Faces|Voices wins Best Research Film award

AHRC Research in Film Awards 2019
Co-directors Paul Basu and Chris Allen receive the prize for Best Research Film at the AHRC Research in Film Awards 2019, BFI Southbank, London.

We are delighted to announce that Faces|Voices has won the Best Research Film Award at the AHRC Research in Film Awards 2019. Faces|Voices is the first of a series of films we have produced in collaboration with The Light Surgeons as part of the [Re:]Entanglements project. Participants in the film voice their responses to the silent faces captured in Northcote Thomas‘s physical type portraits, photographed during his anthropological surveys in Nigeria and Sierra Leone between 1909 and 1915.

AHRC Research in Film Awards 2019
Yainkain, Head wife of Chief Sehi Bureh of Tormah, Sierra Leone, photographed by Northcote Thomas in 1915 as featured in Faces|Voices. It was powerful to see the faces of those photographed by Thomas projected on the large screen at NFT1 in London.

The Awards ceremony took place on 12 November 2019 at the British Film Institute on London’s Southbank. It was wonderful seeing Faces|Voices projected on the huge screen of the National Film Theatre, and of course it was a great honour to win the top prize. Paul Basu received the prize alongside co-director Chris Allen of The Light Surgeons.

The award resulted in some great media covered for Voices|Faces and the broader [Re:]Entanglements project. Please explore some of the links below.

BBC Radio 3 Arts & Ideas Podcast
BBC Radio 3 Podcast, interview with Paul Basu about Faces|Voices, 16 November 2019.
Article in The Guardian
The Guardian, In Pictures photo-essay about Northcote Thomas’s physical type portraits and the [Re:]Entanglements project, ‘Confronting the colonial archive’, 19 November 2019.
Black History Month article
Black History Month article on Faces|Voices, 7 November 2019.
BBC World Service Newsday interview
BBC World Service Newsday interview with Paul Basu about the [Re:]Entanglements project, 20 November 2019.
Article in The Conversation
The Conversation article about the [Re:]Entanglements project and Faces|Voices film, 15 November 2019.
Article in The Independent
The Independent article about the [Re:]Entanglements project and Faces|Voices film, 22 November 2019.

We would especially like to thank the participants in Faces|Voices – Ebony Francis, Robert Kelechi Isiodu, Kofi Mawuli Klu, Yvonne Mbanefo and Esther Stanford-Xose – whose eloquent commentaries on Northcote Thomas’s photographs made the film such a success.

AHRC Research in Film Awards 2019

One thought on “Faces|Voices wins Best Research Film award

  • December 1, 2019 at 12:29 am
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