About The Video Essays Guide

Bartolomeo Meletti works as Head of Knowledge Exchange for CREATe, the Centre for Regulation of the Creative Economy University of Glasgow. In this capacity, he has led the development of CopyrightUser.org, an independent online platform intended to make UK copyright law accessible to everyone.

Previously, Bart was the Education and Research Executive of Learning on Screen. In this capacity, he co-authored this Video Essays Guide.

Bart also worked at the British Film Institute and the Digital Catapult on secondment from CREATe, and held research and media production positions at CIPPM, the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy & Management (Bournemouth University), where he is currently a Visiting Fellow; and at CEMP, the Centre for Excellence in Media Practice (Bournemouth University).

In 2015, and alongside Professor Ronan Deazley, Bartolomeo received the Arts and Humanities Research Councils (AHRC) Award for Innovation in Film. This was for their work 'The Adventure of the Girl with the Light Blue Hair', the first episode in 'The Game is On!' webseries.

Estrella Sendra is Lecturer in Culture, Media and Creative Industries Education (Festivals and Events) at King’s College London. She is a researcher, educator, journalist, and festival worker interested in the relationship and collaboration between research, practice and pedagogy. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, nominated to the King’s Education Awards in 2023 and recipient of the SOAS Director’s Teaching Prize for Inspirational Teaching (2020). In 2022, following her organisation of an event for Black History Month, she was awarded the ‘Outstanding Experience University of Southampton Festival Digital Engagement Pioneer Awards’. In 2024, she was the recipient of the King’s Engaged Research Network Awards in the International Collaboration category for her research project on ‘Decolonising Film Festival Research and Curating African Cinemas’.

She is the co-author of the ‘Introductory Guide to Video Essays’, available at Learning on Screen (2020) and the author of ‘Video Essays: Curating and Transforming Film Education through Artistic Research’ (2020). She is an associate editor in Screenworks, the peer-reviewed online publication of practice research in screen media. Her most recently published video essays include ‘Film as Sound Art: Embracing Love through Extra-diegetic Sound in Nadine Labaki’s Caramel’ in Open Screens (2023) and ‘Displacement, Intimacy & Embodiment: Nearby Alain Gomis’ Multi Sensory Cinema’, in [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image (2022).

Her research interests are festivals, film, screen media and creative industries in Africa and artistic research, with a particular focus on video essays. Since 2011, when she directed Témoignages de l’autre côté, an awarded documentary about migration, she has been developing a regional expertise in Senegal. She is the Co-Principal Investigator of the research project ‘Decolonizing Film Festival Research in a Post-Pandemic World’, funded by the New Frontiers in Research Fund, Government of Canada [NFRFR-2021-00161].