Award Nominees 2024

Georgina Pearce - Senior Producer Mariam Aman - Senior Producer - BBC World Service

Dars is made for 11 to 16-year-olds in Afghanistan, in particular girls - in the only country in the world that bans girls from education. A teacher in Afghanistan has set up a secret school where they watch Dars: 'My students watch with interest and passion”, she told us. We air in both Dari and Pashto, two of the official languages in the country. The programme is also for children who cannot attend school due to poverty or distance but are likely to have access to a radio. The production team have paid great attention to how children will access Dars. We air the programme across the week and across radio, TV and online platforms to reach audiences in both urban and remote areas. The Dars team were contacted by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office who use Dars to teach Afghan children awaiting asylum in hotels in Pakistan.

Grace Louey - Goldsmith's College, University of London

When teenager Siah decides to take a nude selfie, she feels both exhilarated and grown up. But when she receives news that her photo has been shared, Siah’s sexual agency all but evaporates before her. Overcome with panic, she attempts to hunt down her boyfriend Stephen, embarking on a mission to reclaim the image before it does more damage. But this is a fruitless effort and one that results in further humiliation - in front of her peers, her teacher and her mother, who is called in after she lashes out. Her teacher doesn’t really understand while her mother is humiliated and angry at her. On top of that, it feels as though the whole school knows. Both isolated and exposed - Siah is all alone. Shame and disappointment soon give way to a burning sense of injustice. When she sees the boys fooling around, seemingly unaffected, Siah decides how she can reclaim her image.

Sara Evans-Lacko James Rattee Nathalie Abbott - The London School of Economics

Holding onto Hope explores the lives and aspirations of three young people – Leonidas, Josué and Adrielly – connected by their shared experiences of having grown up in financially struggling families in poor neighbourhoods of São Paulo, Brazil. The film sets their stories against the wider national and international efforts to combat poverty, and asks what more can be done to help the wellbeing and life-chances of future generations. Brazil is in many ways a pioneer in combating extreme poverty. In 2003, a landmark nationwide programme called Bolsa Familia was introduced. Unlike other forms of charity and welfare assistance, Bolsa Famila transferred cash directly to those that needed it. The programme, which took 3 million families out of poverty in 2023 alone, has inspired other countries around the world to implement their own anti-poverty initiatives. While Bolsa Familia has been instrumental in lifting many people from extreme poverty, research is being done that asks whether these programmes can better support people like Leonidas, Josué and Adrielly. The international CHANCES-6 research project, based at LSE, investigates the links between mental health, poverty and life-chances of young people. Evidence indicates that poor mental health often traps people in poverty, and CHANCES-6 asks whether cash transfer programmes are adequately supporting the mental health of young people. Holding onto Hope asks these questions – and showcases this research – primarily through Leonidas', Josué's, and Adrielly's stories. They share their ideas and aspirations for the future, the mental health challenges they’ve faced, and the support and limitations of the Bolsa Familia programme. The documentary utilises a storytelling-driven approach focused on the experience of youth beneficiaries to bring new insight into the links between poverty, mental health and life-chances from a youth perspective, and to bring awareness about these issues to a wider audience.

Duncan Raitt - Plastic Milk

This animated film was created for We Are Donors. We Are Donors is a national network of university student groups working to raise awareness of organ and blood donation. Their mission is to empower young people to make informed decisions about organ and blood donation. Their aim is to increase the number of organ and blood donors in the UK and help save lives. They run an outreach programme in which university students give talks at secondary schools and sixth form colleges. The talks tell people what transplants are and why they are needed. They help people to make an informed decision about whether to donate or not. This animated film was created for them to use at these presentations to get across their key messages as effectively as possible. It shows young people why it is so important they talk to their families about their wishes. This is crucial because organ donation often doesn’t go ahead despite the young person's wishes because their families don’t want to think about it at the time. The animation has really helped elevate their teaching presentation and the feedback has been extremely positive. Created by Duncan Raitt, Jon Marsh, David Raitt, Thomas Pullin, Devon Anderson, Michael Blackman and Joe Churchman.

Dr Romina Istratii, Max Conil, Hermon Hailay and Yidnekachew Shumete - SOAS, University of London

Based on real people's stories and testimonies collected through research in Ethiopia, docudrama Tidar (Marriage) tells the story of Genet, who is experiencing domestic violence, and presents her search for a moral and practical solution to her situation within the village community. It shows how the community responds to Genet’s predicament and how personal faith, religious mediation and theological teaching influence how she thinks through her situation. The aim of the film is to raise awareness about the complex role that religion can have in situations of domestic violence in the Ethiopian Orthodox community, influencing both victim and perpetrator rationalisations and behaviour. The film is re-enacted by Amharic-speaking actors in Ethiopia, with subtitles being produced in Tigrigna, Afaan Oromoo and English. The current trailer is the English international version. The film was written and led by Dr Romina Istratii, produced by Hermon Hailay and Max Conil of Exile Pictures and directed by Yidnekachew Shumete of Kurat Pictures. The production was funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the Future Leaders Fellowship grant 'Bridging religious studies, gender & development and public health to address domestic violence” (Grant Ref: MR/T043350/1) and is part of project dldl/ድልድል, a research and innovation project dedicated to the development and strengthening of religio-culturally sensitive domestic violence alleviation systems in East Africa and the UK: https://projectdldl.org

Neil Chakraborti and the UOL In-House Video Team - University of Leicester

A decade on from the original film, ‘Revisiting the Harms of Hate’ features the voices of people typically considered as members of ‘hard-to-reach’ groups, or perhaps more pertinently ‘easy to ignore’. Four victims from very different backgrounds and walks of life share their experiences of hate and harassment, and explore how they have been affected by the events of an extraordinary decade. Hate crimes have escalated over the past ten years, with hostile attitudes, divisive politics, online toxicity and continued cuts to services all reinforcing the huge challenges facing those who are targeted simply because of who they are or what they look like. But as well as showcasing these challenges, the film identifies a series of steps that all of us can take to alleviate the harms of hate. In doing so, the film gives a voice to the 'voiceless' and highlights the crucial role that we all can play in making the world a kinder, less hostile place.

Roy Maconachie and Simon Wharf - University of Bath

Although the health impacts of tobacco use are well documented and understood, far fewer people are aware that growing tobacco is also a harmful undertaking—both physically and financially. Smallholder farmers in Africa who grow tobacco under the contract system, often become trapped in exploitative arrangements with leaf buyers that leave them with very little negotiating power and far lower profits than they were led to believe. Some farmers even end the growing season in debt to the company they have signed a contract with. Meanwhile, major international tobacco companies, which sell products using tobacco grown under these conditions, continue to rake in billions of dollars in profits annually. ‘Tobacco Slave’ shines a light on the plight of smallholder tobacco farmers in Malawi and provides a space for them to share, in their own words, what growing tobacco is really like. Historians and local experts also delve into the colonial history of the tobacco industry and explore how its business practices have (and have not) changed over the years.

Dr Michael W. Thomas - SOAS, University of London

The first documentary ever made on Ethiopian Cinema. In the heart of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, an Azmari and his musical compositions guide us through a film week held in the city’s oldest cinemas as film professionals gather over coffee to debate the state of cinema in the country.

Co-Directors: Victoria McCollum / Andrew Sneddon - School of Arts and Humanities, Ulster University

The Islandmagee Witches Creative & Digital Project, of which this animation forms a key part, highlights the importance of Ireland’s last trial for witchcraft in Country Antrim, Ireland, in 1711 that saw the conviction of nine people for ‘bewitching’ a teenage girl. The trial occurred in a Presbyterian community (Ulster-Scots) deeply influenced by Scottish witchcraft: at the time, Scotland’s execution rate of witches per head of population was five times the European average, and twelve times that of England. However, until recently, witch trials in Ireland were overlooked by scholars and largely forgotten by the general public, as were the economic, political, religious, and social forces that unpinned witchcraft accusation in Ulster. This screen-based, educational project reckons with this facet of our past- our own story of how early-modern witch-hunts (which claimed over 50, 000 lives in Europe between the 15th and 18th centuries) played-out on Irish shores, while dealing with key project themes of gender-based violence, social exclusion, disability and discrimination. The animation was developed to work within a bespoke educational VR app (developed by us in collaboration with our students), so that users could grasp the essential context of the story before embarking on more experiential activities within the application (users are placed on site at Islandmagee and experience the consequences of being branded a witch). The animation also works as a stand-alone short and has been used in numerous heritage, community and educational settings (see below for list). The animation was created by a team from Cinematic Arts, History and Interactive Media at Ulster University, in collaboration with female 2D animators from Enter Yes, Belfast. Co-Directors: Victoria McCollum, Andrew Sneddon Writer: Andrew Sneddon Co-Producers: Helen Jackson, Victoria McCollum, Andrew Sneddon VO Artist: Collette Lennon Animation Studio: Enter Yes, Belfast

Elena Binnig - University College Cork

This film is targeted toward a broad audience and aims to add to the discussion of mental health issues and their treatment within our society .

Zebedee Chittenden - Truro and Penwith College

'Flying for Fun' is a short documentary about Pilot Nick Chittenden and follows a day of flying form opening the hangar in the morning to landing in the evening Nick talks about what he enjoys and his passion towards flying as well showing the history and past of the plane he owns.

Charlie Evans - Truro and Penwith College

Climate change is a growing problem and is in the forefront of media broadcasting, and climate anxiety is rife among people of all ages due to growing fears for the future. However, it is amazing to understand what organisations are doing to help tackle climate change and help educate people to make better choices. This documentary highlights what The Eden Porject is doing to help connect people to the environment and brings attention to planetary emergency.

Tyler Battle - Truro and Penwith College

'Last Road to Nowhere' is an animation that follows two teenagers on their escape from everyday life. The animation style of this animation creates a quirky, unmistakeably American world where the teens meet vampires, killers and potential friends as they let the adventure unfold.

Tom Allen-Jeffery - Truro and Penwith College

'The Rift' is a Psychological Thriller that explores the boundaries between reality and the virtual world. Lines are blurred as the story unfolds and we are left wondering what is real and what is artificial.

**Alice Franchi (Director) ** - University of Westminster (BA Film)

A documentary about the small village of Scampia in the agricultural province of Naples, Italy, where historic cultural and financial rivalries have created a rich but volatile social climate. This is an educational and informative documentary about a people attempting to rise beyond the challenges of their collective past.

Kyla Miller/Ewan Patrick - University of Stirling

This documentary is a profile of strongwoman Steffi Murray, and explores her troubled and traumatic past, the redemption she has found in strength contests and her hopes and dreams for the future. A frank and emotionallly revealing insight into an open and engaging character.

Laura Kaiser/Prachi Sharma - University of Stirling

The Art of Resilience is a profile of three Ukrainian women who are part of a collective keeping Ukrainian culture alive while they live as refugees from war in Scotland. Their commitment to building solidarity through their art is celebrated as they explain their backgrounds and motivations for working together to build an art of resilience.

Dr Piotr Cieplak - University of Sussex

(Dis)Appear follows Gabriel and Ana as they return to their hometown and explore what role photography can play when faced with personal and collective traumas of the past. It is a documentary about the powerful relationship between photos, memory and the forced disappearances and systematic murderer perpetrated by Argentina’s most recent dictatorship (1976-1983). It is also a film about the personal becoming political and about the important part private, family photography can play in the ongoing memory work related to survival, grief and the search for justice. Gabriel Orge is a photographer known for his large-scale projections of the photos of the disappeared in public spaces. Ana Iliovich is an author and survivor of La Perla, a clandestine torture and detention centre; in many ways, a concentration camp. They were both born and raised in Bell Ville, and that’s where they return to in (Dis)Appear. Gabriel comes back to organize a commemorative projection of the photo of a local woman murdered by the dictatorship. Ana, and her brother Lisandro, return to start a long-overdue conversation about a family photograph taken in 1977, when Ana was allowed to leave the concentration camp and visit her family for the first time since her kidnapping. During this period of monitored “freedom” – in which she had to return to La Perla after weekends at home – Ana’s family took many photographs, to prove that Ana was alive and to try to stop her from being killed. With 40 years since the return of democracy to Argentina, and with new threats it is currently facing, (Dis)Appear shows us that the past is never just the past.

Sarah Fox - Goldsmiths, University of London

My Type on Paper is a documentary that takes an intimate look at three women who form strong relationships with prisoners as a result of writing to them. The film seeks to repeal the sensationalist stereotypes of 'prison brides' often cast by the media by delving into their real lives and motives for starting relationships with men most find undesirable. The situation for people in prison is getting bleaker - sentences and reoffending rates are on the rise. One of the causes cited is a lack of connection with the outside world. The internet is banned in prisons, so aside from expensive phone calls, letters are one of the only sources of contact for prisoners. This is a stark contrast to the immediacy of social media on the outside world where we are used to constant, instant contact from friends and family and even strangers. The nature of letter writing, that it takes time to write and time to receive, means it often leads to strong bonds between the correspondents, despite a lack of in person contact. The film will explore whether these fast tracked connections are always healthy for the prisoners people on the outside who get so close to people who most of us would deem as undesirable. Does the fantasy end up being better than the reality? The film will explore themes of redemption and compassion but it will also examine whether, in some cases, the woman ends up doing the sentence too.

**Max Calliby ** - Kingston University

Sheltering from a storm an explorer comes across an ancient cave. Inside is a miner tirelessly mining. Who is this miner? Why won’t they take a break? As the two develop a bond the true nature of the miner's quest is revealed.

Bob Jackson (director) - University College Cork

When Finbarr finds out his wife is coming to visit him in hospital after a serious operation, he devises a courageous and off-the-wall plan to look his best for her.

Zyrus Aldric Miranda de Leon - Middlesex University

In the heartwarming short film 'A Mother's Gift,' we follow the story of Laura, a devoted Filipino housemaid, and her 10-year-old daughter, Clarissa, who reside in the luxurious mansion of their employer, Janice. As Clarissa's birthday approaches, Laura gathers the courage to request an advance on her salary from Janice. However, Janice imposes a seemingly impossible condition: Laura must clean the entire three-story mansion on her own within two days to earn the extra money. Undeterred by the daunting task, Laura embarks on a challenging and laborious cleaning journey, facing various obstacles, including a high window she struggles to reach. Along the way, Laura notices an unexpected bond forming between Clarissa and Janice, evoking a stirring mix of emotions within her. After tirelessly completing the demanding cleaning task, Laura eagerly approaches Janice, hoping to receive the promised funds. Unfortunately, Janice delivers disappointing news—she won't provide the money. Exhausted, Laura falls asleep while crafting a heartfelt gift for Clarissa. In a bittersweet twist, Laura awakens late into Clarissa's birthday celebration and witnesses Janice taking her daughter away to a flower garden. However, when Laura presents her modest handmade gift to Clarissa, a remarkable moment unfolds. Fueled by love and appreciation, Clarissa chooses her mother's simple yet profound creation over Janice's lavish offering, reaffirming the unbreakable bond shared between a mother and her child.

Alina Ilin Ben Bogdan-Hodgson - Middlesex University

Ash conforms to wearing a moustache like everybody else, but he must admit its fakeness to save Nadia from the town's adversity. The project was motivated by a desire to advocate for diversity and inclusion. To achieve this objective and to reinforce the idea that people can’t be put into neat categories, we comedically employed a metaphor of a moustache that all characters in the film are required to wear. This device aimed to serve as a moral framework for what is considered socially acceptable, thereby challenging the conventional norms and stereotypes underpinning dominant cultural discourses. The moustache in the context of the short film can be viewed as a ‘floating signifier’, as it doesn't have a fixed meaning, and we can interpret it in various ways based on cultural and historical contexts. Its significance is subject to change and appropriation and serves as a symbol open to multiple readings.

Nefeli Dimakea - Middlesex University

In Athens 2022, Petros, 18-year-old, is killed by the police while returning home after a night out. After eight months, Petros’s parents, Eleni and Konstantinos despite their doubts, they find themselves seated in the courtroom, anxiously awaiting the judge's verdict.

Myth/Animation Station - The Open University

Throughout history, humans around the world have kept, stored, memorialised, disposed of, their dead in an ever-evolving myriad of ways, all steeped in meaning and significance. From different types of burial site (ground, cave, sky, water) to cremations (and the innovative use of ashes afterwards, such as within tattoos), to caves, catacombs and high-tech Japanese tower-block mausoleums. This short animation explores the fascinating and sometimes unexpected places we put our dead and how people stay connected with the dead. Every example is offered as an invitation to think about the different practices, recognising how each has value and meaning for people across different places and times, and that people are continuously trying to reconcile with the issue of ‘where to put the dead’?

**Caroline Kelly ** - The Open University

For viewers of the ‘Kae Tempest’ programme on BBC Two we want to offer an “added value” content that goes deeper into the themes we expect to see explored in the programme and use artists’ voices to do it. The content aims to engage a general viewing audience and poetry enthusiasts alike by showcasing talent from the world of modern performance poetry and getting an up-close look at their passions and motivations. We start from a place of performance and then segue into an exploration of the power and origins of their art in all its forms and permutations. By combining some performance capture and interview footage, this piece is purely artist-driven, and an authentic look at what the very nature of this movement looks like and means to artists in 2023.

Dr. Nobunye Levin (KCL, SOAS); Palesa Shongwe (Independent Scholar)

Reverie (2023) lies at the nexus of the essay film and videographic criticism. It is assembled from text and conversation, fragments and out-takes from the previous works of the filmmakers (Nobunye Levin and Palesa Shongwe), excerpts from the film Come Back Africa (Rogosin, 1959), and You Tube clips of the South African singer/activist Letta Mbulu, to reveal a feminist love praxis in the collaborative life of the two filmmakers - Shongwe and Levin. In Reverie, the love labour performed in the friendship of the filmmakers is realised through film, and functions as a generative mode of collaborative film praxis that negotiates the tensions and possibilities between dreaming and freedom. Reverie is concerned with a “new cinephilia” (Shambu, 2019) - a critical orientation towards the love of cinema, demanding it be mobilised as a “worldmaking” activity involved in the political transformation of the world through a transformation of representational practices (Srinivasan as cited in Balsom & Peleg, 2022). Reverie is a work in process, revealing knowledge as open-endedness. It is a work of epistolary, ephemeral impressions, organised through the “logic” and action of reverie, where echo and resonance are considered. Freedom and pleasure are imagined through the aesthetic and form of states of reverie, where the haptic is also conjured as a further site of freedom and pleasure. Reverie is a relational reverie, where a series of women dream of one another in call and response – a freedom dream (Kelley, 2002) tracing the reverberations of various “freedom dreams” (Kelley, 2002) in the audio-visual bonds between the different fragments. In this tracing of the notion of a freedom dream is the consideration of reverie as a political concept for “emancipatory dreams” (Verges, 2021) and dreaming – a tool of political action to ward off the inertia of despair.

Wilma Stone - London College of Communication UAL

The Force (2024) retrieves and revalues ‘subjugated knowledges’ of Scottish Gypsy Travellers (SGT) through critical archival interventions, place-based approaches, experimental filmmaking and literary practices. In so doing, it aims to add to urgent scholarly work addressing the cultural ramifications of colonial legacies which actively erase Indigenous and local knowledge systems, their cultural heritage, and collective identity. My family were SGT who avoided stigmatisation by keeping our genealogy secret and disavowing our ancestry. This has led me to ask, in our current time of accelerating governmental eradication policies, how an experimental filmmaking practice could add to the SGT ‘historical knowledge of struggles’ (Foucault 1980 p.83) as a potent force of resistance and liberatory potential? To achieve this aim, I have been working with the vast institutional archives amassed in Scotland of the travelling peoples’ oral traditions, newly accessible online since the pandemic. My methodology combines a repurposing of these audio archives, alongside literary texts, found footage and my own recordings made at ancient campgrounds. The repurposing of heterogeneous archival materials enables new relationships to the historical past to be articulated. This video essay uses temporally disparate home movie footage, interweaving and upending damaged film travelogue fragments with intimate family life. It also contains poetry excerpts and quotations and other fragments of found footage to orchestrate a larger pastiche artwork. I connect disparate images, textures, and figurations, achieved through editing, refilming, blurring, layering, reversing, and flipping, to form different reiterations and other time-based qualities. The corrosion of a filmic surface over time that simultaneously hides and then reveals the photographic image is visually compelling and “performs” the disruption of memory and narrative that traumatic events have on human perception. The remediation of damaged and deteriorated film footage enables me to visually register the larger structural violence being perpetrated against the travelling community.

**Harriet Atkinson ** - University of Brighton

Art on the Streets explores art’s role in providing a voice, a platform and a meeting point in the midst of conflict. The film's focus is 'For Liberty', an exhibition mounted in 1943 in the bombed-out shell of a department store in London's West End. Created by anti-fascist artists’ collective, Artists International Association, the audacious exhibition demonstrated the values people were fighting for. The film tells the stories of some of the artists who took part, many of whom had recently arrived as refugees in London. These included Hungarian sculptor Peter Laszlo Peri, Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka and German graphic designer F. H. K. Henrion. The exhibition’s central focus were the four freedoms – freedom of worship, freedom of speech, freedom from want and freedom from fear – that would become the key values underpinning the Universal Declaration of Human Rights signed in 1948. They were represented in the exhibition through F. H. K Henrion’s striking design of four doves. The film explores the exhibitions’ role as wartime propaganda, the significance of art in the midst of conflict in imagining a peaceful world, questions of how children might fare in the future, and the contribution of refugees to British visual culture. Art on the Streets is developed from research carried out by Dr Harriet Atkinson, a historian of art and design, during Arts and Humanities Research Council Leadership Fellowship ‘The Materialisation of Persuasion’ https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/materialisationofpersuasion/. It features interviews with historians Harriet Atkinson, Adrian Shaughnessy, and Gillian Whiteley; and contributing artists’ family members Peter Peri, Will Rea and Max Henrion. It also draws heavily on brilliant archival film and photographs from University of Brighton’s internationally acclaimed Design Archives, Screen Archives South East, Imperial War Museum, Tate, Marx Memorial Library, Mary Evans Picture Library, Henry Moore Institute, Science Museum Group and private collections.

Adriana Páramo Pérez - Royal Holloway University

The sudden unexpected death of my aunt made me feel for the first time in my life I wanted to be a mother. At the time I was filming a theatre play about obstetric violence and this was the first time I found out these type of abusive situations existed. These two events made me challenge the image of pregnancy I had in my mind. I realised the image of the pregnant woman has been usually mediated through the portrayals made in Hollywood contemporary films (usually women screaming hysterically). As I looked further, I also found out that there are other portrayals that disrupt the perpetuated image. In this video essay I analyse how filmmakers Naomi Kawase, Xisela Franco and Sophie Letourneur challenge the perpetuated image of the pregnant woman using their cameras in subversive ways. I too, use my camera to film my pregnancy process hoping to make visible other types of representations of the pregnant woman.

Jemma Saunders - University of Birmingham

This videographic study explores how media representations of Birmingham, long considered the UK’s ‘motor city’, have both depicted and perpetuated its inextricable connection to automobility, despite the oft-repeated fact that the conurbation has ‘more canals than Venice’. From the adventures of Brum, an anthropomorphic car beloved by children in the 1990s, to the urban iconography of Spaghetti Junction and its frequent appearances in both dramatic and factual productions that feature the city, it argues that the impact of the car has ‘driven’ Birmingham’s identity both on and off screen. Incorporating footage from a range of audio-visual texts, including Take Me High and Locke, the prevalence of the city’s motor heritage is seen in the frequent recurrence of Birmingham’s roads, its ‘carchitecture’, and their narrative deployment. In a critique of this automobile-centric urban identity, a counter-argument proposes that productions such as Rosie & Jim and Zomboat! infer a potential deviation back towards the network that became outmoded in the 20th century as car use boomed: the canal. Birmingham has no major river and canals also constitute a key part of the city’s aesthetic, yet have frequently been subjugated to wheeled vehicles in film and television depictions. While the car is, for many, a means of escaping the city, can shifts in screen narratives, away from roads and towards waterways, enable audio-visual manifestations of Birmingham to escape the ubiquity of the car?

Ellen Nolan - University of Westminster

The Nita Harvey Archive: A Hidden History. This video essay draws directly from the heterogeneous archive of my British great-aunt, Nita Harvey, who was selected by Hollywood director Cecil B. DeMille in a worldwide Paramount beauty contest, and signed to Paramount Studios in 1933. Using feminist film and photography theory together with theories including oral history, radical empathy, trauma, archival studies and studies of early Hollywood cinema to underpin my approach, I am excavating Harvey’s hidden history and remaking archival materials to facilitate new exchanges with the historical past. My methodological approach as: Archivist, Familial member, Artist and Academic, combines a self-reflective positionality, allowing for meaningful engagement with Harvey’s archive and the expansive audience of my research and practice. Entering the archive through the prism of Harvey’s story, “I didn’t make it in Hollywood because I refused to go on the casting couch,” repeated in childhood conversations with myself (1977-1987), I am arguing to embed Harvey’s oral history posthumously, as an unpublished narrative positioning Harvey’s voice to align with the body of her existing archive, establishing significant findings of marginalised women’s history and experience in 1930’s Hollywood, puncturing 1930’s Hollywood mythology by providing an alternate history compared to now. My practice is mediated through my body in genealogical dialogue with Harvey’s archive, establishing a dynamic between embodied subject and archival object. Using photography and film to capture my performances and positioning Harvey’s oral history as a narrative frame, I collaborated with an atelier, to pattern-cut Harvey’s archival outfits: 1. The wool suit, 2. The casting bikini. Performing the archive through Harvey’s outfits, in the U.S sites that she visited in 1933, I embody her experience, inhabiting her archive, through my radically empathetic exploration of her story. Using this process, I offer a new model for archival research, practice and findings.