#killian doherty

[awesomesauce1100]

Father Kill Bill

[citrusimsx]

kallie: do you ever miss them, kil?

killian: of course i do.

kallie: they’d hate this place, ya know.

killian: mhm, i know. that’s why i chose it.

kallie: [ sighs ] even after they’re dead, you’re still contradicting them.

[opencitydocumentaryfestival]

Insights: Edward Lawrenson on Collaborating on Uppland

Filmmaker, writer and lecturer Edward Lawrenson writes for us about Uppland, a film made in partnership with Killian Doherty funded through our Border Crossings initiative, and offers his advice for those looking to get involved (and get funded). Border Crossings is back for 2018, with £7500 in funding available for academic-filmmaker research story collaborations. Applications are due by May 23rd.

About three years ago I took part in a pitching session convened under the name Border Crossings by Open City Documentary Festival and UCL. I was there as a filmmaker, but I wasn’t the one doing the pitching. Instead, in a featureless seminar room in the warren-like depths of UCL, I’d joined a handful of other filmmakers to listen to some UCL academics, each of whom were presenting research they were working on.

The idea was that this research would form the basis for documentary collaboration between individual academics and filmmakers. In meetings lasting not more than a few minutes (a time limit strictly policed by the shrill alarm of an iPhone) I met about half a dozen PhD students and lecturers. We’d speak, the bell would ring, then it’d be on to another researcher.

This was how I encountered Killian Doherty, an Irish architect and PhD candidate at the Bartlett. We were the happy recipients of the development funding that Border Crossings offered as a prize to its participants in a later pitching session. We had developed a proposal to make a film about a mining town called Yekepa in Liberia, and the money we were awarded funded our trip to West Africa. The footage we shot there formed the basis of a short essay film called Uppland, which, having premiered this March in the official shorts competition at Cinéma du réel festival in Paris, will play further festivals throughout the year.

Border Crossings is back (with a boosted award of £5000 for the winning team, and £2500 for a runner up), so Open City have asked me to offer some thoughts on my experience. In the spirit of brevity that marked those initial encounters, I offer three tips to anyone thinking about attending this year’s session:

1) Be open and flexible during and after the initial pitching session. Killian had come to Border Crossings with the notion of finding a filmmaker to collaborate on a project about his Phd field research in Rwanda. I wasn’t so sure there was documentary potential there, nor was I keen about filming overseas. But then Killian saw a film I’d made about a town where I grew up in east Scotland, built in the 1950s to accommodate workers at a nearby mine. It made him think of Yekepa, the mining town in Liberia (which he’d visited a couple of times in the past few years), and he got in touch, suggesting we develop a proposal to film there. In this earlier film of mine Killian recognised an interest in a particular type of ‘new town’ architecture that had so fascinated him about Yekepa – and we proceeded on that basis.

2) Collaboration is key. I suspect some filmmakers may think of Border Crossings as an opportunity to fish for ideas – and that it’s his or her job to ‘translate’ into filmic form pre-existing research work. That certainly wasn’t the experience of Killian or myself, and I’m not sure you’d get the most from the initiative if you approach it this way. From the beginning Uppland was a joint venture between us both, and we shared equal responsibility for shaping the project, especially at conceptual level. Our discussions about what Yekepa represented, informed by Killian’s broader research interests, determined much of what we filmed while in Liberia, and these discussions continued and deepened during the long process of editing the film. We also drew on current academic debate around architecture and development – notably from feedback received at several work-in-progress screenings with architects and scholars in Dublin, Chicago and Portland.

3) The fund is for development. If you are lucky enough to be awarded the fund, know that it is intended to support development, not production. It’s a rare opportunity to follow a hunch, test out ideas, produce a proof of concept without the requirements that are attached to production funding. So if you do pitch with a project, be realistic about what you can achieve. This last piece of advice, however, was one that we ignored: the footage we shot on that initial research trip formed the bulk of what was to be Uppland (with some added material shot in Sweden, supported by the Irish Arts Council). What can I say? We really wanted to make the film...

Edward Lawrenson and Killian Doherty’s Uppland will be screening at upcoming festivals soon. Applications are open for Border Crossings 2018. 10 researchers and 10 filmmakers will meet for the ‘Speed-Dating’ event on June 7th to form teams in order to pitch for £5000 funding at our festival in September. Applications for both researchers and filmmakers are due by Midnight Wednesday May 23rd. The ability to attend on June 7th is required, and the process for applying is short and simple.

[naf-asi]

Journey with Maps - A Cultural Emergency Project in Freetown, Sierra Leone

“Essay by Killian Doherty from Architectural [Field] Office

Countries in the throes of rapid development blithely destroy historic spaces—houses, palaces, military or civil structures. If advantage or profit is to be found in it, the old is swept away. [1] - Henri Lefebvre

Sierra Leone is a country of staggering contradictions, emerging “through years of depression and prosperity through periods of idealism and disillusionment.” [2] Emancipated slaves from America and the UK settled in Sierra Leone and formally established the capital of Freetown in 1792. It was a corporate endeavor supported by abolitionists from the West, and within twenty years the country and capital became an extension of the crown colony of the British Empire.As is the case of many former colonies countries, accurate, unbiased, and non-western written histories are elusive. Yet fluctuating power struggles of Sierra Leone over the past two centuries between that of the British Colonial powers and ex-slaves/Krio people is visually traceable across the city’s built heritage. Where written documents, archives, and accounts are absent, Freetown’s built heritage in part delineates a complex and fraught history.Countless nineteenth-century “Krio” homes built by the liberated slaves dominate inner-city Freetown. Adopting the vernacular style of former western masters, these predominantly timber homes were built by ex-slaves, yet fashioned to deliberately turn inward away from the street as an assertion of privacy and newly acquired property rights. The period of the early twentieth-century colonial administration of Freetown is clearly evident in the Hill Station area where homes were built for a British governor and civil servants. These large timber homes rest on top of steel pilotis, elevated above ground to reduce the harshness of Sierra Leone’s oppressive climate. However, this exclusive white settlement was situated in the remote hills, distant from the inner-city Krio communities due to misguided beliefs about contracting malaria. The once “British Masters divided vision of urban space” is traceable by old railway station signposts that mark the journey between the white salubrious enclave into the inner-city black Freetown. [3] Following Sierra Leone’s 1961 independence and today, local civil servants occupy these homes.”

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[mas-studio]

The Good Cause: Architecture of Peace

If you are in Kigali, Rwanda, from November 24 until December 1, don't miss the exhibition "The Good Cause: Architecture of Peace" curated by Archis and Killian Doherty, contributor to the OWNERSHIP issue of MAS Context. The exhibition includes the work of photographer David Southwood, also contributor to the OWNERSHIP issue of MAS Context.