A new online film festival will showcase cutting-edge ways of using the moving image in social research.
Screening the Social: Beyond the Documentary takes place between 13 and 24 November 2023.
The free event will feature more than 20 creative films made by social science researchers.
Topics covered by the films range from agriculture and climate change to wild swimming and the art of connection.
The festival is being organised by Dr Laura Harris of the University of Southampton and Dr Lena Theodoropoulou of the University of Liverpool, with funding provided by NCRM and engage@Liverpool.
A diverse programme
Attendees will be able to watch all the films at any time during the two-week festival period.
Some productions are feature-length, while others are only minutes long.
The programme features work by geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, artists, activists and those who sit happily in-between subject areas.
Each uses the film camera in different ways, highlighting the breadth of filmmaking methods for social scientists.
Online panels will unpack some of the questions raised by the programme. Filmmakers and social scientists will discuss their methods and issuses like ethics and the distribution of research films.
Highlights of the festival
One highlight of the event is Nick Mai’s collaborative documentary Caer (2021). The film uses fiction and observational filmmaking to express the struggles for recognition and justice of Latina trans women working in the New York sex industry.
Nnenna Onuoha’s film A-Team (2021) visualises interviews with 13 friends who reminisce about their Ghanaian high school’s exchange trip to Jackson, Mississippi a decade earlier. The film explores the uncertainty of memory, with visuals mimicking the group’s memory blocks.
Animation is a strong theme. Forms of Care uses stop-motion animation to movingly illustrate a verbatim interview on everyday practices of palliative care. Similarly, Above All – Inside the Littlewoods Dream Factory uses stop motion animation to bring to life an oral history project about a former pools factory in Liverpool.