Past events
Anthropology and Performance: A Critical Conversation
Friday 16 April 2010, Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama, University of Manchester
In celebration of the 60th anniversary of the arrival of Victor Turner at the University of Manchester
Keynote Speakers:
- Richard Schechner, Professor in Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University
- Edith Turner, Honorary Doctor of Humanities and Lecturer at the University of Virginia
Visual Dialogues Seminars
For a number of years, the Granada Centre collaborated with the Centre for Screen Studies, in the Music and Drama discipline area, to host a series of seminars based on interviews with leading filmmakers. These seminars came to an end, at least for the time being, with the departure of Alan Marcus, the director of the Centre for Screen Studies, to the University of Aberdeen in January 2007.
Richard Werbner
Richard Werbner In Conversation
Shade Seekers and the Mixer
Date/Time: Tuesday 28 November 2006 at 5pm
Venue: Bragg Lecture Theatre, Martin Harris Centre, Coupland Street
Richard Werbner is Honorary Research Professor in Visual Anthropology at Manchester Univ. and Director of the International Centre for Contemporary Research.
His books include Memory and the Postcolony (1998) and Reasonable Radicals and Citizenship in Botswana: The Public Anthropology of Kalanga Elites (2004). His current project is a study of séances, counselling and subjectivities in Botswana's time of AIDS.
In this Visual Dialogues semianr, Dick will screen and discuss his latest film, Shade Seekers and the Mixer (2006), made with the Moremi villagers in Botswana.
Michael Eaton
Michael Eaton In Conversation
Portrait of an Invisible Man
Date/Time: Tuesday 28 February 2006 at 5pm
Venue: Bragg Lecture Theatre, Martin Harris Centre, Coupland Street
Michael Eaton, who received an MBE for 'his services to the film industry', is a screenwriter with an impressive ability for dramatising controversial stories. His credits include Shipman (2002), Shoot to Kill (1991) and Why Lockerbie? (1990). His thriller, Fellow Traveller (1989), won the Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Screenplay.
His films have also been known for their powerful casts, such as in Signs and Wonders (1995) starring James Earl Jones, Prunella Scales and Donald Pleasance. Although best known for his screenwriting, Eaton originally studied anthropology at Cambridge and edited the first serious book in English on the cinéma verité auteur, Jean Rouch, Anthropology-Reality-Cinema (BFI, 1979). His scholarly books also include Chinatown (BFI, 1998), on the classic Jack Nicholson film.
Fresh from the set of the new BBC1 series, New Street Law, currently filming in Manchester, Michael Eaton will be talking about the often publicly invisible role of the screenwriter and how he researches and creates compelling narratives drawn from real events.
Hugh Brody
Hugh Brody In Conversation
Inside Storytelling
Date/Time: Tuesday 14 February 2006 at 5pm
Venue: Bragg Lecture Theatre, Martin Harris Centre, Coupland Street
Hugh Brody is almost impossible to define. Director and writer of feature films, including 1919 (1985) starring Paul Scofield and Maria Schell; a number of classic documentaries, such as The Eskimos of Pond Inlet (1975), On Indian Land (1986), Hunters and Bombers (1990) and Time Immemorial (1991); and author of two books of fiction and seven non-fiction texts, including On Skid Row (19710, The People's Land (1975), Maps and Dreams (1981) and The Other Side of Eden (2001).
Trained as an anthropologist at Oxford, Hugh Brody has combined his time of living in the Canadian Arctic and the southern Kalahari, with photographing the sculptures of Anthony Gormley in Australia. In this Visual Dialgoues seminar, he is going to explore the processes and ethics of storytelling in films, books and oral culture.
Jane Treays
Jane Treays In Conversation
Capturing the Extraordinary
Date/Time: Tuesday 6 December 2005 at 5pm
Venue: Bragg Lecture Theatre, Martin Harris Centre, Coupland Street
Winner of this year's Royal Television Society Award for Best Network Documentary for Extraordinary Families (2005), Jane Treays is one of the foremost documentary directors in British Television. Of her controversial film, Men in the Woods (2001), the Mirror wrote: "Acclaimed filmmaker Jane Treays brilliantly draws on personal experience to tell of the effects of indecent exposure on children. Jane was brave to make this film and Channel 4 was bold to screen it". 2,400 calls were received following its broadcast.
Of her film One Man, Six Wives and 29 Children (1999), broadcast on ITV, the Daily Telegraphy wrote: "Jane Treays has fashioned yet another excellent film, giving her subjects time and space, from behind the camera come incendiary questions"
Kim Longinotto
Kim Longinotto In Conversation
Directing Documentaries
Date/Time: Tuesday 15 November 2005 at 5pm
Venue: Bragg Lecture Theatre, Martin Harris Centre, Coupland Street
Internationally acclaimed director Kim Longinotto is one of the preeminent documentary filmmakers working today, renowned for creating extraordinary human portraits and tackling controversial topics with sensitivity and compassion. Longinotto’s films have won international acclaim, including her latest film, Sisters in Law (2005) which won two prizes at the Cannes Film Festival.
Other accolades include the Amnesty International DEON Award at IDFA for The Day I will Never Forget (2002); the Grand Prize for Best Documentary San Francisco Int’l film Festival for Divorce Iranian Style (1998); Best Documentary at Films de Femmes, Creteil for Dream Girls (1994); and Outstanding Documentary at the SF Gay and Lesbian Film Festival for Shinjuku Boys (1995).