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Dear students, friends, alumni and supporters of visual anthropology at Kent,

In the year when Extinction Rebellion protests caught the public imagination and led to the declaration of a climate emergency of the UK Government we would like to share with you seventeen films that capture our students’ filmic positions on contemporary experience and the challenges and opportunities we face.

We have chosen to create a title, RESOLUTIONARIES, that captures our desire to fight for solutions to address those challenges. The tagline, REBEL- RECLAIM- RECREATE, encapsulates the route to solutions but also describes the themes of the seventeen short ethnographic documentaries we will screen on Wednesday 29th May in the Gulbenkian Cinema.

The day is a  celebration of our students visual anthropological film-making creativity, honesty and engagement. We will have four prizes that reflect the value we put on video as research and intervention. Yasmin Fedda returns to award the New Horizons Prize, informed by her award winning documentary films and PhD research in transdisciplinary films. There will be a public engagement prize, funded by Allan Bicker in memory of Lynn Bicker and Martin Ripley, and awarded on the basis of the students interactive websites. This will be awarded by our  Director of Research, Rob Fish.

We welcome back some of our prize winning alumni from last year, Francesca Tesler and Johannes Walter, who will award a prize on behalf of our alumni. We look forward to learning how they are and how they are using their visual anthropological skills now. The alumni prize is for the film that best captures their excitement of the value of film in their current jobs, study and activity.

We are always happy to welcome Professor Hugh Brody to award the Hugh Brody Visual Anthropology Prize and continue his longstanding support of our programme. This prize is awarded to the most exceptional film in visual anthropological terms. Professor Hugh Brody is an inspiring anthropologist, writer, director and filmmaker whose films are informed by a deep respect for indigenous knowledge, particularly in Canada.