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FOCAL Awards 2023 Shortlisted Nominees

2023 shortlisted nominations

Solus

Director:
Jonathan Brooks
Producer(s):
Jonathan Brooks
Footage Archive Producer:
Jonathan Brooks
Archival Sources:
NASA
Production Company:
United Magic Studios
Country of Production:
United Kingdom

Synopsis

A lone astronaut aboard the ISS suddenly loses communication with Earth. He soon begins to experience a series of strange events that put him and the entire station at risk…

The Looking Glass Anthology

Director:
Sam Kwan, Eoin O'Callaghan, Paul McClintock
Producer(s):
Paul McClintock, Bronagh McAtasney
Archive Researcher/ Producer:
Paul McClintock, Bronagh McAtasney
Archival Sources:
UTV, BFI
Production Company:
Northern Ireland Screen, PRONI, BAI, DFC
Country of Production:
United Kingdom, Ireland

Synopsis

The Looking Glass Anthology is a collection of beautiful, thought-provoking, audio-visual works by a range of musicians and poets that capture what the archives mean to them on a personal level.

The four works in the collection include pieces from Matt McGinn, Rachael Boyd, Stephen Sexton and Eoin O'Callaghan. Each film is different in its own way, yet also complimentary of the whole.

The project challenges us to put ourselves in the shoes of those from the past and imagine what the future may be like, as well as to look within ourselves for answers, in this way being both retrospective and introspective. The pieces are thought provoking, uplifting, bittersweet, challenging, sentimental, heart breaking and inspiring.

Cost of Living

Producer(s):
Graham Relton
Editor(s):
Andy Burns
Film maker:
Andy Burns
Executive Producer:
Martin Hall, Lauren Stephenson, Steve Rawle
Research and Curatorial:
Graham Relton
Research Support:
David Parsons
Digitisation Support:
Montserrat Rovira Prieto
Archival Sources:
Yorkshire and North East Film Archives
Production Company:
Yorkshire and North East Film Archive, York St John University
Country of Production:
United Kingdom

Synopsis

“We have cut down. We have!”

“I'll make do without during the week, in order to be able to get three square meals at the weekends when the bairns are home.”

“When you look at the conditions…they're not fit for animals, never mind human beings.”

These are the words of those on the front line of a cost-of-living crisis, but this isn’t 2023, these are the voices of everyday people facing the tough choices fifty years ago, and now revealed as part of a timely short film that reflects on the pandemic cycles of boom and bust that continue to affect us.

The film expresses the fury and anger of generations whose essential needs for safe housing, secure work and full bellies go unfulfilled. With an uncanny sense of déjà vu, these found voices and images from the Yorkshire and North East Film Archives, evoke a past that feels uncomfortably contemporary.

Commissioned by York St John University’s Cinema and Social Justice Project the film exposes our collective memories of past crises, and the cries for social and economic justice that continue to ring so loudly in our ears today.

A History Of The World According To Getty Images

Director:
Richard Misek
Producer(s):
Thorvald Nilsen
Footage Archive Producer:
Richard Misek
Archival Sources:
Getty Images, Critical Past, NASA
Production Company:
Once Aurora
Country of Production:
Norway

Synopsis

Getty Images is one of the largest commercial image banks in the world. Many defining images of the last century – images that form a part of our collective memory – only exist behind Getty’s paywall. This film forms a meticulously crafted journey through some of the most significant moments of historical change caught on camera, and an impassioned commentary on how commercial image banks influence what we see. Through an intervention revealed at the end of the narrative, the film also forms a small but direct act of resistance to Getty’s privatization of the past.