Moving Image Research Group (MIRG)

Moving Image Research Group (MIRG) is co-convened by Dr Mark Bould (Professor of Film and Literature) and Dr Charlotte Crofts (Professor of Cinema Arts). Representing the full range of moving image research in the College of Arts, Technology and Environment, it works across campuses and disciplines (primarily Film Studies, Filmmaking, and Media Communications) to promote members’ research and contribute to the cultural life of the city and region.

MIRG provides a supportive and stimulating research environment in which postgraduate research students and postdoctoral fellows are fully integrated. It organises research seminars, workshops, symposia and conferences, supports the development of individual and collaborative projects, and acts as an incubator for new ideas and initiatives. It maintains numerous collaborations within and beyond the University, including the Digital Culture Research Centre (DCRC), Creative Economies Lab, Watershed and Bristol City of Film, part of the global UNESCO Creative Cities Network.

MIRG is interested in the moving image at all points along the value chain, from production to consumption to its afterlife in culture, organised under three themes: film cultures, film production, and film education.

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Film cultures

MIRG supports work around festivals and curation, film activism, and social, economic and environmental justice, especially through our relationship with Cary Comes Home Festival, Bristol Radical Film Festival and Radical Film Network, an Arts and Humanities Council (AHRC)-funded international network for organisations and individuals involved in activist and experimental film culture.

MIRG also works to build the status and understanding of practice-as-research, including founding the Practice Research special interest group (SIG) of the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS), and supporting the online journal Screenworks, the peer-reviewed online journal of practice research in film and screen media.

Other areas of research include stardom and performance; film music; screen heritage; independent film exhibition, cinema-going, and cinematic tourism; future audiences; gender, race and representation; and genre, with MIRG co-founding the BAFTSS Science Fiction and Fantasy SIG.

Film production

MIRG supports work around the screen industries, including mapping Bristol’s media production ecology and the experience of freelance labour in the regional industry. The recommendations in the reports Go West! Bristol’s Film and Television Industries (2017), An Invisible Army: The Role of Freelance Labour in Bristol’s Film and Television Industries (PDF) (2019) and Go West! 2: Bristol’s Film and Television Industries (2022) have informed government policy and led to the annual Bristol and Bath Screen Summit.

MIRG also supports the Documentary Film Council, which developed out of UK Feature Docs, a three-year AHRC-funded study of the UK’s feature documentary film industry’s development and the challenges it faces.

MIRG-founded the BAFTSS Screen Industries SIG.

Other areas of research include adaptation; immersion; media archaeology, media policy and film futures; production cultures and labour issues; sustainability, diversity and inclusion.

Film education

MIRG’s film education strand coalesces around sustainable filmmaking pedagogy, with the BAFTA albert accreditation feeding into an emerging research strand around green filmmaking. MIRG is actively involved with the BAFTSS Media and Environment SIG and Film/Making Education SIG.

Other research areas include ageing and childhood, film in education, film literacy, practice pedagogy, and technology enhanced learning.

Contacts

For more information about staff, postgraduate opportunities, current events and activities, please contact Professor Mark Bould (mark.bould@uwe.ac.uk) or Professor Charlotte Crofts (charlotte.crofts@uwe.ac.uk).