Category: Student

May 20, 2013

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Roopa Saini, our former PhD student, has co-developed Mara Pictures, a film distribution company whose focus is to bring some of the most inspiring and innovating cinematic explorations in today’s international market to the forefront of UK cinema culture.

Mara Pictures was inspired by a passion to provide a platform for both international and domestic independent filmmakers to showcase their films across the UK, and now in its fourth year has acquired its most commercial film yet: The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is currently in cinemas across the UK. Adapted from the novel by Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid, the film is directed by Mira Nair (Salaam Bombay, Monsoon Wedding) and stars British Pakistani actor Riz Ahmed in the lead role. The A list cast includes Kate Hudson, Kiefer Sutherland, Liev Schreiber, Om Puri, Shahbana Azmi and Meesha Shafi.

The film tells the story of Changez, an ambitious young man whose identity pivots between a glittering stockbroker career in the Big Apple and his home culture thousands of miles away in Lahore, Pakistan.

Roopa is responsible for Acquisitions and Sales for Mara Pictures. Roopa has worked in the independent film sector for several years as a festival coordinator for the London Asian Film Festival Tongues on Fire, and with exhibitors like Bafta and ICA to bring global films to cinemas across the UK. Her professional and academic background in film and media inspired her to co-develop Mara Pictures as a leading pulse of foreign independent cinema.

For cinema listings, press releases and to find out more about Mara Pictures, click here. Or you can watch the Trailer here.

Share this:

May 8, 2013

One World Student Award

We are proud to announce that last night our former MA student Vincent Du’s film Almost Famous, has won the One World Student Award.

One World Media is a non-profit organisation, which promotes media that contributes to global dialogue and understanding, human rights and development, mobilising a global media community that share their values.

The One World Media Awards reward the most outstanding media coverage of the developing world and recognises the unique role of journalists and filmmakers in bridging the divide between different societies and raising awareness of vital development issues. One Wolrd Media is currently supporting students in a variety of ways through the Student Awards as well as the One World Media Student Programme.

Almost Famous is about the dream of music, and becoming famous. It takes place in the largest, most successful pop and rock music education centre for children in China. Over twenty thousand kids, aged between four and fourteen, study drums, guitar, bass and singing, spread over its one hundred and twenty institutions across the country.

With the opening up and economic reform of China, an increasing number of young parents are influenced by western popular culture. The stories documented in my film undoubtedly tell of an alternative upbringing in China. In this music school’s headquarters in Tianjin, China, the three main characters and their families have different dreams and aspirations.

In China, the dreams of the ‘post 2000′ children are very different from those of the previous generation, which is intriguing and invaluable information for audiences outside China. This documentary shows a real side of modern China through the dreams and aspirations of China’s next generation.

Vincent has also been commissioned to make a new version of the film by Al Jazeera, for broadcast this summer. We will keep you updated.

Share this:

May 3, 2013

Rethinking Gamification

(Photo by M. Fuchs, 2012)

Since December 2012, Paolo Ruffino, one of our Ph.D. students and Visiting Tutors, has been appointed Research Fellow at the Gamification Lab at the Centre for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University in Luneburg, Germany.

From the 15th until the 17th of May, the lab will host the first ‘Rethinking Gamification’ workshop.

“Gamification” is a buzzword of today’s marketing business, but also an accurate description of a fundamental shift in modern society: the permeation of economical, political and social contexts by game-elements. Rule structures and interfaces, inspired by computer games, are exceedingly used by corporations to manage and control brand-communities and to create value. What is missing up to now, however, is a critical analysis of concrete examples as well as theoretical reasoning about the ethical and political implications of gamification. The objective of the workshop is to change that: gamification might be a buzzword, but it surely is a symptom of an underlying, fundamental trend in our society. This first workshop will gather scholars with the purpose of critically rethinking the concept of gamification.

Paolo has been approaching this topic as part of his Ph.D. dissertation. Tentatively titled ‘Gamers’ games, narratives of opposition, independence and engagement in video game culture’, it is a cultural analysis of video game consumers and, particularly, of the emergence of the prosumer in the video game industry. It involves a study of the concepts of consumer and producer, the history of the medium of the video game and phenomena such as ‘modding’, independent gaming, open engines and game art. He is currently contributing with his research at the new lab atLeuphanaUniversity, as co-organiser of the workshop and other future events, and also curating publications on gamification and the study of video game culture.

To find out more about the workshop click here. Or to find out more about Paolo’s work you can visit his website.

Share this:

April 29, 2013

Science News in Kurdish

Sarhang Hars, one of our MA student in Communications and Media is the co-founder of Zanestekan.com, the first website for science content in the Kurdish language dedicated to promoting science, and establishing the foundation for science journalism in Kurdistan.

The website is part of a larger project to introduce science, the latest scientific discoveries, and science news from around the world to the Kurdish public. It was launched this month after the success of a Facebook page ‘science made simple’, also Kurdish, that was initiated by two Kurdish journalists/translators over a year ago, with a fan base that exceeds 27 thousand followers and growing.

As part of the larger project, Zanstekan (which is the plural of science in Kurdish) will also focus on enhancing science education of Kurdish students and providing scientific research for policymakers when needed. We’ll keep you updated with the developments of this great initiative!

Share this:

April 18, 2013

STATES, AN EXHIBITION

The Leslie-Lohman Museum in New York City will be presenting the work Jacob Love our former MA Student who graduated in 2008.

The Leslie-Lohman Museum is the first and only dedicated gay and lesbian art museum in the world with a mission to exhibit and preserve gay and lesbian art, and foster the artists who create it. The Museum has a permanent collection of over 22,000 objects, 6-8 major exhibitions annually, artist talks, film screenings, readings, THE ARCHIVE – a quarterly art newsletter, a membership program, and a research library.

Jacob Love’s exhibition, STATES is part of an ongoing project of landscapes and portraits initially inspired by the utopian scenes printed in the Jehovah’s Witness magazine, The Watchtower. They were taken during Love’s travels through 15 US states and parts of Canada over the last 3 years.

Love’s landscapes depict the same continental landmass photographed in different physical states of being, suggesting that the only consistent truth is change. Even the most solid and permanent aspect of our realities, the ground under our feet, the landscape that sustains us, is in constant change. Through inverting landscapes, they cease to be “a place” and become a “no place” existing in our minds rather than in concrete reality.

In his portraits, figures emerge from darkness re-enforcing the idea that to come out as “queer” is not a single act that positions a subject as being different “in relation” to something else, but a continual emotional, spiritual and psychological process that celebrates the notion of differentiation, singularity and uniqueness of being. In presenting difference in and of itself, Love claims “queer” as an identification with difference.

The exhibition opens with a reception at the Museum from 6-8 pm on April 26, 2013 and runs through June 21, 2013. You can find out more here.

Share this:

April 10, 2013

Charles Parker Prizes

Following last year’s success, we are pleased to announce that two of our MA Radio students took Gold and Silver in the Charles Parker Best Student Feature Awards. Hana Walker-Brown was awarded the Gold Prize for her 15 minute feature “Four Metal Plates”, whilst Flora Neve won the Silver Prize for her feature “5-7-5″, about Haiku and silence.

The Charles Parker Prize is open to all students studying radio at Further or Higher Education establishments within the United Kingdom. The Gold prize included a 2 week placement in BBC Features and Documentaries in Broadcasting House, London , a SADiE 6 Sound Suite editing system provided by Prism Sound and a DAB radio from Pure Radio. The Silver prize included a 2 week placement in an independent production company as well as a DAB radio.

Both features will be broadcast in a special programme on BBC Radio 4 Extra on April 20th 2013. Commenting on the success, Professor Tim Crook, the convener of the MA Radio Programme, said:

‘I am delighted that Hana and Flo have had this success. The MA Radio students bring to Goldsmiths creativity, professionalism and the ability to produce thought-provoking and beautiful radio every year. This is also a tribute to the brilliant teaching of our visiting lecturer Alan Hall and all the other tutors in the Radio Section.’

Share this:

March 8, 2013

On the ‘Last Goddess’

Sabine Schereck, our former MA Radio student has done an amazing feature on Marlene Dietrich. Marlene Dietrich dazzled audiences – whether in glittering dresses or in elegant tails. She crossed gender like no other star and became a gay icon. What was her appeal to a gay audience? Her glamour? Her strength? Her liberty? What could be read between the lines?

Marlene’s illustrious life took her from the heady days of 1920s Berlin to the glamour of 1930s Hollywood, from the fronts of the Second World War to the most prestigious stages in the world. Despite being married, she had numerous affairs with famous men and women. Yet, she managed to avoid scandal to keep her impeccable image intact.

The programme combined interviews and music with extracts from letters, biographies and radio appearances. Author Clayton Littlewood talks to art historian Simon Watney and Terry Sanderson, organiser of a Marlene Dietrich Tribute, as key contributors. Together they take at closer look at this unusual woman, who was very much ahead of her time and often described as the ‘last goddess’.

It was broadcasted on 25 December 2012 as a Christmas Special on Resonance FM and was available as a podcast from 25 February 2013 for seven days as it was LGBT History Month and the Southbank Centre celebrated Weimar Berlin on the weekend of 1 March. When the programme was online it attracted more than 500 listeners.

Sabine is currently a co-producer of the weekly radio magazine show ‘Out In South London’ on Resonance FM on a voluntary basis. Her previous work includes a feature on Alfred and Judith Kerr called: “Kerr – Home and Abroad” produced for the Goethe Institute London. You may read a review of the programme here.

Share this:

February 22, 2013

Too Good to Resist

On the 16^th of February, one of our former MA Filmmaking students, Treasa O’Brien presented her work Too Good to Resist (working title) at the Centre for Creative Practices in Dublin. Too Good to Resist is a creative social documentary in development by Treasa O’Brien and Mary Jane O’Leary exploring Irish reactions (or lack of) to austerity measures and structural adjustment in the wake of the bleating Celtic Tiger economy that never thought for society.

The filmmakers travelled aroundIrelandin Summer 2012 to find out why, in comparison to its European neighbours suffering similar fates, do people not take to the streets to demand more just solutions and a more hopeful future? Does emigration mean that those who might fight are in flight? Is there really radio silence or are there movements afoot? How have other European societies responded? Is there a tipping point or are the Irish just too good to resist? The film will look at the wider European context as well as draw on history, politics, culture, anthropology, sociology, and even meteorology to explain why.

You can find out more here.

Share this:

February 21, 2013

More MA Successes

Ellie Rose, centre, is presented with her award by James Tye, left, chief executive of Dennis Publishing and Miranda Sawyer, the journalist and presenter, who hosted the awards evening. Picture by Noah da Costa.

Lydia, centre, received her award from James Povey, managing director for UK Print, Polesta. Picture by Noah da Costa.

Two former MA Journalism students, Ellie Rose and Lydia Stockdale, have won top honours in the magazine industry’s awards for emerging talent.

Ellie, a writer for Reader’s Digest and graduate of the 2009-10 won the award for New Consumer Journalist of the Year and Lydia, who graduated in 2007, won the New Section Editor of the Year in the New Talent Awards. The awards are run by the Periodicals Publishers’ Association and the Periodicals Training Council. There were among six former Goldsmith’s MA Journalism students to be nominated for the New Talent awards.Their achievements comes in the wake of the nomination for another Goldsmiths student Charlie Cooper, who is up for the Young Journalist of the Year award in the British Press Awards and the success of three other present and former students in gaining placements on top daily newspaper training schemes – see post below.

Ellie said: “I genuinely wasn’t expecting to win anything so it was obviously a lovely surprise. One of my articles was about a really inspiring man who’d walked round the entire coast of England to raise money for mental health charities, as he’d suffered from chronic depression all his life. This was a story I sourced from Twitter when I was putting together our “Twitter-curated issue” The judges mentioned they thought I’d been resourceful in using multiple platforms to tackle difficult topics. Obviously this willingness to experiment was born when I was a newbie journo at Goldsmiths, where innovation was always encouraged!’’

Lydia, who has been at Inside Housing since September 2009, added: “The course at Goldsmiths gave me the chance to explore many different types of journalism, and it was there that I discovered that features were for me. Goldsmiths was also where I found out about opportunities in B2B journalism. Up until then I had imagined working on industry magazines would be dull, but it’s not at all. For example, the three pieces I entered for this award were an FOI investigation into assaults against housing staff, an interview with Lord John Prescott, and an analysis piece on the causes of the UK riots.’’

The other nominations were Michael Pooler, who was on last year’s course, for Most Promising Postgraduate Student, Jane McCallion, also from last year, who works for Cloud Pro and IT Pro magazines and who was nominated for New Business News Journalist of the Year, Louise Ridley, who graduated in 2009, who works for Event Magazine and who was nominated for New Business Features Journalist of the Year and Ruth Emmett, graduate from 2007-8 MA Journalism was the first journalism course in the country to set up its own local news site: East London Lines. Its audience has doubled every year since it started in 2009.

Apply for an MA Journalism at Goldsmiths, by clicking here.

Share this:

February 16, 2013

Transmission of Trauma

On the 15^th of March, 2013, The Affect, Memory and Transmission of Trauma Conference, will take place at Goldsmiths. The conference has been co-organised by two of our PhD students Elena Trivelli and Nathan To, and was fully sponsored and supported by the Graduate School at Goldsmiths.

Elena’s research examines the history of alternative psychiatric movements in Italy, and the work of Franco Basaglia. She particularly focuses on the city of Gorizia, its role in psychiatric deinstitutionalisation movements across the decades, and how this legacy has left profoundly traumatic effects on the community, manifested in collective practices of remembering and forgetting. Nathan’s research explores the entanglement between affect, media, and trauma. He investigates the intergenerational transmission of trauma through distributed, mediated visions of memory in the 2^nd generation Chinese Canadian experience. His work critically explores issues of affective hauntings, silenced individual and collective voices, and the production of memory in ethnic Chinese diasporas.

The Affect, Memory and Transmission of Trauma Conference will draw together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, to explore phenomena associated with traumatic memory. Psychology, sociology, and film studies are but a few of the many diverse perspectives of the day, when presenters and keynote speakers will create vibrant, urgent dialogues and debates about the role of affect theories in understanding the transmission of traumatic memory.

These conversations are due and tied to the growing interest of the ‘turn to affect’ in cultural studies, and across the arts and humanities in the last two decades. Thus, in addition to the panels, this symposium is excited to welcome both a keynote address and dialogue between two leading scholars involved in this ‘turn’: the Keynote speaker, Professor Valerie Walkerdine of Cardiff University, and a response from Dr. Lisa Blackman, Reader in Media and Communications, here at Goldsmiths.

We’ll keep you posted on how the day goes! For more information about the symposium click here.

Image designed and shot by Ciel Liu, MA Photography student in the Media & Communications department at Goldsmiths.

Share this: