*PLEASE NOTE, THIS COURSE WILL NOW BE HELD ONLINE*
Curators, artists, filmmakers, those with a career in the creative sectors who have or an existing project or would like to develop a curatorial idea.
- WHAT: An advanced practical in-person course for those within the cultural sector, interdisciplinary curatorial practices.
WHERE: Online
WHO: Run by Ludovica Fales, UCL tutor, filmmaker and academic.
WHEN: 6x two hour sessions, Thursday evenings, 7-9 PM, starting on 20th of November – 18th of December 2025. + pitch session on the 8th January 2026.
COMMITMENT: 2 hours per week, plus extra development time.
WHAT YOU GET: A weekend to meet others in creative fields, develop a curatorial idea (independently or in groups) build community and share discussions facilitated by a UCL tutor and working practitioner.
HOW MUCH: Full Price: £175 | Students/Concessions: £165 | UCL Students: £155
DEADLINE TO SIGN UP: Monday 17th November.
BURSARIES: This course offers bursaries. Visit the Bursary page for more info, deadline is TBC.
AGES: 18+
Experimental films are always distinguished by a non-linear movement of thought and non-narrative that draws on many different sources of knowledge. Within this configuration, a process of transformation of the role of the spectator has begun, moving from a passive role to an increasingly active role linked to the ability to make choices in space, with video art projects being transferred to the space of the gallery.
With digital media, immersed in a cross and trans-media landscape, a non-linearity is now apprehended with more attention at the same time as the redefinition of the relationship between history and the public.
Through embodiment, tactile activators and immersive 360° storytelling, digital storytellers explore new and innovative applications that could be part of the conventions of the future in connection with the evolution of spectatorship.
The project is intended as an exploration of artistic projects dealing with the expansion of the concept of space as a category through new media tools experimentation from the point of view of the spectator.
New technologies can be used by those who want to create new worlds / spaces; the goal to focus attention on the exploration of space as an artistic practice and to translate the visions of the artists, the proposals they bring to the workshop, into concrete project ideas. The role of the workshop is to familiarize the artist with the tool of new media and to assist them in the ideation of their project but above all to provide inspiration that can help him continue with the exploration of their artistic practice. The sessions are aimed at creating cinematic content’s projects with linear and non-linear narratives but always maintaining the multimedia aspect aimed at the audiovisual and artistic practice of the filmmaker.
It will be possible to work in groups and as individuals. The course examines the role of the audience within experimental cinema history from 1920s to contemporary projects exploring non-linear narrative through digital technology before and after the digital turn and leads students in designing a commissioning pack for their project.
Participants will get to develop a portfolio/commission pack to submit to a gallery or apply for funding.
Indicative course outline:
European avant garde (Surrealism, Cubism, Dadaism) – – Interactive experimental concept development
American Avantgarde (trance film and psychodrama) – Interactive experimental concept development
Abstract film and structuralist film (from Stan Brakhage to the London Film Coop) – Interactive experimental pitch
Video, Installation art (Bill Viola, Pipilotti Rist …)-Interactive experimental audience testing
Contemporary experiments in the moving image (Nam June Paik, Harun Farocki, Tacita Dean, Tracey Emin, Chris Marker …) –Interactive experimental user journey design. From analog to digital – (computer art experiments, hypertexts, archives and interactive art experimental and factual) + VR and AR films (Blast Theory, Marshmallow Laser Feast, Iñarritu …) – Interactive experimental impact strategy
Final Pitch Session.
If you are interested, please email Ludo to discuss before booking: at l.fales@ucl.ac.uk
What is UCL’s section of Public Anthropology?
Public Anthropology is a subsection of UCL’s Anthropology department. It hosts the short course programme, Open City Documentary Festival, and several graduate degree programmes.
The two main strands within Public Anthropology are media and creative and collaborative enterprise, which both merge industry expertise with academic research agendas.
Graduate degree programmes based in the Public Anthropology section include:
Public Anthropology houses London’s global non-fiction film festival, Open City Documentary Festival. Open City Documentary Festival produces an annual film festival, the bi-annual journal Non-Fiction and screening projects throughout the year.
Public Anthropology runs short courses in filmmaking, audio, virtual reality, film theory, practical camera training and film editing.
Tutors
Ludo Fales
Filmmaker and artist Ludovica Fales has been making independent documentary and experimental films since 2007, following on a BA-MA in Philosophy in Rome and Berlin. After an MA in Documentary Direction at the NFTS in 2011, she travelled around the Mediterranean area, across the Balkans and in the Middle East, making films and working closely and collaboratively with vulnerable communities around the world and using filmmaking as a conflict resolution tool.
Her award winning feature film "The Real Social Network", "Letters from Palestine", "Fear and Desire" etc...were screened in festivals around the world . With experience as an AP on projects for Al Jazeera and BBC, she worked collaboratively with various artists and filmmakers, as well as with European Cultural Foundation and Basis of Aktuelle Kunst on a film portrait about Forensic Architecture.
She collaborated with Frames of Representation festival at ICA in London, and programmed for IsReal, Quadrangle, Salinadocfest festivals. With her international collective, Kitchen Sink Collective, she organised mobile cinema events in the Uk and collaborated with festivals such as Sheffield doc/fest.
Her International PhD in Audiovisual Studies led her to researching in the field of interactive documentaries, digital platforms, VR projects and wearable technologies. She started lecturing in documentary practice and theory, experimental and interactive film and video and she now teaches at UCL in London. Her dual posture as filmmaker and academic, led her to take an interest in the exploration of memory and personal and collective, including the use of archival material and new media.
In the last two years, she has been engaging in a process of collaborative workshops with a group of Roma teenagers in Italy, which resulted in a series of improvisation workshops for the production of her first hybrid documentary- fiction film "Lala".