecture series, University of British
Columbia (2003).
28.Invited plenary speaker, Films Without Words, international
conference, Seeing Things, British Council, Tours, France (2001).
29.Invited plenary speaker, The Documentary Image, and chair of a
day session at the ethnographic film festival, Emerging Voices, Isola del
Cinema, Rome (2001).
30.Invited to chair session on National Identities, Alfred Hitchcock
Centenary international conference, New York University (1999).
31.Invited paper, Robert Flaherty as Documentary Activist,
Visible Evidence conference, University of California at Los Angeles (1999).
32.Images
of the Inuit,
Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge (1999).
33.Two invited papers, 'Land of the Long Day' Revisited, andRelocating
Eden, at the 10th Inuit Studies Conference, St. John's, Canada (1996).
34.Invited paper, Imaging the Ahiarmiut, conference held
at The British Museum, Imagining the Arctic:the native photograph in Alaska, Canada and Greenland
(1996).
35.Invited plenary speaker, Robert Flaherty's 'Nanook of the North',
Media Studies Conference, University of Burgundy, Dijon (1995).
36.Panel participant in session
on The docu-drama film, European
Media Conference, Manchester University (1994).
37.Invited speaker, public
lecture series, Canadian Inuit – a
people's transition, the Royal Geographical Society, London (1994).
38.Invited speaker, Scott Polar
Research Institute public lecture series, Utopia
on trial:Canadian Royal
Commission investigation of a relocation, University of Cambridge
(1993).
39.Invited paper, Political moves:relocating Inuit to reaffirm sovereignty, at a
conference on socio-cultural change in the Arctic at Aarhus University in
Denmark (1993).
40.Presentation as a member of a
working group on Environmental narratives
in London organized by the U.S. Social Science Research Council (1992).
41.Invited paper, Canada and the Inuit:historical revisions and cultural
divisions, the annual London Conference on Canadian Studies (1992).
42.Invited paper, Canadian Inuit relocation experiments,
Scott Polar Research Institute (1992).
43.Panel participant, The Inuit, Resolute Bay and the government
era, 8th Inuit Studies Conference in Quebec City, Canada (1992).
44.Invited speaker, the
University Seminar on Northern Studies,
Out in the cold:the legacy of
Canadian Inuit relocation experiments, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New
Hampshire (1992).
45.Invited speaker, The controversy over Canadian relocation
experiments, Canadian Nordic Society, Ottawa (1992).
Conferences and Seminar Series Coordinator
Co-Director of the 10th Royal Anthropological Institute's Ethnographic Film Festival in 2007, and conference deviser and chair of the organizing committee of the Visualizing the City conference in 2005.
 |
 |
Coordinator of The Director's Cut, an interdisciplinary talks series that invites leading practitioners to discuss themes embedded in their work and methodologies they have developed. The series, which was featured in an interview on BBC radio's Movie Cafe programme, attracts colleagues and students from across the University and is open to members of the public. The Director's Cut follows on from the Visual Dialogues series developed by Alan Marcus and Prof. Paul Henley, Director of the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester. Events have included
 |
Guy Hamilton in conversation with Janice Forsyth, 28 April 2009 What do Sean Connery, Laurence Olivier, Roger Moore and Michael Caine have in common? They were all directed by Guy Hamilton. Having worked as Assistant Director on The Third Man (1949), featuring Orson Welles, and The African Queen (1951) starring Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, Guy Hamilton went on to direct films such as the Cold War thriller Funeral in Berlin (1966), starring Michael Caine, and four James Bond films, including Goldfinger (1964) with Sean Connery. Hamilton will be interviewed by BBC Movie Café Presenter Janice Forsyth. |
 |
David Mackenzie in conversation with Alan Marcus, 25 March 2009 One of Scotland's leading film directors, David Mackenzie, won awards at the Berlin Film Festival for both Hallam Foe (2007), set in Edinburgh and starring Jamie Bell and Sophia Myles, and his film, Asylum (2005), featuring Natasha Richardson and Sir Ian McKellan. His psychological thriller, Young Adam (2003), starring Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton, is one of the most important films made in Britain in the last 50 years, winning a Scottish BAFTA for Best Director. His latest film, Spread (2009), shot in the States is being released this summer. |
 |
Richard Holloway in conversation with John Swinton, Faith on Film, 23 February 2009 Richard Holloway, the broadcaster and former Bishop of Edinburgh, will feature in this special event of ‘the Director’s Cut at the Chapel’. Richard Holloway's television series include Holloway's Road, When I Get to Heaven, The Sword and the Cross and Art and Soul. Holloway hosts the BBC Radio book review programme, Cover Stories and has written 26 books, including Between the Monster and the Saint: reflections on the human condition (2008).
|
 |
Jane Treays in conversation with Alan Marcus, Filming People's Lives, 9 December 2008 Winner of the Royal Television Society Award for Best Network Documentary for Extraordinary Families (2005), Jane Treays is one of the foremost documentary directors in British television. Her latest films broadcast on Channel 4 this year, Virgin Daughters and Mum, Heroin and Me attracted wide spread interest in the press. Of her controversial film, Men in the Woods (2001), the Mirror wrote: "Acclaimed filmmaker Jane Treays brilliantly draws on personal experience to tell of the effects of indecent exposure on children. Jane was brave to make this film and Channel 4 was bold to screen it". Over 2,400 calls were received following its broadcast. |
 |
Pawel Pawlikowski in conversation with Alan Marcus, Frontline Filmmaking, 18 November 2008 Pawel Pawlikowski’s acclaimed feature films, My Summer of Love (2004) and Last Resort (2000), won BAFTAs and awards at the Edinburgh Film Festival. Born in Warsaw, Pawlikowski directed a number of highly original BBC documentaries, including Serbian Epics (1992), which was made at the height of the Bosnian war, and includes scenes of Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic, who were later sought for war crimes. |
 |
Hans Petter Moland in conversation with Alan Marcus, The Big Picture, 14 October 2008 Hans Petter Moland is one of Scandinavia's leading film directors, having won numerous awards for his six feature films, including the stunning road movie, Aberdeen (2000). The film features Charlotte Rampling, Lena Headey and Stellan Skarsgard, the Swedish star of the hit movie Mamma Mia (2008). Moland has become known for his striking cinematography and taut narratives, such as the spectacular Zero Kelvin (1995), set in Greenland in the 1920s. |
 |
Sir David Attenborough in conversation with Alan Marcus, Life on Air, 30 June 2008. Sir David Attenborough's distinguished career in broadcasting has spanned more than 50 years. An estimated 500 million people worldwide watched his 13-part epic Life on Earth (1979). Presenter of the popular series Life in the Freezer (1993), The Life of Birds (1998), and Life in the Undergrowth (2005), Attenborough has also written 17 books. In this Director's Cut, Sir David will be discussing key aspects of his career, including his latest series and book, Life in Cold Blood. |
 |
Nicolas Roeg in conversation with Allan Shiach, Cinematic Adventures, 29 April 2008. Nicolas Roeg is one of the UK's most celebrated directors, whose credits include classics such as Performance (1970), Walkabout (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) and Bad Timing (1980). In over 20 features, Roeg creates imaginative and vibrant stories, as exemplified by his latest film Puffball (2007) starring Donald Sutherland and Miranda Richardson. In this unique Director's Cut event, Nicolas Roeg will be talking with Allan Shiach, who under the pen name of Allan Scott wrote the screenplays for four of Roeg's films. |
 |
John Akomfrah in conversation with Alan Marcus, It's Political, 11 March 2008. John Akomfrah is one of the most innovative film directors working in Britain today. His first film, Handsworth Songs (1986), won the BFI’s prestigious Grierson Award for Best Documentary. His more than 20 features and documentaries, including Martin Luther King: Days of Hope (1997), Riot (1999) and Lawless (2001) have received international acclaim for their stylish aesthetic and penetrating insight into the human condition. His latest ground-breaking drama, Wetin Dey (2007), explores social realities facing young people in Nigeria. |
 |
Allan Shiach in conversation with Alan Marcus, Inside Storyteling, 19 February 2008. Working under the pen name Allan Scott, this Scottish writer/producer has written over twenty screenplays, including the classic Don’t Look Now (1973), directed by Nick Roeg and starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. His films include a number of Hollywood hits, such as Castaway (1986) and The Preacher’s Wife (1996) featuring Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston, and more recently the critically acclaimed Regeneration (1997). |
 |
Michael Eaton, in conversation with Paul Henley and Alan Marcus, Portrait of an Invisible Man, 28 February 2006. Michael Eaton, who received an MBE for his ‘services to the film industry’, is a screenwriter with an impressive ability for dramatising controversial stories. His credits include Shipman (2002), Shoot to Kill (1991) and Why Lockerbie? (1990). His thriller, Fellow Traveller (1989), won the Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Screenplay. His films have also been known for their powerful casts, such as in Signs and Wonders (1995) starring James Earl Jones, Prunella Scales and Donald Pleasance. Although best known for his screenwriting, Eaton originally studied anthropology at Cambridge and edited the first serious book in English on the cinéma verité auteur, Jean Rouch, Anthropology-Reality-Cinema (BFI, 1979). His scholarly books also include Chinatown (BFI, 1998), on the classic Jack Nicholson film. |
 |
Hugh Brody, in conversation with Paul Henley and Alan Marcus, Inside Storytelling, 14 February 2006. Hugh Brody is almost impossible to define. Director and writer of feature films, including 1919 (1985) starring Paul Scofield and Maria Schell; a number of classic documentaries, such as The Eskimos of Pond Inlet (1975), On Indian Land (1986), Hunters and Bombers (1990) and Time Immemorial (1991); and author of two books of fiction and seven non-fiction texts, including On Skid Row (1971), The People’s Land (1975), Maps and Dreams (1981) and The Other Side of Eden (2001). Trained as an anthropologist at Oxford, Hugh Brody has combined his time of living in the Canadian Arctic and the southern Kalahari, with photographing the sculptures of Anthony Gormley in Australia. In this Visual Dialogues seminar, he is going to explore the processes and ethics of storytelling in films, books and oral culture. |
 |
Kim Longinotto, in conversation with Alan Marcus and Paul Henley, Directing Documentaries, 15 November 2005. Internationally acclaimed director Kim Longinotto is one of the pre-eminent documentary filmmakers working today, renowned for creating extraordinary human portraits and tackling controversial topics with sensitivity and compassion. Longinotto's films have won international acclaim, including her latest film, Sisters in Law (2005) which won two prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. Other accolades include the Amnesty International DOEN Award at IDFA for The Day I Will Never Forget (2002); the Grand Prize for Best Documentary San Francisco Int'l Film Festival for Divorce Iranian Style (1998); Best Documentary at Films de Femmes, Creteil for Dream Girls (1994); and Outstanding Documentary at the SF Gay and Lesbian Film Festival for Shinjuku Boys (1995). |
 |
Carl Deal and Tia Lesson, in conversation with Alan Marcus, Fahrenheit 9/11: Filming History, 11 May 2005. Supervising Producer, Tia Lessin, and Archival and Field Producer, Carl Deal, worked on Michael Moore’s controversial documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004. Lessin was producer and Deal part of the creative team on Moore’s Bowling for Columbine (2002), which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. In 2002, Tia was awarded the Sidney Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism for Behind the Labels, a documentary she directed and produced about labor trafficking in the garment industry on U.S. Saipan. The film was co-produced by the human rights group WITNESS. Her work as a producer of the satirical television series The Awful Truth earned her an Environmental Media Award, two Emmy nominations, and one arrest. Throughout the 1990s, Carl produced daily news for Worldwide Television News and the European Broadcasting Union, and has contributed to numerous documentary productions. In this Visual Dialogues Seminar, the two NY-based filmmakers discuss the complexities of making documentaries on social issues in a hostile political environment. |
 |
Nick Roddick, in conversation with Alan Marcus, Why is there no such thing as a European film?, 25 April 2005. Nick Roddick taught film and theatre at Univ. College, Dublin, the Univ. of Manchester and Cal State Long Beach in California before abandoning academia for journalism in the early-1980s. He quickly went on to become one of the leading writers on film in the UK, serving as films editor of Stills Magazine in London, Cinema Papers in Australia, Screen International, founding editor of Moving Pictures International, and since 1993 editor of Preview. He has published books on British and Hollywood cinema, and is a contributor to Sight and Sound and the Evening Standard. |
 |
Penny Woolcock, in conversation with Alan Marcus, Adventures on Film, 14 October 2004. One of the UK’s foremost film directors, Penny Woolcock has a reputation for writing and directing some of the most innovative and provocative films of recent years. In feature films, such as Principles of Lust (2003) and The Death of Klinghoffer (2003), television social dramas, Tina Takes a Break (2001) and Tina Goes Shopping (1999), and documentaries, The Wet House (2001) and The Five of Us (2000), Woolcock explores a range of vibrant themes, including life lived on the margins of society. |
 |
John Marshall, in conversation with Paul Henley and Alan Marcus, Under the Baobab, 21 April 2004. Filmmaker, anthropologist, educator and advocate. Following his studies at Harvard and Yale, John Marshall pioneered filmmaking techniques in documentaries such as The Hunters (1957), Titicut Follies (1967), $21 or Twenty-one Days (1970) and the epic 6-part series A Kalahari Family (2003), which took 45 years to film. |
 |
Leslie Woodhead, in conversation with Paul Henley and Alan Marcus, Negotiating Reality, 26 February 2004. Leslie Woodhead OBE, is a prolific film director, series editor and former Cold War spy, following his days at Cambridge. His work includes the first film of the Beatles (1962), more than one-hundred World in Action documentaries, The Stones in the Park (1969), the docu-drama Invasion (1980) on the Prague Spring, 444 Days (1998), Cry from the Grave (1999) on the Srebrenica massacre, Disappearing World films in Ethiopia, a recently a feature film, Endurance (1999), for Disney, The Holocaust on Trial (2000) and Milosevic: how to be a dictator (2002). |
 |
Adrian Malone and David Malone, in conversation with Alan Marcus, The Moment of Truth, 9 December 2003. Adrian Malone and his son David Malone are two of Britain’s most visionary filmmakers, having created documentaries about science, philosophy and the history of civilization. Adrian Malone, as Senior Science Producer for BBC-TV, made television history with the series, The Ascent of Man (1973). His long list of productions include Cosmos (1981), executive producer of Smithsonian World (1986-89), Millennium: tribal wisdom and the modern world (1992) and Uncertainty (1996) for The Discovery Channel. David Malone has most recently made films on Soul Searching (2002), Immortality (2002) and Mother Theresa (2003) for Channel Four. |
 |
Paul Watson, in conversation with Paul Henley and Alan Marcus, Surviving Reality TV, 14 May 2003. Provocateur of British television for four decades, Paul Watson began life as a geology student at the University of Manchester. Director of such visceral fly-on-the-wall series as The Family (1974) and Sylvania Waters (1992), Watson’s latest effort is his controversial contribution to Reality TV, Desert Darlings, broadcast in 2004 on Channel Four. Following a screening of one of his classic films, Paul Watson will talk about his career as a visual storyteller. |
 |
Ricky Leacock, in conversation with Paul Henley and Alan Marcus, Documentary: the Naked Truth?, 6 March 2003. The debut of the Visual Dialogues series during the 2002-03 academic year, co-organized by the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology and the Centre for Screen Studies, featured Ricky Leacock, a leading figure in the Direct Cinema movement in the US in the early1960s. Leacock is an ward-winning pioneer filmmaker, provocative film theorist, and was cinematographer on Robert Flaherty’s classic film, Louisiana Story (1946). Since the 1980s, he has joined forces with Valerie Lalonde to shoot documentaries on light- weight video equipment. |