Join us for a three-day workshop led by acclaimed filmmaker Dónal Foreman to explore essay filmmaking, with a particular emphasis on the primary role that landscape played in the essay form.
Together, we will explore ways to approach landscape as a protagonist rather than as a mere backdrop, investigating how location itself can evoke meaning and emotion. We will discuss how framing, timing, and positioning influence our relationship with place, shaping our understanding of and attention to what we film, and he will demonstrate how we can reveal the “layers” of a place — its histories, transformations, and conflicting perspectives — and translate these layers into a compelling visual language. We’ll also dive into non-linear methodologies for structuring a project, allowing research, writing, filming, and editing to become fluid, iterative processes that develop in tandem.
In this intensive workshop, Foreman will share insights from his award-winning essay film The Image You Missed and his current work-in-progress, Broken Land. Through excerpts from his personal notebooks, film outlines, and raw footage, he’ll guide us through his creative process, shedding light on how he harnesses “wandering” — both through physical landscapes and the vast expanse of archival spaces — as a method of exploration and discovery.
On Friday, Foreman will draw on diverse references – the films of the Lumiéres, Chantal Akerman, Straub & Huillet; the writings of Deleuze, John Berger and Erika Balsom – to sketch out a few diverse, potential paths of experimenting with cinema, landscape and history through essayistic forms. He will look at how his parallel practice as a writer-director of fiction drama has informed, and increasingly converged and intermingled, with his experimental work.
Whether you’re at the start of a new project or deep in the editing phase, this workshop will offer practical tools, fresh perspectives, and a supportive environment for filmmakers, media artists, scholars, and creatives who are eager to explore the intersections of landscape, memory, and experimental cinema. Seats are limited. This workshop requires in-person participation, with proof of vaccination required for attendance. For questions, please reach out to [email protected].
