From suitcases to scissors, photographs to biscuit tins, the objects we inherit embody emotions and memories no matter how random they may seem. These films explore the meanings of unusual heirlooms for the people who have inherited them and, collectively, capture the power of inherited objects in creating personal, family, and national identities. They were made with Professors Joanne Begiato and Katie Barclay and the Inheriting the Family research network. Watch them here: https://inheritingthefamily.org/films/
This film examines the moment when women operated barrage balloons during the Second World War. Ever since I watched a Pathé newsreel passing judgement on the bodies of servicewomen on balloon sites, I have been interested in how both the balloons and their operators were represented as strange objects. I made it for the MK Gallery and Paul Mellon Centre conference on the painter Laura Knight, The Show is On (January 2022). Thanks to historian Peter Garwood for his help.
What did it feel like to undergo surgery before anaesthetic was invented? How did surgeons manage this intense experience? The history of surgery is full of tales of fortitude, empathy, bravado and fatigue, as the historians involved with the Surgery & Emotion project at the University of Roehampton have discovered. I put together this set of films combining Zoom interviews with music and images that help evoke some of these stories, watch them here: http://www.surgeryandemotion.com/films
Made for Hidden Persuaders research project at Birkbeck, University of London
The tobacco industry in the second half of the twentieth century is a rich site for the study of hidden persuasion, whether in its advertisements, its government lobbying, its science funding or its campaigns and debates in the public sphere. Notes from the American Air Wars takes one such debate, between clean air activist Clara Gouin and Tobacco Institute spokesperson Connie Drath, and contextualises it with the help of historian Sarah Milov, author of The Cigarette: A Political History (2019). The film draws on clips from the vast public reserve of old cigarette commercials, on the words of social observer and author of The Hidden Persuaders (1957), Vance Packard, and on documents disclosed by the industry in the Master Settlement Agreement of 1998.
For more films on Hidden Persuaders see: http://www7.bbk.ac.uk/hiddenpersuaders/documentaries/three-films-about-mass-influence-by-lily-ford/
The Stuff that Screams are made of, 2021
Made for Hidden Persuaders research project at Birkbeck, University of London
The Stuff that Screams are made of looks at the phenomenon of the vocal crowds of fans around the Beatles in the early 1960s. The title phrase was coined by Bob Wooler, compere of Liverpool’s Cavern Club which hosted the band in its early days, but also proposes to examine the scream itself and its function. The passionate reactions of the mainly young women who watched a concert or encountered the musicians in public caught media attention as well as a good measure of disapproval and some alarm. The film documents the moral panic that ensued, with a lively roster of fans, academics and practitioners which includes the writer Linda Grant.
For more films on Hidden Persuaders see: http://www7.bbk.ac.uk/hiddenpersuaders/documentaries/three-films-about-mass-influence-by-lily-ford/
Made for the Hidden Persuaders project at Birkbeck, University of London
This film tackles the tangle of anxieties that arise from living in our contemporary connected society. Smartphone use, data gathering and performative social media pressures are examined by writer Timandra Harkness, author of Big Data: Does Size Matter? (2016), and historian Charlie Williams (Queen Mary University of London). The film also makes use of resources generated during the life of the Hidden Persuaders project at Birkbeck: an interview filmed in 2015 with the late Zygmunt Bauman, in which the renowned philosopher and sociologist addressed the idea of brainwashing as a functional component of modern life, and a film made by Misty Scrimgeour and Esme Ramlal when they were Year 12 students as part of the project’s outreach programme with Camden schools in 2018.
For more films on Hidden Persuaders see: http://www7.bbk.ac.uk/hiddenpersuaders/documentaries/three-films-about-mass-influence-by-lily-ford/
The story of Austro-Argentine psychoanalyst Marie Langer highlights the difficulty of reconciling a psy vocation with political activism. Twice an emigrée, Langer brought the critical tools of psychoanalysis to the social and individual problems of her time. This film documents her journeys across different continents and ideological regimes with the help of those who knew her and those who followed in her footsteps. I made it for Birkbeck’s Hidden Persuaders project, and it’s been screened at the UCL Psychoanalysis Unit, London, the National Library of Argentina and Fundación MALBA in Buenos Aires, and Mexico City’s UNAM. You can watch it here and read about it here.
This film tells the story of Ella Pilcher, sister and collaborator of Percy Pilcher. Together the Pilchers built and flew gliders in the 1890s which were at the cutting edge of aeronautical development in Britain, but Ella has never been given her own credit. The film reflects on the process of rediscovering such a figure, and documents her induction into the annals of the moment, Wikipedia.
This portrait of British painter George Shaw was made in collaboration with the Paul Mellon Centre for the Study of British Art. I was invited to make a film on Shaw for the 2018 retrospective of his work at the Yale Centre for British Art, and chose to focus on his use of Humbrol paint. The film goes over the associations with model-making, hobbyism and plain recalcitrance that the paint holds for this voluble deep thinker, while observing him at work in his studio.
I produced this documentary with Dr Will Viney and Edmund Bolger, as part of Will’s Leverhulme-funded research into the cultural constructions around identical twins. We wanted to make a research film that was a little out of the ordinary – this has a 1:1 aspect ratio and innovative interview set-ups – as well as hear from twins themselves about their experiences.
This was made with an AHRC Cultural Engagement Fellowship at Birkbeck, and explored the history of the mothers of foundlings taken in by Bloomsbury’s Foundling Hospital, on the occasion of an exhibition curated by Professor Lynda Nead at the Foundling Museum, The Fallen Woman. It explored the difficulties around taking the testimonies that form an important part of the Foundling Hospital’s archives as an accurate portrait of the women who gave them, often under intense pressure to conform to the guardians’ redemptive narratives in order to secure a safe upbringing for their child. I worked with actors from Synergy Theatre to voice the testimonies.
This is the trailer for a four-part feature documentary about the writer and storyteller John Berger, made with an ensemble of directors including Tilda Swinton and Christopher Roth. I produced this film with Colin MacCabe over six years. It premiered at the 2016 Berlinale and has screened around the world. It is distributed by Curzon in the UK and Ireland, Icarus in the US and Canada and Taskovski Films in the rest of the world. See seasonsinquincy.com for more details.