Platform Films spotlights Jill Daniels
The long established and award winning Platform Films is currently spotlighting Jill’s films on its Youtube channel.
If Not Now film wins awards
If Not Now is an essay film addressed to my Jewish great-great grandmother, Rebecca, who lived and died in Brick Lane in London’s East End.
Interview at FICMEC
Jill’s interview on Resisters at FICMEC (Film Festival of Communal Memory), Nador, Morocco in December 2022.
The interview starts 32 mins in.
Resisters film wins awards
Berlin Art Week
Breathing Still 2020 is being screened as part of the Berlin Art Week.
Podcast interview
My podcast interview with Leaders’ Council alongside David Blunkett as part of their talks with leadership figures in an attempt to understand what leadership means in Britain and Northern Ireland today.
Scott Challinor who interviewed me commented, ‘Hosting a show like this, where you speak to genuine leaders who have been there and done it, either on a national stage or within a crucial industry sector, is an absolute honour.’
51Zero Festival presents and evening with Jill Daniels
51ZERO FESTIVAL PRESENTS AN EVENING WITH JILL DANIELS. Special evening of two short films and a Q & A with Jill Daniels. My Private Life II is a split-screen view of the effects on Daniels’ family of her father’s unacknowledged sexuality; Not Reconciled has the ghosts of Carlos and Rosa, young republican fighters in the Spanish Civil War, roam Belchite, a town in Northern Spain decimated by the war.
Breathing Still – wins awards
Jill’s latest film, Breathing Still , has won some lovely award since its release.
Breathing Still – new film
Breathing Still is a compelling portrait of Berlin, as the right-wing nationalist party the AfD wins members in Parliament for the first time. Weaving together her own voice-over, stills, archive and found footage, Daniels’ flâneuse, a follower of the Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, who was assassinated by fascists nearly a century ago, explores Berlin’s memorials to Luxemburg and to the Jews who once lived there.
Award for My Private Life II
Jill’s film My Private Life II won the Best Experimental Film award at the 55th Ann Arbor Festival.
Arts and Humanities Research Council film nomination
Jill’s last film, Private Life II, has been nominated for the Arts and Humanities Research Council Innovation Award, held at BAFTA, London.
Screenwriting and narrative technique symposium
Recently a fascinating symposium was held in York on screenwriting and narrative technique for the essay film courtesy of BAFTSS Essay Film Special Interest Group. Thanks to Romana Turina for organising.
Review of Journey to the South
Journey to the South was recently reviewed in Filmuforia
“Documentary award winner Jill Daniel’s poetic and often banal voyage of discovery takes her south to the French Riviera where in Menton and Castellar she discovers the villa used by writer Katherine Mansfield and kicks over the traces of a mysterious unsolved murder.
Very much in tune with Agnes Varda’s Cannes outing Faces, Places (2017), Daniel’s leisurely piece randomly engages with the French inhabitants she meets along the way. The photos and diary recollections of Katherine Mansfield give this piece a rewarding historical context as she alights upon ordinary life in rural France. Journey to the South is an artist’s meditation on life and death, on creativity and carving out a more satisfying future away from the gilded trappings of the past.”
‘Exploring themes of displacement, migration and change, Creature of the Estuary takes us on an entirely different poetic journey, through the muddy netherworld of the Thames Estuary. This new work by Eelyn Lee evokes a creature made of fragments of memory and fear: a montage, part fantasy, part travelogue and part requiem’.
Meredith Taylor
Filmuforia
Blurred boundaries
My article Blurred boundaries: remediation of found footage in experimental autobiographical documentary filmmaking will shortly be published in the new issue of Journal of Media Practice. It references My Private Life II and the installation work of Chantal Akerman. There are 50 online copies of the article for free download from the link below. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.
AHRC Film Awards at Bafta
AHRC Film Awards at Bafta
A good night at AHRC Film Awards at Bafta.
My Private Life II was nominated for the Innovation Award. The judges called the film ‘innovative and moving’.
Thanks to Catalin Brylla, Alan Gibson, Piotr Karter, Sandra Milner for all your help and support in making My Private Life II.
Filming the Personal at CCA in Glasgow
My film My Private Life II (2015) will be featured in a programme of films ‘Filming the Personal’ at CCA in Glasgow, co-curated by Sally Waterman and me. The programme was originally screened at Close-Up cinema in Shoreditch, London last April. Sally and I are taking part in a Q&A afterwards and we will be joined by filmmaker Duncan Cowles.
Filming the Personal, Close-Up cinema, London
21st April 2016
I have curated a film programme with Sally Waterman, which explores the dynamics of paternal relationships and will include My Private Life II, the split screen version of My Private Life. This event is held in association with the Moving Image Research Centre at University of East London and features work by the curators, as well as Duncan Cowles, Anthea Kennedy, Theresa Moerman, John Smith and Alia Syed.
Visible Evidence XXII Documentary Conference
While I was in Toronto in August at the Visible Evidence XXII Documentary Conference I was interviewed for the Rogers TV Macedonian Channel about my film Next Year in Lerin, the film about Macedonian refugees from the Greek Civil War. The link is www.macedonianedition.tv and the link to the interview itself here.
Award for The Border Crossing
The Border Crossing won a prize at the Athens Ohio, International Film and Video Festival, Ohio, USA. This festival has been going for over 30 years and is run by the fantastic Ruth Bradley so I am especially pleased.
http://www.ohio.edu/orgs/athensfest/
The Border Crossing screening at Athens, Ohio Film Festival
If you are in or near Athens, Ohio, USA today Monday 16th April The Border Crossing will be showing in the Athens Film and Video Festival at the Athena cinema at 3pm local time!!
Not Reconciled screening at South London Gallery
Not Reconciled will be showing at South London Gallery next Wednesday 18th at 7pm as part of Truth, Dare or Promise art and documentary revisited conference at Goldsmiths on 20th and 21st April.
Also screening is work by Miranda Pennell, Minou Norouzi and Max Schleser. More screenings at South London Gallery on 19th.
details and booking www.southlondongallery.org
to register for the conference which is FREE: truthdareorpromise@rhul.ac.uk
The Border Crossing
The full version of The Border Crossing is now up on Vimeo put up by the Annual Program Without Frontiers.
Truth, Dare or Promise – art and documentary conference
Truth, Dare or Promise, a conference revisiting art and documentary, will take place on 20th and 21st April 2012.
Co-organised by Royal Holloway, University of London, University of East London and University of Ulster. Taking place at Goldsmith’s, University of London.
NAB LG01 – (new Academic Building, LG is Lower Ground Floor)
NAB is 2 on the PDF Campus Map to be found at http://www.gold.ac.uk/find-us/
RSVP: TruthDareorPromise@rhul.ac.uk
In addition there are screenings at the South London Gallery, 18th and 19th April, starting at 7pm, cost £5/ £3 conc. Booking essential www.southlondongallery.org/ 020 7703 6120
Speakers include:
John Ellis, Professor of Media Arts, Royal Holloway University of London,
Babette Mangolte, artist/ filmmaker
Miranda Pennell, UK artist filmmaker:
Zineb Sedira, Algerian/French filmmaker based in London:
Eyal Sivan, Israeli filmmaker and author
Max Schleser, German filmmaker and founder of Mobile-mentary:
Ann-Sophie Dinant, associate curator, South London Gallery, London:
Adam Kossoff, UK artist and filmmaker:
Clare Binns, Picturehouse cinemas:
Minou Norouzi, Video artist and curator of Sheffield Fringe:
Daniel Jewesbury, filmmaker and curator:
Planned by
Gail Pearce, installation artist/ filmmaker, Royal Holloway, University of London
Cahal McLaughlin, filmmaker, University of Ulster
Jill Daniels, filmmaker, University of East London
New film on the way – The Border Crossing
My new film the Border Crossing is ready! Watch this space for links to clips, screenings and details.
The Border Crossing (47 mins)
In this evocative and unique film, award-winning filmmaker Jill Daniels explores her memories of violence 30 years ago hitchhiking through Spain. She decides to return to the Basque country to search for the places which she hopes will jolt her fading memory and lay the past to rest. But everything has changed, the borders between France and Spain have gone and with them the certainty that she was ever there. Merging past and present, documentary and fiction, she utilises her own off-screen voice and the voice of a young woman, Sian, who appears as her younger self. Together their off-screen voices build an imaginary visual world sometimes identical to what we are seeing, sometimes altogether different. As Daniels dives further into this world, she discovers other women, Maria and Aitziber who are also changed by violence and faces the growing realisation that the Basque country in its struggle for its own identity is marked by a continuing violence from long before her own journey. Maria is a photographer who lives alone and has survived a car that crashed while she was driving, killing her niece. Maria’s dead father survived the civil war in Spain and she holds on close to his prison diary. Aitziber is a young woman who spent five years in a Spanish prison and for five days after her arrest, was tortured by the Spanish police. Together these stories, these women, and the place where they live, builds an intense mosaic of impressions of the past and present. As Daniels comes to the end of her journey she realises she can’t be free of the past. She has come full circle.
NOT RECONCILED
A review of my film Not Reconciled by Cahal McLaughlin is now out in the latest Journal of Media Practice. The link to the details is
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-issue,id=2005/
NEXT YEAR IN LERIN
The screenings of Next Year in Lerin throughout Australia were an amazing success, large attendances and interesting discussions. See the photos of the tour http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=1062696629&aid=130966 and
See the link http://www.macedoniantruth.org/forum/showthread.php?t=5016 to the Macedonian truth forum for a discussion about how the film was received.
SUCCESS IN AUSTRALIA
The Australian Macedonian Human Rights Journal AMHRC Review – Summer 2010/2011 Edition is now out. It has an editorial on Macedonian cinema which discusses the signicance of Next Year in Lerin and photographs of the screening in Melbourne Australia. The link to the magazine for download is:
http://www.macedonianhr.org.au/wip/images/stories/pdf/AMHRC_Review_Summer%202010_2011.pdf
NEXT YEAR IN LERIN AUSTRALIA TOUR
You can view the website for the tour here: www.nextyearinlerin.com
NEXT YEAR IN LERIN TOURS AUSTRALIA
In January and February 2011, I am really delighted to announce that there will be commemorative 10 year “Director´s Cut” screenings to premiere Next Year in Lerin in Australia, in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. These screenings offer a chance to meet me and to learn about the Macedonian ‘children’ exiled 50 years ago during the Greek civil war and still unable to reclaim their birthplaces.
It is organised by the Australian Macedonian Theatre of Sydney P.O. Box 227 Rockdale NSW 2216
Screenings:
28th January in Sydney Hoyts Entertainment Quarter, Cleveland Street, Moore Park
Tickets http://www.moshtix.com.au. Moshtix outlets and 1300 GET TIX (438 849)
2nd February in Melbourne Astor Theatre, cnr Chapel St. and Dandenong Rd, St Kilda Tickets http://www.moshtix.com.au. Moshtix outlets and 1300 GET TIX (438 849)
3rd February in Adelaide at the Palace Cinama Nova, off Rundle St.
Tickets: www.palacenova.com and at the door.
4th February in Perth. Astor Theatre, Beaufort St. My Lawley
Tickets www.bocsticketing.com.au, bocs ticketing agents and at the Astor.
SMALL TOWN GIRL IN PLUMSTEAD!
Small Town Girl will be shown at the Plumstead Short Film Festival in South-East London in December.
MORE FROM FESTIVAL DE CINE DE GRANADA ON NOT RECONCILED
2010 Awards Site Festival de Cine de Granada – Comments of the winners:
NOT RECONCILED by JILL DANIELS – Special Mention
Not Reconciled is a film poem. Belchite, an old medieval town in Aragon in northern Spain, was fought over by left and right for three weeks at the height of the civil war. When the war ended it was memorialised by Franco to his victory in the war and left in ruins.
Nobody knows what to do with the ruins,least of all the people who live in the village a few meters away, whose children use the ruins as their playground and young people as a place for sexual explorations. For most people in the new village, particularly the ones who remember the war, it is better to forget the past. But the ruins are a constant reminder.
Belchite is said to be haunted, and during our filming strange things happened. First there was an enormous fire. Then I encountered an old lady, Pilar Paris Minguez, wandering around the ruins of her old house talking to tourists. When I tried to find her again she had gone.
Another time I heard ghostly music and sounds of singing.
Not Reconciled is for me, a call to uncover the mass graves and give names to the anonymous victims during and after the civil war. And it celebrates Spanish women’s moment of freedom and liberty in the early part of the last century.
Jill DanielsDirector/Producer
MORE FROM FESTIVAL DE CINE DE GRANADA ON NOT RECONCILED
2010 Awards Site Festival de Cine de Granada – Comments of the winners:
NOT RECONCILED by JILL DANIELS – Special Mention
Not Reconciled is a film poem. Belchite, an old medieval town in Aragon in northern Spain, was fought over by left and right for three weeks at the height of the civil war. When the war ended it was memorialised by Franco to his victory in the war and left in ruins.
Nobody knows what to do with the ruins,least of all the people who live in the village a few meters away, whose children use the ruins as their playground and young people as a place for sexual explorations. For most people in the new village, particularly the ones who remember the war, it is better to forget the past. But the ruins are a constant reminder.
Belchite is said to be haunted, and during our filming strange things happened. First there was an enormous fire. Then I encountered an old lady, Pilar Paris Minguez, wandering around the ruins of her old house talking to tourists. When I tried to find her again she had gone.
Another time I heard ghostly music and sounds of singing.
Not Reconciled is for me, a call to uncover the mass graves and give names to the anonymous victims during and after the civil war. And it celebrates Spanish women’s moment of freedom and liberty in the early part of the last century.
Jill DanielsDirector/Producer
NOT RECONCILED WINS FESTIVAL AWARD
Not Reconciled has been awarded by the Jury of the Bruxelles Fiction & Documentary Festival in the category: La direction. To see the results, please go to www.bruxelles.festivalinfo.org
NEW VERSION OF NEXT YEAR IN LERIN
Next Year in Lerin has been updated 10 years after its first issue. It has much better sound and image quality and I have made changes to the narration. Check it out by ordering your new copy from the sales page of the website.
SMALL TOWN GIRL WINS ANOTHER AWARD
Small Town Girl won the award for best documentary feature at the first edition of Filmdirecting4women film festival in London yesterday 12th September. I am smiling today. http://www.filmdirecting4women.com/
I will have £2,500 worth of post production facilities at The Mill in London for my next film – The Border Crossing.
PHILIDELPHIA DOCUMENTARY AND FICTION FESTIVAL
UncategorizedNot Reconciled has been selected for the Philadelphia Documentary and Fiction Festival, part of the Annual Program Without Frontiers online festival. http://www.mamut.net/festivalsawards/newsdet7.htm
The film is available for viewing online through the festival.
See this link for full details of the film and to watch it now.http://www.mamut.net/annual_program_without_frontiers/newsdet5.htm
Not RECONCILED SCREENING IN LONDON
UncategorizedNot Reconciled is screening on Saturday 29th May in the London Film Makers Convention at the RoundHouse in Chalk Farm at 12 noon. This is a free event. Everyone is welcome.
For more details of all the screenings see http://www.portobellofilmfestival.com/2010/roundhouse/29_cafe.html
NOT RECONCILED AWARD AT FESTIVAL DE CINE DE GRANADA SPAIN
UncategorizedNot Reconciled wins A Special Mention by the Jury at the Festival de cine De Granada.
http://www.mamut.net/festivalesdecine/newsdet4.htm
NOT RECONCILED SCREENS AT ATHENS, USA, INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
UncategorizedThe Last Happy Day and Not Reconciled : Two Films About History and Memory.
Showtime: Saturday, April 24, 5:15 pm, Athena Cinema Films shown in this competition show:The Last Happy Day Director: Lynne Sachs 38 min. U.S.A.During WWII, the US Army Graves Registration Service hired the filmmaker’s Hungarian cousin, Dr. Sandor Lenard, to reconstruct the bones — small and large — of dead American soldiers. This half-hour experimental documentary work, which resonates as an anti-war meditation, is composed of excerpts of Sandor’s letters to Sachs’ family, abstracted war imagery, home movies of children at a birthday party, and interviews.
Not Reconciled Director: Jill Daniels 40 min. United Kingdom. Throughout Spain there are many unmarked mass graves full of victims of executions during the civil war and after. Rosa and Carlos, the voices of ghosts of young Spanish civil war republicans, roam the ruins of Belchite in Northern Spain, waiting for the discovery of their own unmarked graves.http://www.athensfest.org/film/last_happy_day_not_reconciled
FESTIVAL DU FILM DE STASBOURG
UncategorizedNot Reconciled has been accepted for the Festival du Film de Strasbourg as part of the Annual Program Without Frontiers. See http://www.strasbourg.festivalinfo.org/ for more details.
NEXT YEAR IN LERIN CONTROVERSY
UncategorizedGreek nationalists are busy abusing me on the You Tube Q&A. see below for link. Unfortunately most of it is racist and incoherently childish. For a more supportive discussion see MakNews website onhttp://www.maknews.com/forum/post252906.html?sid=bacd16e712c5b84fb64cffa7ed35041d
Please do give your views. I would love to hear from Greek people who are willing to talk more deeply about the problems of refugees from the Greek civil war in 1948, who I believe have the right to identify themselves as Macedonian or Greek if they choose, and to have the freedom to enter Greece freely to visit their old villages, towns and homes.
Next Year in Lerin at Hot Springs International doc festival
UncategorizedNext Year in Lerin screened to a full house on Saturday 24th October at the Hot Springs Documentary Festival near Little Rock, Arkansas. There was a great discussion afterwards.
See the Q&A on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MWw4o9QkAA.
MACEDONIAN FILM FESTIVAL IN AUSTRALIA
UncategorizedThe Macedonian festival in Melbourne will take place without Next Year in Lerin because the cinema was pulled from under them and the new venue only has 35mm facilities. It is hoped it will be shown at an alternative venue either now or some time in the future.