Researchers’ short film selected for BFI London Film Festival

A film made as a collaboration across arts and science research by Teesside University staff has been selected for a prestigious film festival.

‘Forms of Circulation #1’, directed by Professor Sarah Perks and Dr Paul Stewart from the University’s School of Arts and Creative Industries, has been selected in the Experimenta strand of the 68th BFI London Film Festival. The film will be screened at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, on 19th October.

The short film was shot mostly at the University’s National Horizons Centre in Darlington, a national centre of excellence for bioscience and healthcare, and also at the Teesmouth National Nature Reserve.

Professor Perks and Dr Stewart’s creative curatorial projects explore relationships and interaction between humans and non-humans, and this artist film developed from a collaboration with staff at the advanced biosciences research facility.

The 16mm film captures the new cycles of advanced technology, machine labour and visual motifs of tubes, bottles and cabinets, pressure gauges, pipettes and pipes alongside microscopes, freezers and 3D printers, before moving to images of who the work affects, including investigating deadly mouth rot in the nearby seal colony at Teesmouth.

The research and film also unite two of Teesside University’s flagship and nationally recognised institutions, National Horizons Centre for biosciences and MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art), an international museum and art gallery.

Dr Stewart said: 'We’re really excited our artist 16mm film has been selected for this major national festival by the British Film Institute and to share very different images of Teesside with audiences in London and beyond.

'Alongside capturing the machines and lab scenes at the National Horizons Centre, we workshopped with colleagues to capture their words on their routines and experiences, and how these might be represented by film genres. Their words have been adapted by us into the poem that, on occasion, joins the images.'

Professor Perks added: 'Fujifilm are one of the partners based at the National Horizons Centre, and whilst they no longer make moving image film stock, their presence inspired our analogue film aesthetic and static camera shots of machine labour.

'Through the project, we also learnt that seals are one of the few animals (as well as humans) to have innate rhymical ability which infiltrates our soundscape at the end.”

Professor Vikki Rand, Director of the National Horizons Centre, said: 'It was fantastic to have the impactful work of the National Horizons Centre being depicted in this creative and imaginative way and we are delighted that the film has been selected to screen at the BFI London Film Festival.'

Professor Perks and Dr Stewart will continue researching curatorial and artistic practice-based methodologies for public engagement and knowledge exchange; with further research planned regionally, nationally and internationally that brings contemporary art and film in dialogue with other disciplines including cultural heritage, nature recovery and technology through their collaborative strategies.

Another film work by them Until the End of the World, utilising artificial intelligence, is currently showing at MIMA until the end of September.

They also collaborate regularly with cultural and environmental organisations including Natural England around sustainable, ethical and inclusive interdisciplinary public engagement, and they also co-designed the UK’s first and only MA Curating (Apprenticeship). Forms of Circulation #1 screens in The Treasury of Human Inheritance programme at the Institute of Contemporary Arts on 19 October as part of BFI London Film Festival 2024’s Experimenta strand.

The 68th BFI London Film Festival takes place from 9-20 October at venues in London and across the UK.

---