Student Programme

Event has passed Close-Up,

Daily programme of free screenings and in-depth conversations with festival filmmakers, hosted by tutors from the Documentary & Ethnographic Film MA (UCL). For students in higher education only. All screenings take place at Close-Up Film Centre at 11am.

These screenings are open by application only. Applications open now and close on 23 April.

Wednesday 7 May: Kouté vwa (Listen to the Voices)

Maxime Jean-Baptiste / 2024 / Belgium, France, French Guiana / 77’ / Digital / French, Guianese Creole spoken, English subtitles

The debut feature-length work by Maxime Jean-Baptiste follows Melrick, a young teenage boy, as he spends a summer in French Guiana with his grandmother Nicole. The film traces conversations between Melrick and Nicole that reveal the tragic circumstances of the death of her son Lucas Diomar who was murdered 11 years earlier. The long-lasting repercussions of his death are revealed through a spectrum of voices from the wider community. Combining scripted scenes with documentary and intimate archival material, Jean-Baptiste develops a richly layered portrait of Lucas, the absence at the centre of the film, and of French Guiana itself – situated on the northeastern coast of South America, it remains a department of France. Made collectively in collaboration with family and friends, Jean-Baptiste challenges the colonial present of French Guiana and offers a vibrant presentation of the place and people, its culture and music. Through this chorus Kouté vwa (translated as “listen to the voices”) proposes ways to dismantle past trauma and cycles of violence through collective expression.

Followed by a conversation with Maxime Jean-Baptiste hosted by Richard Alwyn.

Thursday 8 May: An Excavation + Siticulosa

An Excavation
Maeve Brennan | 2022 | UK | 20’ | Digital | English spoken

An Excavation begins with text on screen: “In 2014, 45 crates of looted antiquities were discovered at Geneva Freeport. Three of the crates, containing 32 cardboard boxes, were sent to archaeologists to search for criminal evidence.” What follows over the course of the next twenty minutes is the meticulous reconstruction of an ancient vase – “object 16” – pieced back together from fragments that were likely contained across several of the recovered cardboard boxes. The two archaeologists at work, Dr. Christos Tsirogiannis and Dr. Vinnie Norskov, are not only reconstituting an object; they are also piecing together the evidence of a crime – like forensic detectives in a murder scene.

After a series of projects forensically examining the largely illicit international antiquities market, Brennan turns her meticulous gaze to the landscape the looted objects in An Excavation were extracted from in Southern Italy. Siticulosa’s multidisciplinary research considers the relationship between archaeology, geology and agriculture in the Puglian landscape. “Parched” or “very dry”, as in Horace’s description of the region (Siticulosa Apulia), continues to be an accurate description of the dominant conditions that allow for the appearance of crop marks to indicate the presence of archaeological sites beneath. The film is a study of a territory, and the marks and wounds that it bears of a history of pillage, but also a portrait of the people that inhabit it (farmers, antique dealers, amateur archaeologists, local historians) and their symbiotic relationship to the landscape.

Followed by a conversation with Maeve Brennan hosted by Ed Lawrenson.

Friday 9 May: At All Costs (Koutkekout)

In Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, we are invited to see how the arts play a vital role in the lives of the brave and spirited Haitian community. Against a backdrop of poverty, violence and fear, and interrupted by the sound of machine gun fire, an ensemble of actors and their determined artistic director rehearse for an upcoming festival. Through monologues, poetry, dance, the performers act in resistance to the struggle, corruption and pain that surrounds them. Countless obstacles must be overcome in order for their voices to be heard, but the show will continue to go on at all costs.

Followed by a conversation with Joseph Hillel hosted by Dieter Deswarte.

Saturday 10 May: Being Blue + On Weaving

Being Blue
Luke Fowler | 2024 | UK | 18’ | Digital | English spoken

Being Blue is the latest of Fowler’s biographical films, documenting Derek Jarman’s domestic and artistic haven, Prospect Cottage. Fowler’s lens, shooting on his signature 16mm, gazes across the house, its contents, the garden which Jarman painstakingly tended to in the final years of his life and the surrounding Kentish coast with a vibrancy reflecting Jarman’s research of colour. A previously unheard interview with Jarman and Tilda Swinton, discovered by Fowler whilst filming, forms part of a rich soundscape that also includes music from Jarman’s collaborators.

On Weaving
Luke Fowler & Corin Sworn | 2025 | UK | 26 | Digital | English spoken

On Weaving is collaborative film by artists Luke Fowler and Corin Sworn that reflects on the legacy of textile designer Bernat Klein (1922-2014). Born in Serbia, Klein emigrated to the UK in the post-war period and based his textile manufacturing business in the Scottish Borders. Developed as part of a residency at Alchemy Film & Arts, the film weaves together two portraits: of the region’s famous textile industry and of High Sunderland, the modernist house that Peter Womersley designed for Klein near Selkirk – a house “stitched” into the Scottish landscape that inspired Klein’s textile designs.

Followed by a conversation with Luke Fowler and Corin Sworn hosted by Lasse Johansson.

Sunday 11 May: Becoming Landscape + Memory is an Animal, It Barks with Many Mouths

Becoming Landscape
Eva Giolo / 2023 / Belgium, Canada / 20’ / Digital / English spoken

A portrait of Fogo Island, off the Eastern coast of Canada. Giolo approaches the unique environment of the island – human, geological, floral – proposing an indivisibility between landscapes and the bodies that inhabit them. Shot in her distinctly frontal style, a series of 16mm tableaux hint to the relationship between observation and composition, between seeing and dreaming. As someone reads, “a landscape is a state of mind”, or more accurately a “state of mind is a landscape.”

In Eva Giolo’s latest work the resonances of place, magic and myth unfold through play. Attendant to the landscape through a child’s-eye, the film streams into the specific, hidden, and vast geologies of the Dolomite mountains, through the trills and murmurs of Ladin, the minority Rhaeto-Romance language spoken in the region. As the children narrate local folklore, this language and its oral traditions, passed from body to body, itself becomes corporeal and indivisible from the land.

Followed by a conversation with Eva Giolo hosted by Lucy Parker.