Meet the Cinema Rediscovered 2021 Film Critics Workshop participants
With just two weeks to go until the 5th edition of Cinema Rediscovered (28 July – 1 Aug 2021) kicks off, the festival announces the eleven participants selected for this year’s Film Critics’ Workshop.
This opportunity is designed to support aspiring and early career film critics to develop their practice, meet other critics, and learn from those working in the industry. This is the inaugural online edition of the Film Critics’ Workshop and will be running from July – Sept 2021. Find out more about the eleven rising critics taking part and keep an eye out for updates and writings from them following the festival – and in the future!
The workshop is led by critic and improvisor Tara Judah, with guest speakers including filmmaker and editor Gina Telaroli (MUBI Notebook) Jonathan Bygraves (film historian, programmer and video editor) and Jemma Desai (programmer, researcher and writer.)
Angela Moore is a half-English, half-Khasi writer living in London. She grew up in Cambridge, studied Sociology at Warwick, and now works for a creative writing charity in London. She has always spent an inordinate amount of time at the cinema – especially when she worked at the BFI and got free tickets.
Angela is particularly interested in old Hollywood and other repertory cinema, but she loves films from all eras and countries. She is drawn to charisma and stardom, conscious artificiality, melodrama, heightened emotions, camp, fashion and style, explorations of identity, music and dance, and cinema that engages all the senses (or seems to). In criticism, she is interested in historical context and re-evaluation, the stories and personalities behind the films, personal responses, and good writing. She believes a bad but interesting film is sometimes better than a serviceable one.
You can read some of her work here. You can find her on the dancefloor or eating pasta, probably.
Catherine Putman is based in Brighton, and has MA and BA degrees in Film Studies from the University of Sussex. From a working-class background and striving to make changes in her life, Catherine proudly gained her degrees as a mature student after a thirty-year gap in education. Passionate about researching and writing on film, Catherine has subsequently had film articles published in Senses of Cinema.
Catherine’s debut piece focuses on Kelly Reichardt’s ‘unique temporal rhythms’ in the ‘anti-Hollywood’, Meeks Cutoff (2010). Her second article, featured in the ‘World Poll’ issue of Senses, pays tribute to #fridayfilmclub. This virtual club was set up by the independent filmmaker, Carol Morley – via Twitter – to bring film lovers together during the first lockdown. Catherine writes on the films of other women filmmakers such as Clio Barnard, Lucrecia Martel, and Andrea Arnold. Whilst many people are struggling financially due to the pandemic, Catherine regularly recommends and writes on films that are free to stream via her social media.
Charlotte Geater is originally from Suffolk but lives in Walthamstow, and is a freelance writer and poetry editor. Her poetry has been published in The White Review and Strange Horizons. She won the 2021 UEA New Forms Award for a novel in progress which blends the forms of fiction and essay; it partly focuses on films about rural Suffolk. She is interested in experimental cinema, short films, romantic comedies, and rural life on film.
Twitter: @tambourine
Clare Brunton is a freelance film critic. A graduate of York St John University where she studied Film and Television Production and an ex-Film and Media secondary school teacher, she now spends her time watching and writing about film and tv, without the noisy teenagers telling her it’s boring! She has written for Film Stories, CineChat, CRPWrites as well as others.
A frequent podcast guest, she also co-hosts her own show W-Rated, which reevaluates the ‘worst’ films as voted by IMDB. A big fan of independent and female led cinema, she also loves a big screen Marvel adventure.
Twitter: clareellenhope
Instagram: clareellenhope
Ian Wang is a writer based in London and Manchester. He likes thinking about film, memory, the East Asian diaspora, and internet culture, and his writing often explores the relationships between all four. He is also particularly interested in the history of international animation. His writing on film and culture has been published in the Quietus, Little White Lies, Dazed, Hyperallergic, It’s Nice That and Bright Wall/Dark Room. He was previously an intern at the Guardian.
Twitter: @iantwang
Jake Abatan is a freelance film writer based in Brighton. He holds a BA (Hons) in English and Film Studies and earned his MA in Film Studies from the University of Sussex in 2020, writing his dissertation on James Dean and CGI star re-animation. He currently serves as Deputy Film Editor for The Indiependent, a volunteer lead arts and culture site with a strong focus on fostering writers at the start of their career. His main interests include animation, auteur studies, and genre film.
Website: www.jake-abatan.com
Twitter: @AI3atan
Malaika Kegode is a writer, performer and producer. She has appeared on stages at a number of festivals and literary events including WOMAD and Edinburgh Book Festival. She has published two poetry collections with Burning Eye Books, and the playtext of her debut theatre show Outlier is published by Salamander Street. An autobiographical gig-theatre show created with prog-rock band Jakabol, Outlier was the first piece of new writing to appear on Bristol Old Vic’s main stage in 2021. In addition to her own writing, Malaika is a poetry mentor and workshop leader.
She is the founder and lead producer of Milk Poetry, an organisation that produces innovative spoken word events in a supportive environment. Outside of poetry, she is passionate about writing on the themes of cinema, culture and race. Malaika also studies film and has worked as a programme selector for Encounters Film Festival and Tallinn Black Nights. Her debut short poetry-film Wide as the Sea, an exploration of millennial Queer culture, wasmade over the 2021 lockdown on a £10 budget. It has been shown at various online events, including Queer Vision’s Sofa Club. She is excited to continue exploring genre, form and the power of the written word made visual.
Nadira Begum is a freelance writer and contributor for Obscur Media. A recent English graduate from Manchester, Nadira’s interests lie in film and literature, with a particular passion for texts that explore love and familial bonds. Her favourite author is James Baldwin and her favourite directors include Greta Gerwig and David Fincher.
Twitter: @nadirawrites
Instagram: @iamnadirabegum
Yasmin Begum is a writer, activist and creative practitioner based in Cardiff, Wales. She currently works as a British Film Institute Youth Fan Consultant, and has worked with Ffilm Cymru Wales, Inclusive Cinema, Hansh and more. Yasmin is really passionate about engagement, equality, evaluation and diversity.
Thomas Flew is Editorial Assistant at Sight & Sound magazine. They are currently completing an MA in Film and Screen Media with Film Programming and Curating at Birkbeck, University of London, with a dissertation focussing on films by Josephine Decker and Freud’s theory of the uncanny.
Twitter: @thomasflew
Yasmin Omar is the entertainment writer at Harper’s Bazaar, where she writes actor and filmmaker profiles, cover stories and think pieces for print and digital. A Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, she started her online review column ’Why You Should Watch’ for Bazaar in 2019 and regularly covers all manner of movies, from foreign-language features to American indies and superhero blockbusters.
Yasmin annually reports from key film festivals – she waited 4.5 hours to catch the first screening of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood at Cannes and maintains every second was worth it – as well as red-carpet events. Her writing has been published in the Financial Times, the Guardian, Digital Spy, Town & Country, Girls on Tops (Read Me) and Film Cred.
Twitter: @yasmin_omar6
Letterboxd: @yasmin_omar6
Instagram: @yasmin242
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