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Re-presenting India On Screen is the focus of Scarborough Art Gallery’s online film night on June 30

Still from Survey Number Zero, by Priya Thuvassery, 2016

SCARBOROUGH Art Gallery’s online film series will resume on June 30 with Re-presenting India On Screen.

The 7pm screening marks a new and ambitious element of Scarborough Museums Trust’s digital programming, with filmmakers Suraj Prasad and Tarini Manchanda joining the post-screening Q&A live from Delhi in this international collaboration between Britain and India.

Gallery Screenings Online, on the last Tuesday night of each month, features films selected to give audiences a new perspective on both visiting exhibitions and the permanent Scarborough Collections. Each is followed by a question-and-answer session.

Re-presenting India On Screen will feature short films by director, cinematographer and editor Priya Thuvassery; Gautam Valluri, an artist working with film; Suraj Prasad, co-founder of Lightcube, a film collective in New Delhi, and Tarini Manchanda, a filmmaker based in New Delhi.

Built around short films that re-think how India has been and continues to be re-presented on screen, the event will be co-hosted by Suraj Prasad and curator Martha Cattell.

The catalyst for June 30’s online screening was an item in the Scarborough Borough Collection: a journal by colonialist traveller Colonel James Harrison, from Brandesburton in East Yorkshire.

Suraj says: “The idea that colonialism is necessarily connected to a specific identity and location is convoluted and over-simplified; we are all colonialists to some degree. Perhaps our images can help reveal a lot about how we see the world.”

Still from The Dhenuki Cinema Project, by Suraj Prasad, 2016

Harrison’s journal and photographs offer a specific representation of India through an external and colonialist perspective, observes Martha. “This screening will consider how filmmakers have used moving images to represent India. It will feature archive and contemporary works, drawing on themes of ecology, architecture and colonialism,” she says.

“It will aim to challenge pre-existing biases and colonist hangovers of India on screen, and is part of ongoing work at Scarborough Museums Trust to decolonialise the Scarborough Collections.”

Each Gallery Screening will have optional live captions from a stenographer; downloading the app version of Zoom is recommended for those wishing to use this function.

A “social story” – a visual guide – will be created too, with illustrations by Scarborough artist Savannah Storm to explain the format and accessible elements of the screening.

Access to the June 30 event is by password only, available, along with a link, by emailing Martha Cattell at Martha.cattell@smtrust.uk.com. Email the same address for access to the social story.

The introduction and Q&A will be available post-event on Scarborough Museums Trust’s YouTube channel: bit.ly/YouTubeSMT.

Visit the trust’s YouTube channel at the same address to watch the recorded introductions and Q&As from previous Gallery Screenings.

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What is invariably present but often overlooked in maritime paintings? The sea. Not so at May 26 online film night and Q&A

A still from Hondartza Fraga’s Upon A Painted Ocean, 2015

THE online tide comes in for The Sea Around Us, the latest film night at home from Scarborough Art Gallery, on May 26 at 7pm.

Six short films and audio recordings will be accompanied by a question-and-answer session with artists Daniel & Clara, Hondartza Fraga and Amy Sharrocks, from the Museum of Water.

Under discussion will be their depictions of the sea and its use more generally as an artistic subject.

Dutch Fishing Boats, by John Wilson Carmichael, 1860, Scarborough Collections, Scarborough Art Gallery

Among the films looking at the sea as an element of marine paintings will be:

Louis Lumière, La Mer/The Sea, 1895, 35 seconds: One of the first films ever screened to the public, shown at the first such screening in Paris in December 28 1895.

Hondartza Fraga, Upon A Painted Sea, 2015, 2.58 minutes: A film that seeks to bring a focus back to the sea that is “otherwise only a backdrop in paintings depicting the military and economic power of the Dutch republic”.

Daniel and Clara, Exterior Series, EXT. WAVES, 2017, 21 minutes: Part of a series that strips away as many other elements as possible to focus on the direct relationship between the recording device – in this case a VHS camera – and the natural environment.

“The sea as a subject in its own right is often overlooked,” says Gallery Screenings Online film programmer Martha Cattell

Martha Cattell, Scarborough Museums Trust’s guest film programmer, says: “Scarborough Art Gallery has a great many marine paintings in its collection. The sea as a subject in its own right is often overlooked and, more widely, often absent in discussions on marine-painted subjects.

“This screening will reconsider this and think about the main subject that is usually present in marine paintings, but so often overlooked: the sea. It will consider water through the personal, political and material.”

The Sea Around Us forms part of the Gallery Screenings Online series, held on the last Tuesday of each month, each night featuring films selected to give audiences a new perspective on both visiting exhibitions and the permanent Scarborough Collections, followed by a Q&A.

The Brig ‘Herbert’, ship portrait, by M Scurr, 1843, Scarborough Collections, Scarborough Art Gallery

Each gallery screening will have optional live captions from a stenographer; downloading the app version of Zoom is recommended for those wishing to use this function.

A visual guide, or “social story”, will be created too, with illustrations by Scarborough artist Savannah Storm, to explain the format and accessible elements of the screening.

Access to the Gallery Screenings Online event on May 26 is by password only, available, along with a link, by emailing Martha at Martha.cattell@smtrust.uk.com. Please email the same address for access to the social story.

Isabelle, ship portrait, by unknown artist, 19th century, Scarborough Collections, Scarborough Art Gallery

The Q&A and introduction also will be available post-event on Scarborough Museums Trust’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-gck0CM7gVFcsZHMAIcDw

For further information on Hondartza Fraga, go to https://www.hondartzafraga.com; Daniel & Clara: https://daniel-clara.co.uk; Amy Sharrocks and the Museum of Water: http://www.museumofwater.co.uk.

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Scarborough Art Gallery to launch series of online screenings on Tuesday nights

Great Bustard, from the Scarborough Collections. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

SCARBOROUGH Art Gallery will begin a series of online film nights with When Species Meet this evening (28/4/2020).

Gallery Screenings Online, on the last Tuesday of each month from 7pm, will feature films selected to give audiences a new perspective on both visiting exhibitions and the permanent Scarborough Collections, followed by a question-and-answer session.

The series will have features aimed at making them as accessible to as many people as possible. Each event will have optional live captions from a stenographer; downloading the app version of Zoom is recommended for those wishing to use this function. 

Artist and designer Lucy Carruthers and collections manager Jim Middleton: an image from the social story, illustrated by Savannah Storm

A visual guide, or “social story”, will be created too, with illustrations by Scarborough artist Savannah Storm, to explain the format and accessible elements of the screening. 

The first screening, When Species Meet, will look at captive and extinct animals and how film has been used to represent them, opening with Bert Haanstra’s nine-minute documentary Zoo, followed by Leanne Allison and Jeremy Mendes’ 20-minute interactive film Bear 71. 

Filmed in 1962 and nominated for a 1963 BAFTA Award for Best Short Film, Zoo compares the behaviour of animals and humans, using a hidden camera to capture the true nature of both man and beast.

Great Auk egg, from the Scarborough Collections. Picture: David Chalmers

Bear 71 explores the life of a grizzly bear in Banff National Park, monitored by wildlife conservation offices from 2001 to 2009. The film “gives viewers the experience of ‘being’ a bear”, exploring how one animal’s life is interlinked and affected by the movements of humans and animals around it. 

The screenings will be followed by a 30-minute Q&A with Jim Middleton, collections manager at Scarborough Museums Trust, who will discuss the natural history collections within the archive, and with artist and designer Lucy Carruthers.

Andrew Clay, Scarborough Museums Trust’s chief executive, says: “Increasing access to our events, whether they are online or in our venues, is really important to us. No-one should feel excluded. We hope the visual guides and subtitles will support more people from our communities to participate in our activities.”

Film programmer Martha Cattell: email her for access to Gallery Screenings Online. Image: Susannah Storm

Film programmer Martha Cattell says: “Scarborough Museums Trust has a large collection of taxidermy animals locked away in the stores. Some of the species represented – the great bustard, the great auk, of which we have a rare egg, the passenger pigeons, Captain Cook’s bean snail – are now extinct largely due to human intervention.

“Their bodies now rest, static and captive in the archives. They are ghosts of species lost and haunted by the human actions that led to their demise.”

Simon Hedges, the trust’s head of curation, collections and exhibitions, says: “ We launched the Gallery Screenings programme at Scarborough Art Gallery in early March and then, of course, had to cancel it after the first one because of the Coronavirus lockdown.

Chatscreen: another illustration from the virtual guide by Susannah Storm

“We’re absolutely delighted to be able to continue these fascinating events online. They will return to the gallery once we reopen to the public.”

Access to the Gallery Screenings Online event this evening is by password only, available, along with a link, by emailing Martha.cattell@smtrust.uk.com   

The social story for When Species Meet can be downloaded at https://bit.ly/2W0oOe6. The Q&A and introduction will be available post-event on Scarborough Museums Trust’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-gck0CM7gVFcsZHMAIcDw.