Professor Steven Eastwood, BA, PhD

Profile

I am an artist-filmmaker working in both the cinema and gallery. My current research is on autism and cinema (cinemautism) and filming end of life. I am embarking on a four-year project funded by the Wellcome Trust, titled Autism Through Cinema (with Professor Janet Harbord).

My second feature film, ISLAND, had its world premiere at the 61st BFI London Film Festival in 2017 and international premiere at Rotterdam Film Festival 2018. ISLAND will have a UK cinema release at selected venues from September 2018.

My first feature film Buried Land was officially selected for Tribeca, Moscow, Sarajevo, Mumbai film festivals 2010 and is available on ITunes. Recent exhibitions include The Interval and the Instant, a solo show at Fabrica Brighton and sister project to ISLAND. My documentary Those Who Are Jesus was nominated for a Grierson Award.

I am the Head of Film Practice at QMUL, co-founder of the Centre for Film & Ethics, and convenor of the MA in Documentary Practice. Prior to joining QM, I was the director of the Moving Image Research Centre at the University of East London, and an Assistant Professor in film at SUNY Buffalo. I have convened a number of symposia and screenings to do with cinema and artists’ moving image, and have published widely. I co-founded the arts laboratory event OMSK (1995-2008), a London based collective of artists creating site specific and cross-disciplinary events. I gained a theory-practice PhD through UCL, The Slade in 2007.

Teaching

SMLM7053Documentary Production

SMLM035 Film Studies Core Course

Forms of Film Practice

FLM403 Production Skills

Current PhD supervision

Vicki Thornton: 'Pre-mediated, Mediated, Remediated: Site, Cinematic Memory and Reenactment in Artists' Moving Image', co-supervised with Dr. Jenny Chamarette

Maia Conran: 'Offline-Site: Site in Expanded Cinema After the Internet', co-supervised with Dr. Jenny Chamarette

Research

Research Interests:

• Artists’ moving image
• documentary
• fiction
• death and dying
• ethics
• autism & neuro-diversity
• underground and expanded cinema
• punk & DIY cinema
• live art
• film collectives
• affect
• Deleuze
• Agamben
• Deligny
• surrealist ethnography
• visual anthropology

Publications

Ongoing and recent projects

Autism Through Cinema (2018-2022) brings together autism and cinema in the belief that they hold insights for each other hereto unexplored. The link between them is the body and more specifically body language. Film practice will be used to elucidate the potential of autism to expand understandings of bodily conduct and communication. The project will also involve working with autistic individuals to develop an alternative film language inclusive of the neurodiverse population.

ISLAND (90.00, 2017) is a ground-breaking feature-length documentary, the result of 12-months filming, during which time I worked closely with persons nearing the end of life, in partnership with Mountbatten Hospice on the Isle of Wight. The film has been identified as a game-changer in terms of breaking taboo and giving new and vital visibility to death and dying.

The Interval and the Instant (2017) is a multiscreen video installation directly addressing the act of dying and end-of-life care. The artwork, which was first exhibited at Fabrica Brighton, has at its centre a longform triptych loop inviting the viewer to be witness to intimate events including the moment of death. The wider visual language allows the viewer to reflect on the passage of time, relationships and one’s own place in the world.

OMSK Moving Image Archive is a substantial resource consisting of approx 250 hours of captured artists’ moving image and documentation of fifty live events produced by the OMSK Artists’ Collective (1996-2008), which I co-founded. The archive features film, sound and live art from London’s counter culture.

Select Films and installations

Buried Land (Steven Eastwood & Geoffrey Alan Rhodes, HD. 81:00. 2010) Funding from the AHRC and the Princess Grace Foundation. Tribeca, Moscow, Sarajevo, Mumbai, Gothenburg International and East End Film Festivals 

The Hiss of the Blow (S16mm/HD. 17.40 loop. 2009) Multi-screen installation commissioned for Jerwood Encounters ‘Laboratory’ exhibition, Jerwood Space Gallery, London, 29 July-31 August 2009

Save It (HD. 1:00. 2014) part of The Film That Buys The Cinema portmanteau

In Transit (2010-13) Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Project Art Works commission 


Seminar in Film Sound (16mm. 11.07 looped. 2007)


Hearsay (DV. 9:00. 2006.) For Tank TV DVD publication

Like a House on Fire (16mm/DV. 16:00. 2006.)

The Film We Didn't Make (16mm/DV. 25:00. 2005)


The Film (16mm/DV. 28:00. 2004)

Those Who Are Jesus (56:00. 2001) Nominated for best documentary newcomer, Grierson Award 2002.

Select articles and book chapters 

‘Cinemautism’, in Screen Bodies, ed. by Brian Keith Bergen-Aurand (Berghahn Books, 2016) 

‘The interval and the instant: Inscribing death and dying’, Moving Image Review and Art Journal MIRAJ, 5:1-2, 2016 

‘Buried Land: Filming the Bosnian Pyramids’ in Screening Nature: Cinema beyond the Human, ed. by A. Pick and G. Narraway (Berghahn Books, 2013)

‘Powers of the False’, Moving Image Review and Art Journal MIRAJ, 1:2, 2012

‘The Film to Come’, in Cinematic Folds: the Furling and Unfurling of Images. ed. by Firoza Elavia (Pleasure Dome Press, 2009)

‘The Film is in Front of Us’ in Telling Stories: Visual Practices, Theories and Narrative, ed. by Jane Tormley and Gillian Whiteley (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009)

Select screenings and exhibitions

Buried Land (Steven Eastwood & Geoffrey Alan Rhodes, HD. 81:00. 2010),Tribeca Film Festival (2010), Moscow Film Festival (2010), Sarajevo Film Festival (2010), Mumbai Film Festival (2010), Gothenburg International Film Festival (2011), East End Film Festival (2011)

Of Camera, Artists Vs Hollywood, group show, QUT Gallery, Queensland, Australia and Globe Gallery Newcastle, 2008-9

Seminar in Film Sound group show, KK Projects Gallery New Orleans, 2008

Seminar in Film Sound group show, ‘A Walk Through’ at The Stephen Lawrence Gallery, London, 2007

Like a House on Fire, Trace Exhibition, Stephen Lawrence Gallery, Greenwich

Like a House on Fire, installation/screening, Open Video Projects, Rome screening/artists' talk, 1:1 Gallery, Rome, 2006

The Film! The Film! The Film!, Cinemaniac group show, MM Luka Gallery, Pula, Croatia, 2005

Come As You Are, installation, Killing Time, CCA, Oslo, Norway, 2005

Grants and awards

2015 Arts Council England for The Interval and the Instant

Big Lottery for The Interval and the Instant

2014 University of East London research grant, for OMSK Archive research internship phase 2

2013 University of East London research grant, for The Sally-Anne Test

University of East London research grant, for OMSK Archive research internship phase 1

2012 Arts Council England / Fabrica Gallery for End of Life exhibition


Paul Hamlyn Foundation / Project Art Works, for In Transit


MeCCsa, for Powers of the False symposium


University of East London research grant, for Powers of the False symposium

2011 University of East London, sabbatical research leave


2010 Paul Hamlyn Foundation / Project Art Works, for In Transit


2008 AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK) for Buried Land

2007 PGF (Princess Grace Foundation) for Buried Land


2006 Arts Council Grants for the Arts, for OMSKBOOK


2004 Arts Council Grants for the Arts, for The Film


2002 Tower Hamlets Film Fund, for Of Camera

University of Plymouth, research fund, for Of Camera

2001 London Arts, for Cinema into the Real, Test 1, and ATOMSK

2000 Arts Council, for ATOMSK

Peabody Foundation, for Those Who Are Jesus

University of Plymouth, research fund, for Those Who Are Jesus

1997 Arts Council, for Approaches to Autism