News Story
FLAMIN Fellowship 2022-23 selected artists. (Top left to bottom right) Chris Childs, Asmaa Jama, Ben Dawson, Tobi Onabolu, Bo Choy, Ronan Mackenzie
Six early-career artist-filmmakers have been selected for the fifth edition of Film London’s FLAMIN Fellowship scheme, a development programme offering mentoring and funding alongside access to audiences, curators and established artist advisors.
The FLAMIN Fellowship aims to support the most exciting, innovative and challenging moving image practices from filmmakers at the early stages of their careers. Investing £15,000 in artists' development bursaries, each artist will receive seed finance of £2,500 to develop new work.
Selected from over 160 applications and assessed by a board comprising of producers, artists and Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network, the selected artists are:
Chris Childs, Bus Film (2022), video still
Bo Choy, War of Perception (2020), film still
Finding the world of artist filmmaking via different routes, the six selected artists employ a wide range of innovative and creative approaches to the moving image. This includes but is not limited to hand-drawn animation, inter-weaving personal footage with staged scenes, layering multimedia, and combining dance and performance with poetry.
Projects supported through this round of The Fellowship explore a variety of topical themes and viewpoints, such as delving into the liberation and confinement that technologies can have on society and individuals, the notion and construct of Blackness through time and space, and investigating queer histories through the creation of game-like environments and characters. Other projects will explore how folklore traditions and ancient rituals speak to the tensions of our contemporary world such as post-industrialism and migration, and how memory loss can be presented through physical decay.
Tobi Onabolu, Dear Black Child (2021), production image. Photo by Karis Beaumont
Now in its fifth edition, The FLAMIN Fellowship is going from strength to strength, having built a reputation for facilitating creative experimentation, step-changes in artistic ambition and allowing artists room to fail and change. This development of artists’ work and wider practice through mentorship and peer group building are some of the most important ways to support artists today. We are very excited to be working with such a talented group of filmmakers over the next 10 months, and are looking forward to seeing them being a part of the growing numbers of highly regarded and award-winning moving image artists.Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network
Ben Dawson, I express myself best in silence (2022), video still
Asmaa Jama, Before We Disappear (2021), video still
Established in 2017 by Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network (FLAMIN) and supported by Arts Council England and established with support from The Fenton Arts Trust, the Fellowship builds on FLAMIN’s successful work at the core of the UK’s moving image ecology. With a focus on early-career practitioners, The Fellowship complements FLAMIN’s wide-ranging programme supporting early, mid and later-career artists through FLAMIN Animations, FLAMIN Productions, the Film London Jarman Award and a range of significant development opportunities.
The FLAMIN Fellowship is widely known for spotlighting new and exciting artists’ moving image talent with bold visions and diverse perspectives - attracting hundreds of applications. It is vital that we support and nurture this exploration and discourse, providing opportunities to not only develop creative practice, but to engage in critical professional and peer support. I would like to extend my thanks to Arts Council England for their invaluable support of The Fellowship.Adrian Wootton OBE, Chief Executive of Film London and the British Film Commission
Ronan Mackenzie, It's Raining, It's Pouring (2019), video still. Commissioned through BBC New Creatives
Alumni of The FLAMIN Fellowship include recent winner of awards at Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival and the Arts Foundation, Onyeka Igwe, as well as Ollie Dook, Jennifer Martin, Antonia Luxem and Max Colson, who have staged solo exhibitions at Humber Street Gallery, Hull; Turf Projects, Croydon; Well Projects, Margate and Vitrine, London, respectively.
Previous invited speakers on The FLAMIN Fellowship workshop programme include artists Larry Achiampong, Esther Johnson, Onyeka Igwe, Noor Afshan Mirza & Brad Butler, Hetain Patel, Imran Perretta, Heather Phillipson and Marianna Simnett. Arts organisations including ACME Studios, Arts Council England, Artquest, Auguste Orts, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, BFI, CPH:DOX, DACS, Film and Video Umbrella, Forma, Jerwood Arts, LUX, Tate and the Wellcome Trust have all contributed to the professional development arm of the scheme, and each of the FLAMIN Fellows is provided one-to-one mentoring with Pinky Ghundale, who is producer to Turner Prize and Academy Award winner Steve McQueen.
