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Press release


  • 10 November 2005
  • Student documentaries hit big screen at SEE Festival


    Anna Pons Carrera as Claude Cahun. Image: Jess Hooks

    Anna Pons Carrera as Claude Cahun. Image: Jess Hooks

    A wry look at "cursed" Hastings, a moving animation depicting a child's journey to Auschwitz and the lives of two extraordinary women photographers are among the University of Sussex documentary films featured in a new festival devoted to the genre.

    Seven short films made by students will be screened at the first-ever SEE Brighton Documentary Film Festival (Nov 19-20) at Sussex Arts Club, Brighton, on Sunday November 20.

    They will join the regional premiere of Playing A Part: The Story of Claude Cahun, a documentary by University of Sussex media lecturer and film-maker Lizzie Thynne, based on the life of an extraordinary surrealist photographer and war heroine.

    Former digital media MA student Stephanie Wong will also have her work, Echoes of Lee Miller: St. Malo, exhibited on the same day. This prototype CD-ROM is part of a series of interactive pieces produced by Sussex Media and Film Studies lecturer Mary Agnes Krell, which reflect on the career of the former Vogue model turned war photographer Lee Miller.

    The student films, which will be followed by a panel discussion with producers Michele d'Acosta (Biggie and Tupac; Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam and Kurt and Courtney) and Rachel Wexler (Philip and His Seven Wives, for the BBC's Storyville series) include:

     

    • Besides the Seaside (Dir: Reu Hickman, 10 mins) Asks, "Is Hastings cursed?" and takes a wry look at the darker side of seaside life;
    •  i go looking for you in places i know (Dir: Madeleine Mullett, 10 mins in total) Evokes the loss of three women in the life of the film-maker;
    • The Menorah (Dir: Peter Moores, 3.5 mins) A powerful flash-animation film that follows a young girl from Jewish Ghetto to Auschwitz;
    • Young Germany (Dir: Kevin Reynolds, 23 mins) Young Germans reveal how Germany's past affects the way they see themselves today.
    A still from Pete Moores' The Menorah

    A still from Pete Moores' The Menorah

    The other student films feature subjects as diverse as the work of Brighton's Soup Run volunteers to a defence of fox-hunting and the lifestyle of "freegans" - people who eat what we throw away.

    The study of film and media at the University of Sussex now includes a degree that focuses on practice as well as theory, involving photography, film-making, digital and computer media. Lizzie Thynne says: "It's great that we are involved in the SEE Festival, particularly as the department of Media and Film is planning to start an MA in Documentary in the next couple of years."

    The SEE Festival includes several other screenings and talks by leading film-makers including Molly Dineen, Phil Grabsky, Luke Holland (maker of the series A Very English Village, about Ditchling) and The Guardian arts writer Maev Kennedy.

     

     

    Notes for editors 

    SEE Festival programme: http://www.seefestival.org/ Tickets: Brighton Dome 01273 709 709.

    For more information about Lizzie Thynne's film, see: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/news/press-releases/media447.shtml

    To find out about film courses at Sussex, see http://www.sussex.ac.uk/mediastudies/

    University of Sussex press office contacts: Maggie Clune or Jacqui Bealing, tel: 01273 678 888 or email M.T.Clune@sussex.ac.uk or J.A.Bealing@sussex.ac.uk

     

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