Jeremy Bubb - Chair
Jeremy Bubb is Chair of NAHEMI. He is an independent filmmaker, artist, and Senior Lecturer in Film Production and Cinematography at Roehampton University London. His current body of work synthesizes traditional film language with multi-screen storytelling techniques and focuses on narratives of the everyday. He has directed TV commercials, produced films in Denmark, Poland, and the UK, for S4C, C4, ITV, and trained as a multi-camera director at the BBC. His work has been screened in film festivals in the UK, Italy, Ireland, Poland, Helsinki, Austria, and Portugal. He sat on the Southern Art Film Board, was a member of Chapter Filmworks, and been an External Examiner for Universities in England, Scotland and Wales. He has published in The Journal of Media Practice and Education, The Journal of Screenwriting, The Journal of Arts Research, The National Archives Website, Screenworks, and speaks regularly at national and international conferences on film education and research. He is a graduate of the National Polish Film School in Łódź, The Northern Film School UK, and Cardiff School of Art and Design.
Lucy Leake - Secretary
Lucy is an educator, artist, and academic researcher, whose pedagogic research focuses on student engagement, and creative approaches to Higher Education teaching and learning in Arts and Media. She has published work nationally and internationally through organisations including RAISE (Researching, Advancing and Inspiring Student Engagement), CICAP (The International Congress of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising), Making Futures, and Advanced HE (formerly HEA). As Associate Editor with Screenworks (Journal of Screen Media Practice Research), Lucy edited the Screenworks Special Edition on ‘Practice Pedagogies’, in partnership with the Journal of Media Practice in Education.
Lucy’s film practice and research is focused around notions of memory, she has published works on how family stories are fabricated, gendered and collectively re-remembered in a digital age. She is currently working with South of Devon Films on a new series of fictional shorts, based on the music scene in Plymouth.
Executive Committee
Daisy Gili - Finance
Daisy is from a family of artists, writers and filmmakers, and grew up spending as much time as possible in cinemas, cutting rooms and dubbingtheatres. Although a maths graduate, Daisy decided not to pursue a career in numbers but to enter the film & TV industry. She finds that her grounding in mathematical thought, which combines form and pattern with logic, has enhanced her own approach to filmmaking.
After working for four years in production on a series for Channel 4, then briefly on Richard Eyre’s film 'Iris', Daisy decided to return to beinga student, this time of filmmaking. Unable to find a course that met her expectations, Daisy co-founded the LFA with Anna MacDonald. In addition to co-running the LFA, Daisy has produced and directed three short films, including 'The Summer House' (starring Robert Pattinson and Talulah Riley).
Lucy Brown – Deputy Chair & Media Diversity
Lucy Brown is Professor of Film and Television Practice and Head of Film at London South Bank University. She is an award-winning practitioner and educator. She has filmed around the world for the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Nickelodeon and Disney on multiple BAFTA and RTS award winning programmes. She has taught at film schools across five continents and is the Founder and Chair of Women in Screen and the Trailblazing Women On and Off Screen conference. Lucy sits on the editorial board of Representology: The Journal of Media and Diversity. Her latest documentary exploring themes of female friendship and sexual violence has screened globally and won several awards. She is author of ‘Script Development on Unscripted Television’ in The Palgrave Handbook of Script Development, co-author of The TV Studio Production Handbook (Bloomsbury) and is currently co-editing a book on collaborate creativity in the film and television industries for Routledge.
Barry Dignam – Website & Membership
In 2021 Barry Dignam was appointed to the new role of Head of European Projects at the National Film School, IADT where he leads out on FilmEU - The European University for Film and Media Arts. . Formerly he was the Head of Department of Film & Media, Chair of Film & Television and Irish Course Director of Viewfinder (the Erasmus+ Joint Master of Art in Cinematography). As an educator, he has over twenty years’ experience in teaching, academic strategy and quality assurance. He studied Drama at Trinity College Dublin and Film at the National Film School IADT. As a filmmaker, he has made many multi-award-winning short films including ‘Chicken’, ‘Dream Kitchen’ and ‘A Ferret Called Mickey’. He’s had been nominated for a Palme d’Or at Cannes and a Berlin Bear. ‘Monged’ a feature he co-wrote with Gary Duggan premiered in 2015. His films have been presented in official selection at over a hundred and fifty international film festivals. They have been screened by top broadcasters and released on DVD, VOD and theatrically in Europe, the US and beyond.
Peter Hort - Kodak Competition
Peter Hort is a film maker and film educator. After 20 years making TV drama and documentary for NDR, Channel 4, France 2, National Geographic and others, he started teaching, and ran the film course at the University of Westminster for 14 years. He is now organising its film archive.
David Wheeler – Membership Subs
An inspirational teacher and Course Leader. Avid networker and experienced in production, workplace skills and pastoral areas. The student experience is paramount. I developed a ‘Peer Advisor Scheme’ (mentoring and PAL) for 2nd year students to support 1st years -highly successful over 8 years at Staffs. Also developing, re-writing and revalidating modules and courses. I relaunched Advertising Film and Music Video Production at Staffs, introducing new briefs, field trips, assessments and partnerships, increasing recruitment by 30% year on year.
I have recently trained up on a range of tools and techniques to ensure student engagement and active learning this Autumn. Blended learning will create challenges for the teaching team. I am excited to engage students with Zoom, Padlet, Kahoot, discussion boards, breakout rooms and enhanced digital design.
Directed live multi-camera studios, including news, entertainment, Events and Outside Broadcast, and supervised large teams for the BBC and Discover US.
Well-travelled, camera operator and photographer with a science degree! A BAFTA voting member.
Rafe Clayton - Festivals
Rafe Clayton is a researcher and academic at the University of Leeds, leading film theory and practice on the taught master’s degree programme. His particular interests include how the emergent and diverse uses of screens and moving images for entertainment, education, work and communication may exacerbate perceived inequalities among marginalised groups. An experienced filmmaker, Rafe is also festival director for the NAHEMI National Student Film Awards.
Mike Parker – Festivals
Liam Wells
Liam is Course Leader on BA (Hons) Film and Moving Image Production and MA Moving Image and Sound Unit Tutor.
My practice-based research aims to investigate hybrid processes of identifying non-linear modes of time/ event(s), drawing upon models from different disciplines to explore contemporary understandings of hybrid long durational audio-visual works within site-specific contexts. The research focuses on non-linear relationships between space (both physical and virtual) and temporal events within audio-visual works of a (perceived) long or open duration. A series of audio-visual installations, performances and webcasts/ transmissions will be created to investigate non-linear relationships between sound and image, rather than the linear relationships implied by long duration. These works explore the time/ duration in onscreen/ off-screen, virtual and sonic spatial contexts. The research questions aesthetic and philosophical strategies employed in contemporary audio-visual practices including: repetition/ difference, simplicity into complexity, accumulation of event, interruption, instability and indeterminacy.
Funke Oyebanjo
Funke Oyebanjo is a script consultant, lecturer and scriptwriter and web fest curator for the Raindance Film Festival. She was one of the founder members of the Talawa theatre writers’ group. Her television script The Window was produced for Channel Four’s Coming Up season and she currently has three screen features in development. One of her projects The Land, was selected by Script House, for development at the Berlin film festival’s talent campus. Funke has worked as a script reader and development consultant with Arena Majicka in Norway, BBC Writer’s Room, BBC World Service, The UK Film Council, Creative England.
Dr Savyasaachi Jain
Saachi is a Reader at the Cardiff University School of Journalism, Media and Culture (JOMEC), where he works in the areas of journalism and documentary, drawing upon a professional career spanning print, television current affairs, documentary, and training journalists and filmmakers internationally.
He came into academics via a PhD at the University of Westminster (London) researching the applicability and suitability of Western models for understanding the behaviour of global media systems. He has taught at Swansea University, where he led the Erasmus Mundus MA programme in Journalism, Media and Globalisation (War and Conflict specialism), and now teaches on the MA International Journalism (MAIJ) and MA Digital Documentary (MADD) at JOMEC. He has a specific focus on helping students develop longer journalistic projects, including their Master’s project/ dissertation.
He is also currently engaged in an interdisciplinary applied research project, working with computer science colleagues to develop a camerawork simulator, an online tool for teaching creative decision-making skills to students of documentary and visual journalism. The project has been supported by JOMEC, the Research Wales Innovation Fund, AHRC and EHRC.
He has been a consultant on the training and capacity building programmes of several UN organisations (UNDP, UNESCO, UNICEF and UNDRR) and intergovernmental and international organisations such as the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union, Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development, Caribbean Broadcasting Union, Commonwealth Broadcasting Association and The Thomson Foundation. For them, he has developed training programmes, manuals and handbooks, supervised international documentary co-productions and conducted workshops for journalists and programme makers in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, the Caribbean, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Macau, Malaysia, Maldives, Mexico, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Turkmenistan, UK and Vietnam.
Suzie Hanna - Honorary
Suzie is Emerita Professor of Animation at Norwich University of the Arts where she continues to supervise PGR students and engage in research.
She taught in Higher Education for over three decades, specialising in the subject areas of animation and sound design. In this time she developed international academic and industry networks, as well as maintaining her own creative practice. Her current research includes diverse collaborations with other artists, performers and academics to create original films. This work is regularly selected for public screenings including international animation and literary festivals and conferences. She creates innovative theatrical and site specific animation. She presents papers at international symposia and industry seminars and writes for academic journals and other publications. Her focus is on creation of animation from documentary material, and the study of parallels in animation, poetry and sound design.
Yossi Bal - Honorary
Yossi Balanescu-Bal is a director/producer/film-educator specialising in documentary and experimental fiction.
As part of a small group of active filmmakers/educators that included the avant-garde artist Malcolm Le Grice (the first Chair), and founding director of NFTS, Colin Young, (the first Treasurer), all dedicated to practice-based film education, Yossi Bal was instrumental in founding NAHEMI. Yossi helped steer the organisation (originally called the National Association for Higher Education in Film and Video), through a very long period of attacks on education and training budgets and was part of a campaign to establish Film, Television and Animation as well as media practice in general including journalism, sound/radio and new media as genuine and essential subjects of academic inquiry.
Yossi has been passionately committed to the education and training of new generations of young filmmakers. He led a newly established film department at Goldsmiths, University of London in the eighties, was instrumental in setting up and leading a range of very successful undergraduate and postgraduate film production programmes at the Cass School of Art, Media & Architecture, London Metropolitan University and has been pro-actively involved with the UK film industry and the media unions’ national training & education initiatives for more than three decades.
Over the years, Yossi has continued to support the formation of many talented young practitioners specialising in film, television and animation, who are working today in the UK industry as well as on the international circuit.
Together with Joost Hunningher of Westminster University, Yossi was a founder, and later Artistic Director, of the NAHEMI Eat Our Shorts Film Festival.
He was chair of Education and Training for BECTU, and was also a founder member of the editorial board of ‘Vertigo’ film magazine. He is currently on the board of Four Corners Film, the socially committed London Film and Photography Centre in Bethnal Green.
Yossi runs Bridge Films, a project he set up in partnership with his brother Alexander Balanescu, the film composer and leader of the Balanescu Quartet, aiming to foster innovative multimedia productions. These involve blending live performance of music, dance, poetry, theatre and performance art with the moving image, and explore developments in narrative film language, documentary style and cross-cultural ethnographies.
Claire Barwell - Honorary
Claire Barwell currently works as a dissertation tutor at the NFTS and External Examiner for courses at Reading University and the University of East London.
After working in theatre she produced and directed films for Channel 4 and worked with Terence Davies and Patrick Keiller. She was the London Region organiser for the Independent Film and Video makers’ Association and served as a director of the London Filmmakers’ Co-op. She has contributed to the journals Undercut and PIX and the Journal of Visual Communication. As a Churchill Fellow she travelled to festivals in France and Canada and wrote a report on women’s filmmaking “A Bigger Piece of the Pie or Changing the Recipe?’ and was a founder member of the Women in Film and Television Network.
She was Course Leader of the BA in Film Production at UCA Farnham until 2018 and was Chair of Nahemi from 2010 – 2016
James Price - Green & Documentary
I am a nonfiction filmmaker, lecturer, and researcher into anti-extractivist nonfiction filmmaking and its education.
Trained as an artist at Newcastle, I was part of expanded cinema collective The Light Surgeons, working on film, installation and multi projection live performance projects. Some of these I now identify as co-creation works, which today inform my practice as a lecturer and my research into how nonfiction filmmaking education might be shaped to respond to climate change and loss and alteration of life. After attending the NFTS, I directed films for Channel 4, setting up the production company Field Studies in 2008, and had films exhibited at Sheffield, HotDocs, CPH:DOX and others. In the following years I shifted from broadcast into contemporary art practice and research-creation within academia, and I started lecturing, first at Brighton, MetFilm, UCL Anthropology (Open City) and more recently at Aberystwyth and the London Film Academy. I am an AHRC-funded PhD researcher between Aberystwyth with Kim Knowles, and UWE with Steve Presence. I am co-convenor of the BAFTSS Media and the Environment SIG, and on the UCU Climate and Ecological Emergency Committee.
