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2022 Archive

Since 2004 FOCAL International Awards competition is dedicated to the promotion and celebration of archival footage and its contribution to the creative and cultural industries. We congratulate all the past winners.

Best Use of Footage in a Short Film Production

2022 Winner

Lost Connections

Producer(s):
Graham Relton, Sue Howard, Frank Gray
Editor(s):
Andrew Burns
Footage Archive Producer:
Curators at the nine English regional film archives and three Home Nation film archives (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland)
Filmmaker:
Andrew Burns
Archival Sources:
East Anglia Film Archive, London’s Screen Archives, Media Archive for Central England, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales Screen and Sound Archive, North East Film Archive, North West Film Archive, Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive, Screen Archive South East, South West Film & Television Archive, Wessex Film and Sound Archive, Yorkshire Film Archive
Production Company:
Yorkshire Film Archive
Country of Production:
United Kingdom

Synopsis

An echo of our own contemporary experiences, Lost Connections is an archive-based film which gives us hope for the future by connecting with the past.
Comprising over a century of remarkable footage, the film responds to the unprecedented lockdown experience when many of us were forced to stop, reflect, question and re-assess what is most important.
Lost Connections is not a film about the pandemic – it is about recovery, hope, renewal, the human character, sadness, joy, what we really value, and a collective desire for reconnection with each other, our communities, and the world around us.
Lost Connections is a unique curatorial collaboration of all twelve regional and national UK film archives (RNAs), supported by Film Hub North on behalf of the BFI Film Audience Network through National Lottery funding and screened at cinemas across the UK, online and in schools.
Andy Burns, Yorkshire Film Archive editor and filmmaker, meticulously crafted dialogue between the past and the present, using nearly 200 of the 500 films put forward by archive curators.
Narrator Hussina Raja provided a connecting voice, responding to the imagery with a common and recurring thread that weaves through the film: “Can we always be connected?”

Shortlisted

Lost Connections

Producer(s):
Graham Relton, Sue Howard, Frank Gray
Editor(s):
Andrew Burns
Footage Archive Producer:
Curators at the nine English regional film archives and three Home Nation film archives (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland)
Filmmaker:
Andrew Burns
Archival Sources:
East Anglia Film Archive, London’s Screen Archives, Media Archive for Central England, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales Screen and Sound Archive, North East Film Archive, North West Film Archive, Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive, Screen Archive South East, South West Film & Television Archive, Wessex Film and Sound Archive, Yorkshire Film Archive
Production Company:
Yorkshire Film Archive
Country of Production:
United Kingdom

Synopsis

An echo of our own contemporary experiences, Lost Connections is an archive-based film which gives us hope for the future by connecting with the past.
Comprising over a century of remarkable footage, the film responds to the unprecedented lockdown experience when many of us were forced to stop, reflect, question and re-assess what is most important.
Lost Connections is not a film about the pandemic – it is about recovery, hope, renewal, the human character, sadness, joy, what we really value, and a collective desire for reconnection with each other, our communities, and the world around us.
Lost Connections is a unique curatorial collaboration of all twelve regional and national UK film archives (RNAs), supported by Film Hub North on behalf of the BFI Film Audience Network through National Lottery funding and screened at cinemas across the UK, online and in schools.
Andy Burns, Yorkshire Film Archive editor and filmmaker, meticulously crafted dialogue between the past and the present, using nearly 200 of the 500 films put forward by archive curators.
Narrator Hussina Raja provided a connecting voice, responding to the imagery with a common and recurring thread that weaves through the film: “Can we always be connected?”

The Silent Pulse of the Universe

Director:
Ben Proudfoot
Producer(s):
Elizabeth Brooke, Abby Lynn Kang Davis, Gabriel Berk Godoi, Ben Proudfoot, Brandon Somerhalder, Sarah Stewart
Footage Archive Producer:
Sarah Stewart
Archival Sources:
Newspaper, BBC, Personal, Kino, Pond5
Production Company:
Breakwater Studios
Country of Production:
United States

Synopsis

Jocelyn Bell was a graduate student at Cambridge in 1967 when she pushed through the skepticism from her superiors to make one of the greatest astrophysical discoveries of the twentieth century. While Jocelyn was belittled and sexually harassed by the media, the Nobel Prize was awarded to her professor and his boss.

We Were There to Be There

Director:
Mike Plante, Jason Willis
Producer(s):
Mike Plante
Archival Sources:
Joe Target Rees/Target Video, Napa State Hospital, Napa County Historical Society, Berkeley Barb, Individuals: Jill Hoffman-Kowal, Ruby Ray, Jim Jocoy, Sam Edwards, Brad Lapin
Production Company:
Field of Vision
Country of Production:
United States

Synopsis

Taking place as cuts to crucial social services loom under Ronald Reagan, two legendary punk bands come together to perform a show for patients and staff at a psychiatric facility. Captured on tape by seminal video art collective Target Video, “We Were There Be There” threads moments from the Napa State Hospital set with commentary from band members and those who witnessed it firsthand, providing a crucial backstory for the recording of one of the most iconic shows in the history of music, at a critical moment in the future of mental health care in the US.