Live Cinema III: Speakers & Artists

On Monday 14 and Tuesday 15 September 2020 our Live Cinema Conference 2020 will be taking place entirely online. You can read more about the conference and the full schedule here. Below is the full list of all our artists, panellists and guest speakers taking part in the conference.

Organisers

Sarah Atkinson

Sarah Atkinson is Professor of Screen Media at King’s College London and co-editor of Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. Sarah has published widely on the film, cinema and screen industries including extensive work into the Live Cinema economy. She has worked on numerous funded immersive media projects and virtual reality initiatives. Sarah also adopts practice-based methodologies through the creation of her own original works which include video essays, an interactive documentary, immersive experiences and short films (including Live Cinema – walking the tightrope between stage and screen- nominated for a 2020 Learning on Screen Award).

Lisa Brook

Lisa is the Founder and Director of Live Cinema UK, establishing the organisation in 2014 to support the national live cinema sector. Lisa fell in love with live cinema events whilst working in her previous roles at Sheffield Doc/Fest and Leeds International Film Festival, and not finding a national organisation to advise on producing work for big screens with extra live performance and interactivity, she set up Live Cinema UK to do just that

Helen W. Kennedy

Helen W. Kennedy is Professor of Creative and Cultural Industries at the University of Nottingham. Her current research interests are feminist interventions into digital games culture, live cinema and the broader ludification of cultural experiences. Recently she has been awarded further significant UK Research Council funding to investigate new technologies and new creative practices in immersive experience design.

Sarah Martindale

Dr Sarah Martindale’s interdisciplinary research focuses on applications of new digital technologies in creative and cultural industries, and the value these have for audiences. Martindale has a prestigious Nottingham Research Fellowship in the Department of Cultural, Media and Visual Studies on the topic of Future Audiences for Transformations in Digital Media. This follows her 2018 AHRC Creative Economy Engagement Fellowship. Martindale has been part of Horizon Digital Economy Research, a cross-council centre, since 2012, working on human-computer interaction and ergonomics outputs, as well as film and cultural studies publications.

Hannah McHaffie

Hannah has a background in film festivals and community cinema exhibition. After three years with Sheffield Doc/Fest and their Film Programming team, she joined the Live Cinema UK team in 2019 as their Marketing and Operations Coordinator. Hannah is also a freelance writer and marketeer having worked across the BFI Musicals season and on the Birds Eye View Films Reclaim the Frame campaign.

Associate Artists

Martha Cecilia

Vocalist and frontwoman of electronic duo, La La & the Boo Ya since the noughties – Marf has more recently started working with video. Initially drawn to skilling-up as a filmmaker with the sole intent of creating her own music videos and with a background in running quirky grass-roots music events, ‘live cinema’ as a concept gets her creative muscles twitching. Since completing a BA in film last year, Marf has been focusing on building upon her skills as a videomaker and the potential for crossover with live performance – creating bespoke audiovisual accompaniment for new theatre.

Sean Clarke

Residing in Manchester for over ten years, Sean has become a key figure in Manchester’s digital art & DIY performance community. His experience has been shaped by holding roles such as technician, curator, artist, and producer for projects such as Distorted Constellations, Test Card & DRIFT.

Francesca Ruth Levi

Francesca Ruth Levi is a video artist who regularly mixes film mediums such as Cine film with smartphone footage to create a sort of film collage. She has had short films screened at a number of festivals including IFFR 2019, LSFF 2019, Bideodromo, Belarus smartphone film Festival and many more. Her biggest collaboration to date has been with her sister Mica Levi on The Colour of Chips as part of the Unfilmables project with Live Cinema explored the concept of films that didn’t exist but should have. Francesca also runs a film festival called Everyday Arias which has screened at a variety of locations including Republic Gallery London , Close Up Cinema London and Café Roya Beeston.

Mandy Wigby

A sound artist, composer, music producer and educator Mandy has worked on various multi-media projects, and live performances. She is currently part of collective ‘Architects Of Rosslyn’. AoR make music and soundscapes using acoustic and electronic instruments, found and collected sound, creating original tone sets and scales from architecture and nature; biology and form into music from maths. AoR collaborate with Di on multiple sound art projects including Soundpit at Southbank Centre, Time Bascule on Tower Bridge, and Wonderlooper on the Northern Spire Bridge.

Alex Wilson

Memory Dance was founded in 2016 by AV archivist and researcher, Alex Wilson. The project works with festivals, arts and heritage venues, programmers, artists and curators. A collaborative, cross-generation space where film-makers from the 1970s can screen work alongside music producers born in the 2000s, locating rarely-seen archive film and video collections in new and exciting contexts. Memory Dance aims to build a greater community understanding of forgotten screen heritage, re-imagining the history of moving image and sound so it can be shared and preserved for the future.

Panellists and Speakers

Anthony Andrews

Anthony Andrews is the co-founder and creative director of We Are Parable, an award winning film exhibition company, dedicated to providing diverse audiences with opportunities to experience films featuring people of colour in memorable and innovative ways. Since co-founding the business in 2013, Anthony has worked with the likes of Spike Lee, Idris Elba, Amma Asante, Tinge Krishnan, Rapman and Ryan Coogler, whilst establishing professional collaborations with the British Film Institute, Film London, Sundance, Picturehouse Cinemas, Entertainment One, Disney, Marvel, Paramount, StudioCanal and Violet Pictures.

Mia Bays

Mia Bays is an Oscar winning twice BAFTA nominated creative producer. Prior to producing, Mia worked in some of the top sales, marketing, distribution and exhibition companies in the UK, across both documentary and fiction. In 2016 Mia took over Birds’ Eye View pivoting it from being a film festival about to close into a year-round charity – running the Reclaim the Frame exhibition project (a mission to bring ever-greater audiences to films by women) and Future Leaders in Distribution, a leadership training programme for women with 7+ years of film distribution experience. Alongside this, Mia also produces Sundance London.

Duncan Beiny (DJ Yoda)

DJ Yoda is a multi-award-winning hip-hop DJ and producer, headlining festivals and clubs around the world. No typical club DJ, his interests lie in finding fresh and unique ways to bring turntables out of the club and getting involved in bespoke collaborations. Working with classical composers to neuroscientists; brass bands to film directors; Dr Dre to Dame Evelyn Glennie; Banksy to Mark Ronson; BBC Radio 4 to the BFI, he reinvigorates his craft with wry invention and humorous intent.

Steve Benford

Steve is a Professor in the Mixed Reality Laboratory at the University of Nottingham where he directs the Horizon Centre or Doctoral Training and the Smart Products research beacon. He previously held an EPSRC Dream Fellowship, has been a Visiting Professor at the BBC and was elected to the CHI Academy in 2012.

Sarah Byrne

Sarah Byrne is a PhD student in the Film, Theatre, and Television department at the University of Reading. Her interdisciplinary research is concerned with the hybrid form of livecasting. The primary areas of interest are remediation and the processes of medium hybridity and aesthetic hybridity that livecasting utilises. Sarah has previously presented at the Screen Studies Conference in Glasgow.

Laurence Cliffe

Laurence is a PhD student at The University of Nottingham’s Mixed-Reality Laboratory researching audio augmented reality. He has a Master’s degree in Fine Art, and an undergraduate degree in Music Technology and Sonic Art. Laurence recently authored, deployed and studied several public audio augmented reality sound installations in collaboration with the Science Museum Group and is currently collaborating with the musician and composer Aleksander Kolkowski on the Sonic Futures Project.

Wendy Cook

Wendy has been bumbling around Hyde Park Picture House for over sixteen years in some form or another, trying to make audiences watch films, trying to keep the building standing. For the last six years she’s led on our major capital refurbishment project including securing £2.4m in major investment from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The work requires lots of hats, project manager, programmer, team leader, fundraiser… the variety keeps her on her toes and thankfully her loved ones are very forgiving of the fact she hasn’t come home on time since the early 2000s.

John Dorr

English musician/ composer, over the last 8 years I have been involved in many cross- arts collaborations (Live film soundtracks/ Theatre/ Puppetry and Dance) toured Europe incessantly, self-released and funded albums for both my band STEMS and my solo project DORR.

Christopher Greenhalgh

Chris Greenhalgh is a Professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham, where he is a co-leader of the Mixed Reality Laboratory and a member of Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute. His research interests are at the intersection of human-computer interaction and distributed systems, including ubiquitous computing and mobile multi-user applications. His work is collaborative and multi-disciplinary in nature and, in common with the Mixed Reality Lab as a whole, focuses on supporting everyday activities and situations, including home, work, leisure and entertainment. He has a particular interest in creating platforms and tools that enable non-programmers to use emerging technologies and create engaging experiences. 

Sam Groves

Staying up late one night watching C4’s Shooting Gallery series, Sam came across the short film Music for Six Drummers and One Apartment. Unknowingly he became an exhibitor, showing the film to everyone he knew. Fifteen years on and with a little more understanding of curation and exhibition, he’s still showing films to people, as well as putting on all manner of mixed arts events as Flatpack’s programmer. He also programmed the short films for the Nordisk Panorama in Malmo, Sweden.

Rachel Hayward

Rachel has over 15 years’ experience in film exhibition, festival programming and film education. As a senior member of HOME’s Artistic Strategy Group, she has responsibility for programming and producing seasons and festivals, developing partnerships, curating engagement activity and fundraising. Rachel has led the programming of ¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American Film Festival since 2009, and key projects from the last 12 months include Not Just Bollywood and the wide-reaching Celebrating Women in Global Cinema.
Rachel is the chair of Film Hub North’s Cultural Leadership Group and in addition to her role at HOME, she is a Board member for the Alliance Française de Manchester.

Adrian Hazzard

Adrian Hazzard is a Research Fellow in the Mixed Reality Lab, University of Nottingham, specialising in research at the intersection of human computer interaction, music composition and performance. He is interested in the role digital tools can play in creative practice and audience engagement. Adrian is also the Training Programme Manager for the Horizon Centre for Doctoral Training, University of Nottingham, supporting cohorts of students through multidisciplinary PhD’s that speak to the theme of ‘Creating Our Lives in Data’.  

Caroline Hennigan

As Broadway’s Programme Director I’m responsible for programming the full public programme including on-date releases, repertory, seasons, festivals, live and special events. I also oversee Broadways informal Film Education programme including Film Courses, Day Schools and Workshops. I have an in-depth knowledge of all the key aspects of cinema management including programming, marketing, and operations. I’ve previously taught English and Film Studies at school, FE and University levels. I have an MA in Film and Television Studies.

Elizabeth Kelly

Elizabeth Kelly is Associate Professor in Music Composition at the University of Nottingham. Her music embraces diverse influences, running the gamut from ‘majestic Wagnerian lines aggressively punctuated’ (Boston Musical Intelligencer) to ‘rasping jazzy exploration’ (The Guardian). Her compositions have been performed throughout the UK, Europe, and North America at venues including Carnegie Hall in New York, the Tanglewood Music Festival in Massachusetts, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in the UK and the Gaudeamus Festival in the Netherlands. Her opera about soprano/silent film star Geraldine Farrar, ‘Losing Her Voice’, premiered in April 2019 with support from an Opera America ‘Discovery Grant’ and a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant.

Kerin

 Mancunian entertainer Kerin has had a fun wild energetic life so far! Starting out as a street dancer and ‘spitting bars’ for fun Kerin loved and thrived in performing arts. Having a rebellious faze like most young people getting into trouble with the law a lot, it was not until Kerin’s best friend was murdered did she start using music as a tool to focus her energy positively & start building her music career. Having always loved her community she set up music/dance workshops to help other troubled young people channel their energy positively too. As well as being a UDO world hip-hop dance champion freestyler and choreographer Kerin also spent a short stint in a girl group. Kerin has performed along the likes of Ed Sheeran, Olly Murs, Mnek, The Saturdays,  Ghetts, opened up for Chipmunk as well as supported JLS on a full UK arena tour .

Di Mainstone

Artist & Movician, Di Mainstone creates sonic sculptures, that extend from the body and trigger sound via movement. The New York Times has featured Di Mainstone as one of the “new generation visionaries” of the international digital arts scene.  She is artist in residence at Queen Mary University London where she collaborates with researchers from the Centre for Digital Music and Media Arts & Technology group, to develop new musical instruments that are inspired by the body, transforming physical movement into sound via digital technology.  Di has invented the term “Movician” to describe the player of these instruments – a hybrid artist who explores and composes sound through movement.

Helen Scarlett O’Neill

Helen Scarlett O’Neill is an interaction designer best known for her immersive performance work with Secret Cinema (all productions 2010-2013), London Contemporary Orchestra, Fruit For The Apocalypse (Surrealist Taxi) and within the heritage sector (The Caravan Club, Suffragette City, and others for the National Trust and The National Archives). She recently entered the field of artistic research, testing and compiling a series of performance scores in digital space (Artistic Protocols for Digital Interaction).

Roma Patel

Roma is a scenographer and digital artist. She has designed interactive and site-specific performance, theatre and digital installations in the UK and Europe since 2000. Her recent PhD research at the University of Nottingham focused on the points of intersection between scenography and interactive technologies in Theatre for Early Years. She is interested in how current electronic and wearable tech can be developed for performative installation.

Rachel Pronger and Camilla Baier (Invisible Women)

Invisible Women is a film collective founded in 2017. Our aim is to highlight the work of female filmmakers in the archive, and we do this through screenings, exhibitions and editorial. Since our foundation we have presented film programmes and research at festivals, cinemas and pop up spaces across the UK, as well as at the Eye Institute in Amsterdam. Since June 2020 we have also been developing editorial, with a monthly newsletter and expanded website.

Rachel Ramchurn

Rachel Ramchurn started integrating interactive technology into her artworks in 2015. Most recently ‘A Museum of Journey’s in a Chest of Drawers’, a participant-led storytelling project opened in Jan 2020. She has extensive experience producing projects, recently brain-controlled film ‘The MOMENT’ toured nationally and internationally, including Hong Kong British Council Blast Festival, Geneva International Film Festival, Reykjavik International Film Festival and Sheffield Doc/Fest.

Richard Ramchurn

Founder of production company AlbinoMosquito, Richard Ramchurn makes and shows work nationally and internationally. As a filmmaker, designer and researcher his current practice explores creating and understanding Neurocinema. He has completed a PhD in Brain Controlled Cinema at the University of Nottingham. His film The Disadvantages of Time Travel (2014) explored unconscious control within a narrative, research about which won Best Art Paper at CHI16 in San Jose, California. His new brain-controlled film The MOMENT (2018), which explores real-time narrative recombination and passive interaction, has toured internationally. 

Tara Sachdeva

Tara is founder and director of Compass Presents. Compass Presents create expanded cinema experiences: cross-disciplinary happenings that meld film with performance, and live projection mapping with circus and dance. Recent work has focused on the integration of archive footage into these productions, and new experiments in performance-led interventions. Compass also produces interactive installations and stages for festivals across the UK. Tara’s experience working closely with communities often underserved by the arts informs her approach to engaging new audiences, and producing work that better speaks to and reflects the diversity of people in the UK.

Joe Strickland and Nat Henderson (Chronic Insanity)

Chronic Insanity is a theatre company led by Nat Henderson and Joe Strickland. They have been staging work in Nottingham for the past four years, often working together to deliver thought-provoking and visually stimulating live performances in traditional, found, and digital spaces. They have just finished their 12 shows in 12 months project successfully and are currently working on various other creative endeavours, including a reflection on their 12in12 project, a consultancy firm helping artists/venues use audience data in performances, and multiple live and digital arts events for 2021 and beyond.

Claire Vaughan

Claire Vaughan is the Programme Manager for Film & Cinema at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff.


Maria Vélez-Serna 

Maria A. Vélez-Serna teaches Film and Media at the University of Stirling. She is the author of Ephemeral Cinema Spaces (Amsterdam University Press, 2020), and also co-edited Early Cinema in Scotland (Edinburgh University Press, 2018). She studied at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and the University of Glasgow.

Gary Williams

Gary James Williams is the creator, event producer and host for Make A Scene, a multi-platform film and TV club that celebrates and promotes film and TV made for, featuring and beloved by the LGBTQ+ community. Make A Scene specialises in interactive, immersive screenings of camp and queer film and TV that often gets overlooked by other live cinema companies, putting LGBT audiences and their allies at the centre of the movies and telly they love. Gary is also Event Producer for Manchester Business Improvement District and produced large scale events for the city including Chinese New Year and their famous Halloween celebrations.

Grab your tickets here.